Is Amazon a Monopoly? The FTC Antitrust Case and What It Means for the Stock

A company sued by its own government three years ago has still not stood trial. Within one spring next year, three separate courts are scheduled to hear three separate cases against it. One is about the prices sellers may charge elsewhere, one is about whether the company is a monopolist, and one was thrown out and then revived on appeal. All three still await a ruling on the merits.

A headline that says monopoly moves a share, but a complaint is an accusation with a filing date. The court that decides it will decide only whether the law was broken, and it leaves what the company must change to a later proceeding. Between the accusation and any change there are deadlines for evidence, motions to throw the case out, a trial with no jury, a written decision, a second proceeding on remedies, and an appeal.

For a holder, the useful questions are narrower than the headline. What could a court order the company to change, which lines of its income would that touch, when are the dates on which something can happen, and what can a date deliver on the day itself. Answered from the pleadings and the dockets, the case stops being a mood and becomes a calendar.

On the venue the share is held as the AMZNX/USDT Spot token or as the AMZNUSDT Perpetual, and each has trading hours of its own that differ from a court's filing hours. A ruling can land after the Nasdaq close on a weekday evening, and what a holder can do at that hour depends on which instrument they hold.

Is Amazon a monopoly?

No US court has found that Amazon is a monopoly. The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general allege that it is, in a complaint filed on September 26, 2023 in the Western District of Washington (source: FTC). The question goes to a bench trial before Judge John H. Chun on March 29, 2027 (source: FTC v. Amazon docket).

The legal question is narrower than the everyday one. The FTC's own release says the complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law "not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging" (source: FTC). Size is not the charge. The charge is that a company with market power kept it by punishing sellers who priced lower elsewhere and by tying the Prime badge to its own fulfillment service. The court will test each of those claims against the evidence, and Amazon's share of retail on its own is beside the point.

Amazon's answer is on the record in its own filings. Its second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q lists the cases brought since March 2020 by private plaintiffs, state attorneys general and the FTC alleging price fixing, monopolization and consumer-protection violations. It states that "We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in these matters" (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The same filing records that in the US "most of Amazon's motions to dismiss were granted in part, but in each case, at least some of the claims survived" (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Both sides have won something before trial, and neither has won the case.

Say you hold the share and want to know how much of the business the case reaches. AWS earned $16.6 billion of Amazon's $27.5 billion of operating income in the second quarter of 2026, and the marketplace conduct at issue lives in the North America segment, which earned $9.1 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results). The complaint leaves untouched the cloud business that carries most of the profit, and that business cannot be bought on its own, which is where can you buy AWS stock begins. Between court dates the price answers to what Amazon's own risk factor lists, interest rates, quarterly results and spending decisions (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K), and what moves the Amazon stock price ranks those drivers.

What the FTC and the state attorneys general say Amazon did

The complaint describes two markets, the online superstore market for shoppers and the market for online marketplace services that sellers buy. It alleges that Amazon holds monopoly power in both, keeps it through anti-discounting measures and the tie between Prime eligibility and its fulfillment service, and exploits it through advertising that degrades search results, self-preferencing and seller fees (source: FTC).

Open the release and the anti-discounting allegation is the one about prices on other sites. The FTC says that if Amazon discovers a seller offering a lower price elsewhere, it can bury that seller's listings so far down its search results that they become effectively invisible, which deters other retailers from competing on price (source: FTC). The complaint puts a figure on why that matters. Nearly 98% of all purchases on Amazon are made through the "Add to Cart" and "Buy Now" buttons in the Buy Box, so losing the Buy Box is losing the sale (source: FTC complaint). Amazon's own 10-Q describes the same allegations in its own words, as claims about its pricing policies, its selection of the Featured Offer, its use of seller data, its advertising practices, the structure of Prime and the promotion of its own products (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).

The second allegation is the Prime tie. The FTC says Amazon conditions a seller's ability to get Prime eligibility for a product, which it calls "a virtual necessity for doing business on Amazon", on the seller using Amazon's fulfillment service. That, it says, makes it more expensive for the seller to also sell on other platforms (source: FTC). The third and fourth are about the store itself: replacing organic search results with paid advertisements, and biasing results toward Amazon's own products (source: FTC). The fees that sit on top of all of this are the FTC's closing number. It says the fees, from a monthly fee to the advertising fees that have become virtually necessary, combine to force many sellers to pay close to 50% of their total revenues to Amazon (source: FTC). A seller's margin is built from referral, fulfillment and advertising fees before any of the conduct alleged here, and Amazon's marketplace and seller fees prices each one.

The complaint was filed by the FTC and 17 states on a Commission vote of 3-0: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin (source: FTC). The amended complaint of March 14, 2024 added Vermont and Puerto Rico, so 19 states and territories now sue beside the Commission. Twelve of them add counts under their own laws to the federal ones (source: order on Amazon's motion to dismiss). The court's order of September 30, 2024 kept every federal count alive while dismissing some state counts with leave to amend (source: order on Amazon's motion to dismiss).

The remedies on the table and what each would touch

The complaint asks the court to enjoin Amazon permanently from the conduct alleged and from similar or related conduct, and for "any preliminary or permanent equitable relief, including but not limited to structural relief" (source: FTC complaint). No remedy has been ordered. Each class of remedy reaches a different line of Amazon's second-quarter 2026 revenue.

Two things are easy to get wrong here. The remedies are classes, not orders. The court has not decided liability, and under its own order it will only take up remedies at a later conference if it finds Amazon liable (source: order on Amazon's motion to dismiss). And the revenue lines are the lines a remedy would touch, not the amount at risk. An order ending anti-discounting does not remove $70.4 billion of online-store sales; it changes the terms on which those sales are made, and the effect on margin is what the trial evidence would eventually be about. North America's $9.1 billion of operating income is what the segment keeps after its costs, which Amazon's business segments traces line by line. The marketplace's fees carry a higher margin than first-party retail, for the reasons Amazon's profit margins sets out.

Three trials in one spring: The 2027 calendar

Three cases against Amazon go to trial in the spring of 2027. California's was set for January 19, 2027 in San Francisco Superior Court (source: California Attorney General), and was reported on September 16, 2026 as moved to March 22 (source: MLex). The FTC's bench trial starts March 29, 2027; the District of Columbia's is set for May.

On September 16, 2026 MLex reported that the state court had approved moving the California trial from January 19 to March 22, 2027, and that Amazon plans to ask the FTC about postponing the federal trial (source: MLex). Nothing on the federal docket had changed by its latest entry of August 27, 2026.

The FTC docket is the one whose calendar is public in full. The scheduling order of December 15, 2025 closed fact discovery on January 30, 2026 and expert discovery on September 16, 2026. It sets dispositive and Daubert motions for October 16, 2026, with oppositions by November 25 and replies by December 23, a settlement conference no later than February 5, 2027, and the pretrial conference for March 15, 2027 (source: FTC v. Amazon docket). A dispositive motion asks the court to decide part of the case without trial, so the order on those motions, which can come only after the December 23 replies, is the next document that can narrow the trial. The settlement conference is the one scheduled date whose purpose is ending the case without a ruling; a settlement can be reached on any other day too.

The FTC date is on the federal docket; the other two rest on legal-press reports. California's press page carried no release on the new date through September 18, 2026, and the District's carried none as of September 17, so re-check those two first.

What a ruling on March 29, 2027 would decide, and what comes after it

The FTC trial is a bench trial on liability only. Judge Chun's order of September 30, 2024 split the case: the trial "will address only Amazon's liability under the FTC Act, Sherman Act, and the state laws", and a remedies conference follows only "If the Court renders a decision finding Amazon liable" (source: order on Amazon's motion to dismiss).

That structure sets what a trial date can and cannot deliver. Open the docket and the sequence is written into the deadlines. A bench trial has no jury. The judge hears the evidence, the parties submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law by March 22, 2027, and the decision comes as findings and conclusions the court files when it is ready, not as a verdict announced at the close of trial (source: FTC v. Amazon docket). A finding of liability would then open a second proceeding on what Amazon must change, and only the order at the end of that proceeding would touch a revenue line. A finding of no liability ends the federal case, subject to appeal. Either outcome can be appealed to the Ninth Circuit. The order on the motion to dismiss already shows the court deciding claim by claim, which is how the decision after trial is likely to read too.

Alphabet's search case is the working precedent for the shape, and it is a different docket. There Judge Mehta's liability opinion was filed on August 5, 2024 and his remedies opinion on September 2, 2025, thirteen months apart (source: US v. Google docket). Google's antitrust rulings and Alphabet stock reads both of those documents for what they changed in Alphabet's business. Amazon's case is at the stage Alphabet's was before its first ruling, and nothing in the Alphabet outcome binds Judge Chun.

Whichever way the decision reads, a document filed after the 4:00 pm Nasdaq close reaches the AMZNX/USDT Spot pair before it reaches the share, and the pair's live price and order book are on its page.

The Amazon cases that get confused with the monopoly case

Amazon has agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC, is defending a second FTC suit filed in August 2026, and is a designated gatekeeper under the European Union's Digital Markets Act. None of those is the monopoly case. Each has its own court, its own statute and its own date.

Open the FTC's settlement release and the $2.5 billion settled a consumer-protection action over Prime enrollment. On September 25, 2025 the FTC announced an order settling allegations that Amazon enrolled millions of consumers in Prime without their consent and made cancellation difficult. Amazon pays a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds (source: FTC settlement release). Amazon recorded the charge in its third-quarter 2025 operating income, and its 2025 operating income of $80.0 billion carries it (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The monopolization complaint was filed two years earlier and remains open.

The August 2026 suit is about advertising auctions. On August 31, 2026 the FTC and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon in the same Seattle court. They allege that for more than seven years it told advertisers it ran second-price auctions while charging Sponsored Products advertisers their own winning bid close to 80% of the time, through what an internal document called "a surcharge hidden in it" (source: FTC advertising release). The FTC files it under consumer protection, and California pleads its own Unfair Competition and False Advertising Laws. California's release puts the surcharges at over $20 billion and asks for injunctive relief, civil penalties, disgorgement and restitution (source: California Attorney General, August 31, 2026). The line it reaches is the same $19.8 billion quarterly advertising line the monopoly case reaches from another direction (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results).

The rest is dated context. Private class actions on the same conduct have been filed in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom since March 2020, and in the US one class has been certified and three are pre-certification (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). In Italy the competition authority's 2021 fine of 1.1 billion euros was affirmed in September 2025 and cut to 752 million euros, and Amazon appealed in December 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). In the European Union (EU), Amazon was designated a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on September 6, 2023, one of six companies, and non-compliance carries fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover (source: European Commission). The designation covers two core platform services, its Marketplace and Amazon Advertising (source: DMA gatekeeper list). Each of these can produce a headline with the word Amazon and a fine in it, and each leaves the March 29, 2027 trial where it is. Is Amazon stock a good investment weighs these cases against the growth case as one line of its risk register.

How a holder handles a trial date on the venue

A court date is a day on which something may be filed, and a bench trial is a set of such days with no jury-verdict day. On BloFin the share is held as AMZNX or as the AMZNUSDT Perpetual. At 06:23 UTC on September 17, 2026 the token traded at 248.32 USDT.

The hours are the first thing that differs. BloFin's risk disclosure describes xStocks markets as trading 24 hours a day on weekdays only (source: BloFin xStocks risk disclosure). A filing that lands at seven on a weekday evening in Seattle, after the Nasdaq close, can therefore be acted on in the token before the share opens in New York the next morning. The disclosure does not say where the weekday window ends, so a Friday-evening filing is the case to check on the venue. The perpetual also trades outside the primary market's regular hours, and at the same read the contract carried a funding rate of +0.0035%. The venue warns on the contract page that outside the primary market's regular hours the underlying may show limited price movement and reduced liquidity, and that order placement may be restricted to reduce-only orders for closing positions. A holder of the token can sell into the overnight book; a holder of the perpetual may be able only to close.

The second thing is what a date contains. Say you hold AMZNX on March 29, 2027. The trial opens, and no document that changes Amazon's obligations is filed that day, because none is scheduled to be. The dates on which a document can change the case are the ones with filings attached. They are the order on dispositive motions after December 23, 2026, the settlement conference by February 5, 2027, the written decision after the trial, and the remedies order after any liability finding (source: FTC v. Amazon docket). A position sized for a jury verdict on a trial date is sized for an event that does not exist in a bench trial.

The third is Amazon's own filing. Its 2025 Form 10-K says its share price moves with the risks in its risk factors, and names news, analyst reports and social-media activity among the specific ones; a separate risk factor on litigation calls the outcomes of its legal matters "inherently unpredictable" (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The company's own filing therefore treats its cases as a risk whose outcome it cannot predict. Sizing a position for a filing date and closing it after the document lands is the same procedure as sizing for an earnings release, which trading Amazon around earnings works in numbers. A hedge of a token holding with the perpetual carries the funding rate for as long as it is held, paid or received every eight hours depending on the rate's sign, which how to short Amazon on BloFin works through.

Buying the token takes an eligibility attestation, a USDT deposit and one spot order; how to buy tokenized Amazon on BloFin walks the six screens. The leverage tiers and the funding of the perpetual are read from the contract page in how to trade Amazon with leverage, where the funding cost is worked for a holding of days, against the years a court case runs.

Looking to gain exposure to Amazon? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page or AMZNUSDT Perpetual page.

Frequently asked questions

Did Amazon lose the FTC antitrust case?

Amazon has neither lost nor won it, because it has not been tried. The one ruling on the claims so far is Judge Chun's order of September 30, 2024 on Amazon's motion to dismiss, which decided whether the complaint states a claim, not whether it is true. It denied the motion on the Sherman Act counts and the FTC Act counts, dismissed some of the states' claims under their own laws, and gave the plaintiffs until October 31, 2024 to amend the claims dismissed without prejudice (source: order on Amazon's motion to dismiss). Liability is decided at the bench trial that starts on March 29, 2027.

What happens on March 29, 2027?

The bench trial opens before Judge John H. Chun in Seattle, with no jury, at the end of a pretrial sequence the scheduling order fixes. The plaintiffs' pretrial statement is due by February 3, 2027 and Amazon's by February 12, motions in limine by February 22, the proposed pretrial order and deposition designations by March 5, then the pretrial conference on March 15 and trial briefs on March 22 (source: FTC v. Amazon docket). The trial produces evidence and argument; the decision comes afterward as findings of fact and conclusions of law the court files when it is ready, and it covers liability only.

What is Amazon's $2.5 billion FTC settlement for?

It settles a consumer-protection action over Prime enrollment and cancellation, by a stipulated final order Amazon consented to and the Commission approved 3-0, announced on September 25, 2025 (source: FTC settlement release). Beyond the $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds, the order requires Amazon to stop the enrollment and cancellation practices the complaint described. It is a consumer-protection order, not an antitrust one, and it leaves the monopolization case, filed in 2023, untouched.

Is the August 2026 advertising lawsuit part of the monopoly case?

It is a separate case in the same court. The FTC and 22 states allege that Amazon told advertisers it ran second-price auctions, in which the winner pays one cent more than the next bid. Its surcharges, they say, meant Sponsored Products advertisers paid their own bid between 30% and 40% of the time in 2021, 70% in 2022 and approximately 80% in 2024 (source: FTC advertising release). It is pleaded as deception, under consumer-protection and state advertising law, and it reaches the advertising line rather than the marketplace conduct the monopoly case is about.

Could a court break Amazon up?

The complaint's request for relief includes structural relief, without naming a split, as one of the equitable remedies the plaintiffs say are needed (source: FTC complaint). Under the court's order, no remedy of any kind is taken up unless the bench trial ends in a liability finding, and then at a separate conference (source: order on Amazon's motion to dismiss). A separate power sits in Brussels: under the Digital Markets Act the Commission can, for systematic non-compliance, oblige a gatekeeper to sell a business or parts of it (source: European Commission). In Seattle, two proceedings and an appeal stand between March 29, 2027 and any break-up.

Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include the Federal Trade Commission's press releases of September 26, 2023, September 25, 2025 and August 31, 2026, the public complaint in FTC v. Amazon.com, Inc., the court's order of September 30, 2024 and the docket of case 2:23-cv-01495 in the Western District of Washington, the California Attorney General's releases, MLex and Law360 reports on the state trial dates, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals' opinion of August 22, 2024, the European Commission's Digital Markets Act designation, Amazon's 2025 Form 10-K, second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q and results release, and BloFin's AMZNX/USDT and AMZNUSDT pages, current as of September 2026.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial or legal advice, and nothing in it predicts the outcome of any case or recommends buying, selling or holding Amazon in any form. Trial dates move: two of the three 2027 dates rest on legal-press reports and every date here should be re-checked against the docket before it is relied on. A liability finding would not itself change Amazon's business; only a later remedies order could, and either side can appeal. AMZNX is a tracker certificate rather than a share, carrying no voting rights and exposure to the issuer, its custodians and the trading venue, and a leveraged position in AMZNUSDT held into a filing date can be liquidated by a single session's move. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.