Speaker 1: We have the largest database of fraud and financial crime
Speaker 1: and human history. Every transaction on a public ledger is
Speaker 1: logged and immutable.
Speaker 2: It's there forever.
Speaker 1: I think that we're living this really interesting moment where
Speaker 1: the private sector has all of the data and the
Speaker 1: public sector has all of the authorities. And our job
Speaker 1: at TRM is to make sure that the public sector
Speaker 1: has the data that it needs. Clarity will pass. We
Speaker 1: will one hundred percent have a crypto market structure bill.
Speaker 1: We're going to get something, whether it's now or whether
Speaker 1: it's later.
Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by Fordax. Guys, Let's
Speaker 3: be honest, the crypto market has been moving sideways for
Speaker 3: a while now. A lot of people are just sitting
Speaker 3: on their coins waiting for the next big move. But
Speaker 3: while you're waiting, your crypto is just sitting in your
Speaker 3: wallet doing absolutely nothing. That's why I want to mention
Speaker 3: one of my longtime partners, FORTASX. Instead of just like
Speaker 3: your assets sit idle, you can put supported cryptocurrencies into
Speaker 3: fortestx liquidity pools and earn daily rewards while still keeping
Speaker 3: the flexibility to withdraw whenever you want. One of the
Speaker 3: reasons I've continued working with them is because they keep delivering.
Speaker 3: The team is public, They've successfully completed Cyberscope team verification,
Speaker 3: KYC past independent security audits, and the platform has been
Speaker 3: building consistently for years. They've focused on long term growth,
Speaker 3: transparency and security rather than hype. In a market like this,
Speaker 3: it makes far more sense to have your crypto working
Speaker 3: for you instead of letting it sit idle in your wallet.
Speaker 3: I've worked with fortest x for a long time and
Speaker 3: if you're planning to hold your crypto anyway, I genuinely
Speaker 3: think it's one of the smartest ways to put those
Speaker 3: assets to work. And folks, I know security is very
Speaker 3: important to all of us as we hold our crypto
Speaker 3: assets and they are fully audited by certain and they
Speaker 3: are sec registered and much more so. You've got to
Speaker 3: check out fort x. Go to fordest x dot fi
Speaker 3: slash x slash Thinking Crypto link will be in the description. Hey, folks,
Speaker 3: welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm Tony Edward and
Speaker 3: I'm Amanda Wickcroft and joining us is Ari Redboard, Global
Speaker 3: Head of Policy at tim Labs, which is a blockchain
Speaker 3: intelligence company that helps the financial institutions, crypto businesses, and
Speaker 3: government agencies detect and investigate crypto related financial crime and
Speaker 3: fraud ery. Great to have.
Speaker 1: You, hey, Tony Amanda, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Really looking forward to the conversation today.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we're excited to chat with you. I think it's
Speaker 3: very timely for us to be having this conversation with
Speaker 3: the backdrop of crypto legislation about to make it through
Speaker 3: the Senate with the Clarity Act and much more. You
Speaker 3: have law enforcement agencies weighing in and giving their endorsement
Speaker 3: for the Clarity Act and much more.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Lots to talk about, but we love to kick it
Speaker 3: off with your background. Tell us about where you're from
Speaker 3: and how do you make your way into the government
Speaker 3: and then into crypto.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, and again thanks for having me. Prior to
Speaker 1: joining TRM about six years ago, I spent about eleven
Speaker 1: years as a federal prosecutor. I spent much of that
Speaker 1: time in the intersection between money laundering and national security,
Speaker 1: what I call threat finance, essentially stopping bad actors from
Speaker 1: getting the money they need to do bad things. So
Speaker 1: I think terrorst financiers, sanctions, criminal prosecutions, export control, cyber
Speaker 1: North Korea. After the Department of Justice. I spent about
Speaker 1: two years at the US Treasury Department, working in the
Speaker 1: office that oversees the National Security Apparatus there so OPAC,
Speaker 1: the Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is our sanctions
Speaker 1: regulator in the US, FINSEND, a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
Speaker 1: which is our financial intelligence unit, and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other sort of components that really try to stop
Speaker 1: bad actors from accessing the global and certainly US financial systems.
Speaker 1: As I said, I joined TIRAM about six years ago
Speaker 1: after again close to fifteen years in the US government.
Speaker 1: We were about seven people at the time, were about
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty today globally. It's been this just
Speaker 1: incredible journey. I've never worked harder, I've never had more fun,
Speaker 1: never felt like I've done, you know, more meaningful work,
Speaker 1: even as a prosecutor. So it's been a really extraordinary
Speaker 1: adventure in the crypto ecosystem.
Speaker 3: With regards to the transition into crypto. Did you see
Speaker 3: this technology? You know, at what point, I should say
Speaker 3: what point did you see this technology? And was it
Speaker 3: what was your aha moment that you saw, Well, this
Speaker 3: looks like it's going to be the rails for the
Speaker 3: financial markets and things along those lines.
Speaker 2: You know, so interesting.
Speaker 1: I wish I had a better crypto origin story, like
Speaker 1: I bought bitcoin in like twenty thirteen or something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't, you know, I'd be driving around my
Speaker 1: lambou somewhere.
Speaker 2: But it was a little different for me. It's very
Speaker 2: much as a prosecutor.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I was investigating cases pretty early twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: seventeen involving North Korea, and their crypto playbook was very different.
Speaker 2: Back then.
Speaker 1: They were really using bitcoin to launder funds. North Korea
Speaker 1: is a country that has no economy whatsoever. It's essentially
Speaker 1: a banana republic, and it's a criminal regime that has
Speaker 1: basically tried to figure out ways to launder funds for decades.
Speaker 1: Whether it was counterfeit hundred dollars bills, whether it was
Speaker 1: counterfeit tobacco, counterfeit cigarettes, whether it was hacking Sony pictures.
Speaker 1: You might remember, trying to steal a billion dollars from
Speaker 1: the Bank of Bangladesh. This was all before crypto. And
Speaker 1: what I started seeing in those early days of those
Speaker 1: investigations was North Korea really looking to bitcoin. And I
Speaker 1: said to myself, well what is this and kind of
Speaker 1: went down that rabbit hole a little bit to understand
Speaker 1: it and realized like, wow, I'm seeing bad actors use
Speaker 1: this at scale, but wow, what just an incredible use
Speaker 1: case for lawful citizens and what a particular like, what
Speaker 1: a possible revolution this technology is when it comes to money.
Speaker 1: So I think for me it was very much like, Hey,
Speaker 1: how do I stop bad guys from using it? But
Speaker 1: I think as part of that journey, realized how just
Speaker 1: incredible a technology is for good and how we have
Speaker 1: to really leverage blockchain technology in order to stop these
Speaker 1: bad actors.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not kidding about North Korea being the Banana Republic.
Speaker 4: I was just reading about that investigative journalist Nick Sureley,
Speaker 4: who everybody loves with all the exposure that he's doing
Speaker 4: with the tax fraud, and I think I just read
Speaker 4: about the daycares that North Koreans are, the amount of
Speaker 4: money being poured into I forget this city. I think
Speaker 4: it might be New York City, but the amount of
Speaker 4: money being put into that's it's a shame that that's happening.
Speaker 4: But can you give us a quick overview of TRM labs,
Speaker 4: The history mission.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Tarms a blockchain intelligence company. Essentially, what that means
Speaker 1: is we provide training and tools to investigate illicit activity.
Speaker 1: We allow law enforcement to trace and track illicit proceeds
Speaker 1: in crypto in order to build investigations. He's back funds.
Speaker 1: I think what's missing in a lot of conversations around
Speaker 1: law enforcement, and Tony kind of got into the clarity
Speaker 1: act a little bit is we have never had more
Speaker 1: visibility on financial flows, illicit financial flows than we do
Speaker 1: in crypto. Every transaction is logged and immutable on a
Speaker 1: public ledger, immutable meeting.
Speaker 2: It's there forever.
Speaker 1: My colleague Christian Chesky, who is a former IRSCI investigator,
Speaker 1: probably he hates when I say stuff like this, but
Speaker 1: probably the most famous crypto investigator ever. He was the
Speaker 1: protagonist in Andy Greenberg's book Tracers in the Dark. He
Speaker 1: and I were on this Netflix documentary called The Biggest
Speaker 1: Heist Ever together talking about the Bitfinex hack. He calls
Speaker 1: blockchains like the greatest crime scene that he ever had
Speaker 1: access to, right because you can investigate cases going forward,
Speaker 1: you can investigate cases going back in time, right to
Speaker 1: the first ever transaction, and really it's an amazing tool
Speaker 1: for investigators. So we provide software to law enforcement agencies globally.
Speaker 1: We provide software to regulators. They want to understand, Hey,
Speaker 1: this cryptocurrency firm, this exchange is looking for a license
Speaker 1: wherever it is in the world, New York or Singapore
Speaker 1: or somewhere else. They use our tool to make a
Speaker 1: licensing determination and then going on to supervise that entity.
Speaker 1: And finally we work with the private sector. So we're
Speaker 1: a compliance solution to think every large major cryptocurrency exchange,
Speaker 1: think every large financial institution that's all of a sudden
Speaker 1: sort of coming on board into the crypto ecosystem, and
Speaker 1: they use us to ensure that bad actors aren't accessing
Speaker 1: their platforms. So you mentioned North Korea, and you know,
Speaker 1: every large financial institution that's providing crypto custody, providing access
Speaker 1: to assets to their customers. They want to make sure
Speaker 1: that North Korea, the terrorist financiers, that ransomware groups, that
Speaker 1: cartels are not accessing their platform So we provide that
Speaker 1: type of service. To think of it as you know,
Speaker 1: anti money laundering for crypto and really more and more beyond.
Speaker 1: I think we can get into this as well later.
Speaker 1: But AI has really enabled us to not just take
Speaker 1: that rich on chain data, but combine it with really
Speaker 1: rich data sets off chain to do holistic investigations in
Speaker 1: crypto and beyond.
Speaker 3: Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of
Speaker 3: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if
Speaker 3: you can please support the podcast by hitting the like
Speaker 3: button subscribing. If you haven't as yet, you can leave
Speaker 3: a comment below as well. And if you're listening on
Speaker 3: a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts, please be sure to follow and hit
Speaker 3: the five star rating. I'll let you get back to
Speaker 3: the content. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: From a tech perspective, and I don't know if this
Speaker 4: is a dumb question, we'll see, but I know that
Speaker 4: blockchains are limited in terms of the data that they
Speaker 4: can actually extrapulate, so they partner with companies like chain
Speaker 4: link Labs so that there's more data that they're able
Speaker 4: to actually to receive. Does that affect in your investigations
Speaker 4: at all as far as when you're using the blockchain
Speaker 4: as a starting point to investigate.
Speaker 1: It was interesting? Yeah, no, I mean we have the
Speaker 1: largest database of fraud and financial crime and human history.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds crazy, but every transaction on a
Speaker 1: public ledger is logged.
Speaker 2: And immutable, like it's there forever.
Speaker 1: So when you start to talk about, like, all right,
Speaker 1: where are databases for fraud and financial crime? Right, finn Send,
Speaker 1: The US Treasury Department holds something called the SAR database,
Speaker 1: the Suspicious Activity Report Database. It's alerts that are coming
Speaker 1: from banks, financial institutions, crypto businesses. We are magnitudes larger
Speaker 1: than that because we see every transaction in real time.
Speaker 1: So every transaction that is occurring on a blockchain, is
Speaker 1: on a public blockchain, is visible to us. So think
Speaker 1: you know bitcoin ethereum, Solana polygon tron. Where we lose
Speaker 1: visibility today is when funds are moving in and out
Speaker 1: of cryptocurrency exchanges, right, because those are going off chain
Speaker 1: and onto order books. And that's that's fine when you're
Speaker 1: talking about a coin base or a binance or a
Speaker 1: crack in or someone who's responding to law enforcements. But
Speaker 1: harder when you're talking about sort of non compliant exchanges
Speaker 1: in Russia or Chinese OTC brokers right that aren't that
Speaker 1: don't have KYC, that aren't doing compliance controls. But you know,
Speaker 1: DeFi comes up in a lot of these conversations, and
Speaker 1: I always come back to, look, we can see every
Speaker 1: transaction occurring in DeFi that's happening on blockchains, right, those
Speaker 1: are the ones we see. I think where things get
Speaker 1: a little harder is when funds are moving off chain.
Speaker 1: But I think now, as I said, like things we
Speaker 1: couldn't even do six months ago, like take rich threat
Speaker 1: intelligence human intelligence data and combine it with on chain activity,
Speaker 1: using AI has really revolutionized the way you can do
Speaker 1: these types of investigations.
Speaker 2: Hopefully that was helpful in.
Speaker 3: Regards to the evolution of blockchain intelligence. Are criminals getting
Speaker 3: more educated about this that they're trying to avoid crypto
Speaker 3: now maybe going back to cash and other means of
Speaker 3: exchange of value or you think that that education is
Speaker 3: not there, and he still continue to try to use
Speaker 3: the technology, but they're getting caught because the applications and
Speaker 3: what tier M labs and you folks are doing has
Speaker 3: you know, obviously grown and evolved and you have more
Speaker 3: advanced technologies and so forth.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, like not the wax too philosophical, but you know,
Speaker 1: like bad actors are always early adopters of transformative technology.
Speaker 1: I tell this story all the time. I want to
Speaker 1: say it was like nineteen eight the model t Henry
Speaker 1: Ford's model t rolled off the assembly line. And that
Speaker 1: was actually the first year that we created what they
Speaker 1: called the Bureau of Investigation, which has now the modern FBI.
Speaker 1: And it was because we realized that policing was no
Speaker 1: longer local, that bad actors can move across state lines
Speaker 1: at unprecedented speed and scale. I think Body and Clyde
Speaker 1: and al Capone and machine gun Kelly, right, So we
Speaker 1: needed a federal police force that could, you know, jump
Speaker 1: in those vehicles and follow the as bad actors across
Speaker 1: state lines, you know, move fastward to pagers. I'm old
Speaker 1: enough to have used a pager when I was a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: In the early days, the only people using pagers were
Speaker 1: US and the drug dealers, right, cell phones and to
Speaker 1: end encrypted messaging apps. Today it's crypto and AI right.
Speaker 1: So I'd say there's always this cat and mouse game
Speaker 1: between bad actors and law enforcement. Bad guys are always
Speaker 1: trying to use transformative technology, and we're always trying to
Speaker 1: catch up. And I think what we're seeing with crypto
Speaker 1: is essentially that we still see illicted activity as a
Speaker 1: tiny percentage of overall illicit activity somewhere around two percent
Speaker 1: or so is pretty conventional wisdom. That's significantly less than
Speaker 1: what we're hearing out there in terms of fiat currencies
Speaker 1: or traditional currencies, which I think you usually hear about
Speaker 1: five to eight percent in terms of that type of activity.
Speaker 1: But when I'm when I tell you what we see
Speaker 1: about two percent, and when it's like, well, five to
Speaker 1: eight percent, it's because you don't have visibility the way
Speaker 1: we do in crypto, right, Like we're talking about at
Speaker 1: works of shell companies and jwalas and bul cache smuggling
Speaker 1: and high value art. So cash is a lot better
Speaker 1: for money launders than crypto. And that's that's very much
Speaker 1: a conversation I'm having a lot with policymakers and have
Speaker 1: for years in Congress and other places, particularly around clarity
Speaker 1: right now as well as you mentioned.
Speaker 4: So Aery, are you telling us that tirm Labs is
Speaker 4: the modern day digital sing thing? Oh? I like that.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: I think of more as I like to I think
Speaker 1: of myself more as like the elliot ness of of
Speaker 1: of of modern day investigators or something like that.
Speaker 4: I want to congratulate you on tier M MCP. I
Speaker 4: believe you guys announced that early last week. What is
Speaker 4: this and what does it do?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think it's like it actually is like a
Speaker 1: broader conversation, which is really cool. And that is how
Speaker 1: we can integrate AI into tooling. And I think this
Speaker 1: is a great example of how you can integrate AI
Speaker 1: into compliance workflows. We have built in capabilities in our
Speaker 1: actual tracing tool where now law enforcement can click on
Speaker 1: a button and auto trace transactions using AI. But to me,
Speaker 1: I think the most really revolutionary piece to this is
Speaker 1: how we can use AI tools to combine that on
Speaker 1: and off chain component. And this is all sort of
Speaker 1: building towards that, and that's what we're really working with
Speaker 1: law enforcement and financial institutions today. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: think of it necessarily as blockchain intelligence anymore. It's now
Speaker 1: this sort of AI powered intelligence where we could build
Speaker 1: out networks not just of on chain activity. You know
Speaker 1: that Like you know, think about our the graphs that
Speaker 1: you see in the public domain all the time and
Speaker 1: the reports that we put out. Now we can take
Speaker 1: those and say, well, hey, now we see that on
Speaker 1: chain picture, let's marry that up with beneficial ownership, information
Speaker 1: about the business, where's the corporate registries? Is there shipping data,
Speaker 1: is there, threatened intelligence data, human sources? And that's really
Speaker 1: I think this evolution, and this is a great example,
Speaker 1: is really building towards how do we use AI power
Speaker 1: tooling to do investigations better and to do compliance better.
Speaker 3: How are you preparing for the AI agent economy where
Speaker 3: where you have KYC where you can track a customer
Speaker 3: and some of the things that may be doing the
Speaker 3: connected wallets. But if I have a hundred AI agents
Speaker 3: doing different things for me and some of them are
Speaker 3: doing bad activities, I'm a bad actor. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: take advantage of companies and so forth. How do you
Speaker 3: kyc so to speak the AI agent and track that
Speaker 3: back to the bad actor?
Speaker 1: Tony, we are in just an extraordinary moment in human history.
Speaker 1: I don't I've never seen anything move as fast as
Speaker 1: as as AI, not the Internet, not crypto, and of
Speaker 1: course we're seeing bad actors really adopt it at scale.
Speaker 1: And you ask anyone, I'm the most positive guy in crypto,
Speaker 1: you know. I think I think sort of famously, so
Speaker 1: that's why I'm terrible on Twitter or x. But but
Speaker 1: this is an area that I that that makes me
Speaker 1: very nervous. And if you ask me sort of what
Speaker 1: keeps me up at night, it's exactly this question we're seeing.
Speaker 1: We saw a five hundred percent increase last year in
Speaker 1: AI enabled scams and fraud. So think deep fake videos,
Speaker 1: think really tailored phishing attacks, right, you know, it's no
Speaker 1: longer like hey, you know, I'm a Nigerian prince scenario.
Speaker 1: It's you know, hey, Amanda, this is Tony with your
Speaker 1: voice and your image. Can you send me money? I'm
Speaker 1: in the hospital, right Like it's your child, it's your mother,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a celebrity. So we're seeing that
Speaker 1: really happen at scale. And what concerns me about that
Speaker 1: is it really just takes the friction out of scams.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't need a one off transaction anymore.
Speaker 1: You can have hundreds, thousands, millions of agents working around
Speaker 1: the clock. They don't need food, they don't need to sleep,
Speaker 1: they're just constantly scamming. Last year, Americans lost well globally,
Speaker 1: we saw about thirty five billion in scam losses. Within
Speaker 1: the crypto ecosystem. Only about fifteen percent of victims report,
Speaker 1: so that number is probably closer to two hundred billion.
Speaker 1: I mean that is a global scourge we're seeing ransomware groups.
Speaker 1: Just last week it was reported that the first ever
Speaker 1: end to end AI ransomware attack took place where there
Speaker 1: was no human involvement whatsoever. So what does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that if hospitals are the number one target
Speaker 1: for ransomware actors, which is true today, that means that
Speaker 1: we don't have to worry about one actor anymore. They
Speaker 1: can have millions of agents attacking hospital systems at scale.
Speaker 1: That's not a law enforcement issue. That is a global
Speaker 1: civilization level threat and we need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to combat it. But I told you I'm the most
Speaker 1: positive person in crypto, So I have an answer for that,
Speaker 1: and that we have to use these tools right. Law
Speaker 1: enforcement compliance professionals need to have access to them. And
Speaker 1: that's really that's like how we see that's how we
Speaker 1: see our place in the world, is how can we
Speaker 1: enable these types of mission outcomes for law enforcement agencies,
Speaker 1: for national security agencies to actually stop these attacks from
Speaker 1: happening in the first place, to get money back to victims,
Speaker 1: and to disrupt the criminal networks that are doing this activity.
Speaker 1: I'll stop rambling, but I'll kind of say this last piece,
Speaker 1: and that is like, these aren't one off criminals right
Speaker 1: in their mom's basement or something. These are transnational criminal
Speaker 1: organizations that have industrialized this type of activity. So the
Speaker 1: US government, working with other authorities, the UK and others,
Speaker 1: about six months or so GO took down a group
Speaker 1: called the Prints Group, which operate at the highest levels
Speaker 1: of the Cambodian government. We ended up forfeiting about fifteen billion.
Speaker 1: It was the largest seizure in world history or the
Speaker 1: largest forfeiture action in world history. But that's that's one
Speaker 1: of I don't know, twenty twenty five, thirty fifty compounds
Speaker 1: just like this, where there's human trafficked workers that are
Speaker 1: scamming you know, Westerners and an American citizens. So these
Speaker 1: are huge problems, but we have the technology combat it.
Speaker 1: We just make make sure that the good guys have
Speaker 1: the technology as well.
Speaker 4: With the convergence of AI and crypto evolving so so quickly,
Speaker 4: and I didn't even think about that with people use it,
Speaker 4: you know, the deep fay. Of course, I understand what
Speaker 4: deep fake is. I understand that people are using other
Speaker 4: people's voices, but with regard to that type of money,
Speaker 4: you know, take away the fraud obviously being a legal activity,
Speaker 4: how is it handled when somebody is using your voice
Speaker 4: without your permission? Is that is that something that Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, look like I am, I'm a lawyer,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that, Like, there are some really interesting,
Speaker 1: thorny legal issues when it comes to AI. I testified
Speaker 1: about a year or so ago. It's crazy, it feels
Speaker 1: like longer in the first ever hearing on Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: on AI crime, and that question arose a number of times.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, you know, it's your name, it's
Speaker 1: your image, it's your likeness, you know what what what
Speaker 1: do you have there? Conventionally it's like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's a I think they call it the Elvis law,
Speaker 1: where like this whole idea of like someone stealing your
Speaker 1: your your voice or you know, you potentially have civil ramifications.
Speaker 1: But I think there's all kinds of interesting questions that
Speaker 1: arise with this that are a little outside my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: But like from from being able to use that type
Speaker 1: of information, I think we need to update our criminal
Speaker 1: laws also in terms of how we think about bad
Speaker 1: actors using AI. We have federal sentencing guidelines that have
Speaker 1: upward departures that go up based on certain activity. I
Speaker 1: think probably using AI to scale is probably one of
Speaker 1: those that should increase your sentence. But there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of like, I mean, fat, fabulous, fabulous issues out there
Speaker 1: that I you know, you step back back from the fear.
Speaker 1: Justin Wales, who's a friend who's the general counsel for
Speaker 1: crypto dot com, wrote a book recently. It's like AI
Speaker 1: law Legal Handbook and is a great read and it
Speaker 1: goes through issue by issue and I thought to myself, Gosh,
Speaker 1: to be a law student today or to be a
Speaker 1: young lawyer and grappling with like questions that will be
Speaker 1: legal precedent right that there's just no legal precedent on
Speaker 1: any of this today, and you're really building it, you're
Speaker 1: writing the law books as you go. And I think
Speaker 1: that's just an incredibly just energizing point where if you're
Speaker 1: a young lawyer today, I feel like an interested in
Speaker 1: technology and this stuff. I just feel like, wow, just
Speaker 1: the sky's the limit in terms of what you can
Speaker 1: do and build.
Speaker 3: What are the top growing scams using crypto technology? Is
Speaker 3: it ransomware?
Speaker 2: Malware?
Speaker 3: Things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's interesting, you know, like there's a whole
Speaker 1: host of different types of criminal activity when it comes
Speaker 1: to crypto, and I want to be really clear, like
Speaker 1: when I talk about these things, you know, criminal activity
Speaker 1: is still a tiny part of the overall crypto ecosystem.
Speaker 1: But the reality is that bad actors always go to
Speaker 1: where the money is, and the money is in crypto today.
Speaker 1: So we follow you know, fifty one hundred different typologies,
Speaker 1: so everything from ransomware to terrorst financing to child sexual
Speaker 1: abuse material to scams.
Speaker 2: We follow sanctions violations very very closely.
Speaker 1: So think about sort of what's happening with Russia or
Speaker 1: Iran or North Korea in terms of trying to use
Speaker 1: crypto to evade sanctions, that's probably the largest if you're
Speaker 1: thinking about percentages of overall illicit activity, sanctions.
Speaker 2: Evasion is the number one.
Speaker 1: But scams to me is like if I think about
Speaker 1: sort of all the real global threats, this proliferation of scams,
Speaker 1: I think pig butchering where you know, you get hit up.
Speaker 1: I'm sure this happens to you guys all the time.
Speaker 1: You get hit up on your your cell phone, Hey,
Speaker 1: how you doing? You don't want to play golf today.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got every version of this right. You're
Speaker 1: in my cell phone, but I didn't know your name.
Speaker 1: That's inevitably going to lead to a conversation, likely romantic,
Speaker 1: potentially back and forth. You'll be groomed over the course
Speaker 1: of potentially weeks, months or even longer, and eventually will
Speaker 1: result in a a investment opportunity. You know, Hey, I
Speaker 1: just bought a lambeau today. Oh, I just took my
Speaker 1: I just bought my mom a home. Oh how did
Speaker 1: you do that? Like it's like, hey, it's just like this,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this crypto thing. And they show you a
Speaker 1: genuine website. Maybe you send one hundred dollars first time.
Speaker 1: Maybe they send you a thousand back, and you said, wow,
Speaker 1: this is a you know, huge return on my investment
Speaker 1: in just a few days. So then you go ahead
Speaker 1: and send ten thousand and twenty thousand. Until you've lost
Speaker 1: your life savings and and you don't know where to
Speaker 1: go for help. Maybe you've lost your parents' life savings.
Speaker 1: We posted a video recently where we worked with law
Speaker 1: enforcement to recover some funds in a case where a
Speaker 1: young man committed suicide having lost everything to scammers and
Speaker 1: not knowing how to tell his family. To me, this
Speaker 1: is like the worst financial crime typology that I've seen
Speaker 1: sort of in my career, and I think in large
Speaker 1: part of like dedicated the rest of my career at
Speaker 1: least to trying to stop this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and with the regulatory nature that's coming into crypto,
Speaker 4: you know, especially with US merging with traditional finance, I
Speaker 4: just think of traditional finance because of the compliant nature
Speaker 4: they are required by law to take these quizzes and
Speaker 4: always go through these tests of phishing emails and scant
Speaker 4: and to be on the lookout for this. So that
Speaker 4: do you think as that comes into crypto and you
Speaker 4: have more people in this ecosystem just kind of aware
Speaker 4: of what's out there and being you know, having to
Speaker 4: now go through these steps, do you think that that
Speaker 4: will help in any way?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I think it's a combination of things, Like there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different issues there, and it's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think that like, hey, we need a massive public
Speaker 1: awareness campaign, certainly in the US and globally, and those
Speaker 1: are things we're thinking a lot about. Is like how
Speaker 1: to support that. FBI has an amazing program called level
Speaker 1: Up where they literally go door to door, they get
Speaker 1: the data from TRM, they say, hey, we believe this
Speaker 1: person is going to be a victim or is a victim.
Speaker 1: They actually go knock on that person's door to try
Speaker 1: to intervene, and it's just shocking. People say like no, no,
Speaker 1: this is like I love this person. Get the wrong
Speaker 1: person right, and then you start to dig in if
Speaker 1: you ever actually met them, right, And.
Speaker 2: That doesn't scale.
Speaker 1: So we're thinking all the times, like how do we
Speaker 1: scale that, how do we make it bigger, how do
Speaker 1: we get to more victims? So I think it is
Speaker 1: it's it's public awareness is a huge piece, absolutely and
Speaker 1: something we're thinking a lot about. I think the other
Speaker 1: piece is how do we harden cybersecurity amongst crypto affirms,
Speaker 1: And you know, in the in the wake of the
Speaker 1: Drift protocol hack and the kelp Dow hack, there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of interesting questions about how do we harden cybersecurity,
Speaker 1: which I think is where where at least your question
Speaker 1: was getting to in part, And I think cybersecurity standards
Speaker 1: might be a little bit much, but I think definitely
Speaker 1: agreement on best, best in class or best practices for
Speaker 1: cybersecurity when it comes to certainly DeFi I think is
Speaker 1: really really important. The large exchanges, you know, do like
Speaker 1: I think, to your point, demand to operate like banks
Speaker 1: in many respects, and they have a lot of those
Speaker 1: things in place, right cyber they have compliance teams. But
Speaker 1: for these moral sort of DeFi protocols, I still think
Speaker 1: there's a lot we can do just utilizing the technology.
Speaker 1: I don't think we need to over regulate this space
Speaker 1: in order to stop bad actors. I think we just
Speaker 1: really need to lean into the technology. And you know,
Speaker 1: in part that is hardening cybersecurity. And then what I
Speaker 1: talk about a lot is like, you know, we like
Speaker 1: to blame the DeFi protocols, like oh they had like
Speaker 1: you know, lacks cyber controls, or this was a private
Speaker 1: key failure, like whatever, the whatever the excuses.
Speaker 2: I think we need to get better there.
Speaker 1: But my focus is always on, all right, let's go
Speaker 1: after the bad actors. So like, what are what are
Speaker 1: the national security capabilities that we have to go after
Speaker 1: North Korea? If North Korea is attacking Drift, why don't
Speaker 1: we attack North Korea and steal that money back. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot of what I talk about in terms
Speaker 1: of like we need to be more offensive as well
Speaker 1: as sort of defensive from like a hardening cyber perspective
Speaker 1: in this space.
Speaker 3: Have you heard about what Christopher Perkins and Chris John
Speaker 3: Carlo been talking about with letters of the Mark, so
Speaker 3: these privateers can go after sole in crypto.
Speaker 1: So we we've worked really closely with both Chris's who
Speaker 1: are really who are great friends also on letters of Mark.
Speaker 1: And I am a huge, huge proponent of letters of Mark,
Speaker 1: which is really what I was getting to just like
Speaker 1: for your audience. It's really cool in the US Constitution
Speaker 1: and I think sort of the most prevalent around the
Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve, which is amazing to get to
Speaker 1: talk about like history like this when it comes to.
Speaker 2: Cyber and crypto.
Speaker 1: We were having a pirate problem, so essentially we provided
Speaker 1: or the US government, the president provided letters to privateers
Speaker 1: to go after pirates on the high seas in order
Speaker 1: to stop them from pillaging and plundering and all the
Speaker 1: things that Jack Sparrow does. I want cyber letters of Mark.
Speaker 1: I want to go after pirates on blockchains in the
Speaker 1: digital space using AI. And I think that we're living
Speaker 1: this like really interesting moment where the private sector has
Speaker 1: all of the data and the public sector has all
Speaker 1: of the authorities. And our job at TRM is to
Speaker 1: make sure that the public sector has the data that
Speaker 1: it needs. But I want some of those authorities because
Speaker 1: I think we could do a really good job in
Speaker 1: the private sector of being fast, of being nimble about
Speaker 1: going back and taking those funds. So, Dony, you nailed it, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we want a letter of Mark to say, hey,
Speaker 1: go get those funds back from the Drift Protocol hack
Speaker 1: from North Korea.
Speaker 2: See what you go after? A scam?
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, transnational criminal network that's that's that's stealing
Speaker 1: money from Americans. So yeah, very very I'm so proud
Speaker 1: of the work that Chris Perkins and Christian Carlo have
Speaker 1: done in this space and always want to amplify it
Speaker 1: whenever I can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've interviewed both of them a few times, and
Speaker 3: of course that's always the topic because that's I think
Speaker 3: it makes sense and in the world we live and
Speaker 3: with how decentralized the Internet is and blockchains are, you got.
Speaker 1: I love that You've had those guys on like I'll
Speaker 1: bring this up and people think I'm crazy sometimes and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, No, some really smart people agree with
Speaker 1: me on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When crypto, when crypto Dad agrees with you on something,
Speaker 2: you know you're living right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It is really interesting how history always repeats itself
Speaker 4: in some way or another. I think Christopher Perkins made that,
Speaker 4: you know, he equated the parts and what we're going
Speaker 4: through today. I think it's great. Absolutely, what's on what's
Speaker 4: on the roadmap for a CRM, What's what's coming up
Speaker 4: that you have or you're excited to announce?
Speaker 2: No, I love it, Thank you for asking.
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of really cool things happening
Speaker 1: if you have so, sort of like what's top of
Speaker 1: mind for me right now? I think I got into
Speaker 1: the AI piece a little bit. We have integrated AI
Speaker 1: into every every piece of our platform to now allow
Speaker 1: investigators to really take that rich on chain data set
Speaker 1: and combine it with off chain data to build holistic investigations.
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about like scams, for example, Hey,
Speaker 1: we can map out what a scam compound looks like
Speaker 1: or scam activity looks like on chain. You do that
Speaker 1: by connecting victims to certain wallets and you kind of
Speaker 1: can see like it's you know, a spider web of
Speaker 1: a network there. What I'm excited to do is say, hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's learn everything we can about who's running these organizations,
Speaker 1: what's the what's the financial structure, and take all that
Speaker 1: kind of rich off chain data and combining those things.
Speaker 1: So I'd say that that AI and how to integrate
Speaker 1: it into the these types of investigations is like the
Speaker 1: most top of mind thing. Equally exciting is this idea
Speaker 1: of like public private disruption. We talk a lot about
Speaker 1: public private partnerships. I hate that phrase. It's like the
Speaker 1: recommendation that everyone makes when they don't have a real
Speaker 1: recommendation to make. Hey, we just need to get together
Speaker 1: and talk and sit around a table. I believe the
Speaker 1: public sector and private sector have to work really closely together,
Speaker 1: but it has to be in real time and it
Speaker 1: has to result in interdiction, meaning stopping funds from moving
Speaker 1: and seizing them back for the good guys. So we
Speaker 1: built About a year ago August, we announced something called
Speaker 1: the Beacon network. It's the largest information sharing network within crypto.
Speaker 1: What we did is really cool, Like we saw a
Speaker 1: huge problem that actors were moving faster than compliance teams
Speaker 1: could keep up. By bit had happened about six months prior.
Speaker 1: We saw you know, we saw a billion and a
Speaker 1: half dollars laundered from ethereum to bitcoin in like seventy
Speaker 1: two hours, and we said, hey, how do we keep
Speaker 1: up with this pace? So we reached out to coinbase
Speaker 1: and binance, to largest or arguably most important exchanges in
Speaker 1: the space. If anyone knows Coinbase and finance, they don't
Speaker 1: do much together, so this was like really cool to
Speaker 1: get them on board together. We then onboarded folks like
Speaker 1: Kraken and Okx, Crypto dot com, blockchain dot com. We
Speaker 1: added FinTechs like Stripe and Robinhood and PayPal, Ripple. Beacon
Speaker 1: today accounts for about eighty five percent of centralized cryptocurrency transaction,
Speaker 1: so it's this extraordinary group. We then married that group
Speaker 1: of private sector companies with about one hundred global law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies. I think every three letter law enforcement agency
Speaker 1: in the US today, and the law enforcement agents are flaggers.
Speaker 1: They will flag illicit crypto proceeds as they're moving in
Speaker 1: real time. Say there's a North Korea hack, there's ransomware,
Speaker 1: there's a scam, and they send out an alert. Think Beacon, lighthouse,
Speaker 1: right to the network and ultimately to be a member
Speaker 1: of Beacon. It's non commercial for us, so we have
Speaker 1: TRM customers, we have non TRM customers. The only thing
Speaker 1: you have to agree to is if you're in exchange
Speaker 1: and you want to be in that, you actually have
Speaker 1: to act on an alert, which means you have to
Speaker 1: freeze and then work with law enforcement to seize those funds.
Speaker 1: And if you're a flagger, you have to agree to
Speaker 1: follow up on your flag. So I say all of
Speaker 1: that to say that, like, I think this combination of
Speaker 1: AI and real real information sharing for disruption in addiction
Speaker 1: seizure combined is actually how we stop bad actors. We
Speaker 1: keep funds on chain, right, So like those exchanges basically
Speaker 1: create a perimeter so funds cannot move off the blockchain
Speaker 1: or blockchains, and then we ultimately work to seize them back,
Speaker 1: making it much more difficult for bad actors. So I'll
Speaker 1: kind of stop there, but I'd say that like top
Speaker 1: of mind AI definitely information sharing at scale and just
Speaker 1: really crushing it with you know who you could bring
Speaker 1: together in the space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it makes sense. The real time data
Speaker 4: obviously that you work on is so important. Does the
Speaker 4: do the prediction markets have any is there? I know
Speaker 4: you can't really work off of a maybe, but there
Speaker 4: is there any way that you could forecast where the
Speaker 4: bad actors might go based on prediction markets or that's
Speaker 4: not a part of your business model.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. You know, we put out a piece
Speaker 1: just a few months ago on sort of prediction market
Speaker 1: more from a volume perspective, but also from sort of
Speaker 1: the instrider trading perspective and how all that works. I
Speaker 1: think it's a fascinating space. It's interesting. I mean, you
Speaker 1: look at a poly market where there's most or many
Speaker 1: of their transactions are on chain, so we have a
Speaker 1: lot more visibility on those flows than say a call sheet,
Speaker 1: which doesn't operate on chain. So I think it's sort
Speaker 1: of a real open question. What we would be looking for, obviously,
Speaker 1: is if bad actors are using these types of platforms
Speaker 1: to launder illicit proceeds. Right, are you taking proceeds from
Speaker 1: a hack and moving them to a wallet that we
Speaker 1: know is associated with polymarket and that's that's the type
Speaker 1: of activity. But I think it's a wonderful question because
Speaker 1: like it speaks to this on chain economy that is
Speaker 1: that is taking shape, and prediction marketers are a piece
Speaker 1: of this. Crypto is a piece of its stable coins,
Speaker 1: and how financial institutions engage there as a part of it.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin'll obviously always play a part in this. So I
Speaker 1: think it's it's it's going to be very interesting to
Speaker 1: see kind of how all of that plays out. But
Speaker 1: it's fun to see, you know, fintech kind of building
Speaker 1: that bridge between you know, crypto and and and FIAT
Speaker 1: and and and all that we're seeing there.
Speaker 3: With the data mining that you're doing, all this data
Speaker 3: you're collecting on the blockchain. Obviously it's to prevent and
Speaker 3: stop a lot of bad actors and prevent hacks and
Speaker 3: things like that, but there's also a lot of good data.
Speaker 3: There are the companies you're working with looking or taking
Speaker 3: that data and looking at how they can better serve
Speaker 3: the customers based on their habits, again to everyday user,
Speaker 3: not the bad actors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, of course, it's a great question. So really,
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're mapping blockchains, and we're mapping
Speaker 1: them primarily for illicit activity today, right, we want to know, hey,
Speaker 1: is that an address we know is associated with a
Speaker 1: terrorist financer or a ransomware group. And the way we
Speaker 1: do this, I mean it's really cool stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a team of threat hunters. We have someone
Speaker 1: who focuses full time on ransomware, someone who focuses full
Speaker 1: time on terror financing. Our terror financing expert is communicating
Speaker 1: with ISIS fighters on password protected Telegram channels and rocket
Speaker 1: chat in order to get that illicit crypto address because
Speaker 1: they send it to him, say hey, send funds to
Speaker 1: this address. We label it in our tool terror financing.
Speaker 1: We then use AI to build out a larger and
Speaker 1: larger database. We don't want to know just that one address,
Speaker 1: We want to know anyone who sent funds to it,
Speaker 1: who's received funds through it, and were then able to
Speaker 1: label those. So what we're doing is we're mapping out
Speaker 1: illicit activity on blockchains, using really just the most amazing
Speaker 1: team of threadhunters in the world, many former law enforcement,
Speaker 1: but then using technology to really scale it. So I
Speaker 1: think that's that's definitely something that we're taking that that's
Speaker 1: our primary business, and then sort of using that data
Speaker 1: on and off chain. Your question is a great one,
Speaker 1: and that is blockchain data rich. There's so many interesting
Speaker 1: things that you can get from blockchain data, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, are there are there patterns, consumer behavioral patterns,
Speaker 1: even the consumer. We're in the consumer protection lane and
Speaker 1: we're definitely looking at a lot of that. But the
Speaker 1: primary business today is investigations on and off chain AI powered.
Speaker 4: Well, you've mentioned sanctions a lot in this interview, and
Speaker 4: unfortunately I see Elizabeth Warren's face every time you say sanctions.
Speaker 4: That's just an association now I have. But I want
Speaker 4: to move to the Clarity Act moving in the Senate.
Speaker 4: What do you think is going to happen here? Do
Speaker 4: you have an opinion on it? I know you're positive.
Speaker 4: What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Yeah? The what order should I take those questions in?
Speaker 2: Let's go with so A.
Speaker 1: I'm very positive and you've probably seen me out there
Speaker 1: a bit talking publicly about why I think that Clarity
Speaker 1: is good for law enforcement, for US national security, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's not an industry perspective, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I were not a member of any trade associations. I
Speaker 1: don't speak with any I don't speak for the industry
Speaker 1: by any means. But in the conversations that I've had
Speaker 1: over my six years, A tirm with investigators from the FBI,
Speaker 1: from HSI, from IRSCI, from DEA Secret Service. They are
Speaker 1: using TRM to track and trace the listit activity that
Speaker 1: we never would be able to see in traditional cases,
Speaker 1: you know, involving networks of shell companies and bul cash smuggling.
Speaker 1: You just can't see it. So I think there's that piece.
Speaker 1: The other piece Clarity does really for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: and you alluded to this earlier, Amanda, is it brings
Speaker 1: crypto firms within the Bank Secrecy Act framework, essentially giving
Speaker 1: them exactly the same compliance obligations that financial institutions have,
Speaker 1: and that is absolutely critical. But then there's eighteen other provisions.
Speaker 1: We wrote a post that I would encourage folks to
Speaker 1: read that literally go provision by provision, laying out the
Speaker 1: twenty or so that are pro law enforcement or supportive
Speaker 1: of law enforcement within the Clarity Act. Two favorites for
Speaker 1: me really stand out. There's one that describes the beacon network.
Speaker 1: In large part it's how we can really use real
Speaker 1: time data to share information and how the Secretary of
Speaker 1: the Treasury and the Attorney General could certify existing networks
Speaker 1: in order to do that sort of a realization that
Speaker 1: we can actually share information better in crypto than we
Speaker 1: can in this traditional world. And then the other is
Speaker 1: a hold law. And the way a hold law works
Speaker 1: is that today banks have limited liability if they hold
Speaker 1: customer funds based on law enforcement process search warrant. Cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: firms don't have that protection today. So in order to
Speaker 1: ensure that firms are able to freeze and wait for
Speaker 1: law enforcement process, there is a whole law that allows
Speaker 1: businesses thirty days up to one hundred and fifty days
Speaker 1: limited liability in order to hold customer funds pending you know,
Speaker 1: law enforcement investigation, subpoena, search warrant. That's critical, It's absolutely critical.
Speaker 1: And we can get into all kinds of other provisions
Speaker 1: in there on DeFi and the BRCA. But I think
Speaker 1: that obviously very very positive. Your second question is actually
Speaker 1: much harder for me, and that is like, you know,
Speaker 1: the prognosticator part, and I think it's hard. I think
Speaker 1: this is going to be really hard. To be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm a prosecutor. I've had some fun policy conversations on
Speaker 1: the Hill the last few years, which is like an
Speaker 1: incredible honor and like very humbling because it's not my
Speaker 1: world at all I've testified, I don't know four or
Speaker 1: five times up there, always nervous every time, and I
Speaker 1: would say just always trying to find like provide that
Speaker 1: expertise and like law enforcement perspective. I think the time
Speaker 1: is ticking. I think we're having the midterms come up
Speaker 1: in November. Congress is going to be out for a
Speaker 1: significant amount of time between now and then, like almost
Speaker 1: all of it, other than a few weeks here and there.
Speaker 1: So I think the timeline and a couple really outstanding
Speaker 1: issues are are going to be very, very difficult to overcome. Ironically,
Speaker 1: I feel very good about this issue right from a
Speaker 1: pro law enforcement perspective. I think a lot of groups
Speaker 1: have come out lately. A couple groups have come out lately.
Speaker 1: Some are still skeptical, but I think that ultimately they
Speaker 1: understand that this is better. You know, what's in there
Speaker 1: today is better than nothing at all. But then I
Speaker 1: think you start talking about ethics and stuff that, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: is stuff I spend less time thinking about because I
Speaker 1: just don't have the headspace of the bandwidth that I
Speaker 1: think is going to make it really hard for Democrats
Speaker 1: to ultimately vote for I will stop there. Other than
Speaker 1: to say this clarity will pass like we will one
Speaker 1: hundred percent have a crypto market structure bill. It may
Speaker 1: look a lot different than this bill looks like today,
Speaker 1: based on whose controls Congress next, what happens in the
Speaker 1: White House in two years. Like, we're going to get something,
Speaker 1: whether it's now or whether it's later, We're going to
Speaker 1: get something. And quite frankly, like I'm a pretty patient
Speaker 1: guy and kind of excited to work with whoever is
Speaker 1: willing to work on this with us. I think that
Speaker 1: right now we're in a very good space with the
Speaker 1: regulatory agencies, the SEC, the CFTC, and I think that'll
Speaker 1: be very strong for the next couple of years. I
Speaker 1: will kind of see how all that plays out. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, you just got me to do something
Speaker 1: I tell my kids never to do play what ifs
Speaker 1: or guessing games or this kind of thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's been It's been a fun conversation. So
Speaker 1: I think you just got me.
Speaker 4: I'm right perfect.
Speaker 3: I had a quick question about tokenization of assets. You
Speaker 3: have this transition happening with traditional assets going on chain.
Speaker 3: How are you and the folks at Tierram Lambs preparing
Speaker 3: for that, because you're going to have more transactions to
Speaker 3: the handle and process, but also more assets avenues where
Speaker 3: bad actors can say, I'm going to take a tokenized
Speaker 3: version of Tesla stock and go try to scam some here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, that's that's the beauty of this, right,
Speaker 1: anything that's put on a blockchain, certainly a public blockchain
Speaker 1: or any blockchain that we're running nodes on, we have
Speaker 1: visibility on those transactions, so we can track and trace
Speaker 1: that Tesla stock if it is tokenized and put on chain.
Speaker 1: I will say that, like, again, as bullish as I
Speaker 1: am on the space, I mean, the only thing and
Speaker 1: your viewers may push back on this, but the only
Speaker 1: thing that I've seen successfully tokenized in my time over
Speaker 1: the last few years in this space is the US dollar.
Speaker 1: But I will say that that has been tremendous boon
Speaker 1: for compliance. We're now able to track and trace US
Speaker 1: dollars on chain right USDC, usd t H, and can
Speaker 1: build investigations and and go after bad guys in ways
Speaker 1: we never could before. And I think that that as
Speaker 1: the tokenized economy grows, will own just be better.
Speaker 2: You know, at that essentially.
Speaker 1: I mean, stable coins is a huge piece of the
Speaker 1: cryptoeconomy today, and there are some really unique properties of
Speaker 1: stable coins, and I don't know if we need to
Speaker 1: get into all of those, but stable coins are really
Speaker 1: unique and that the issuer can essentially what they call burn,
Speaker 1: which is essentially removed from your wallet, put in another wallet,
Speaker 1: and reissue to a victim to law enforcement based on
Speaker 1: legal process. So you know, there's all kinds of properties
Speaker 1: that we can now build in in this world. And
Speaker 1: I know some of your listeners will think, Wow, that's
Speaker 1: an amazing compliance capability, and some will be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that is the worst thing to happen to privacy.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think, as someone who really believes
Speaker 1: in the importance of privacy in our space, I think
Speaker 1: it's I think we need to make sure that we are,
Speaker 1: you know, really being very careful about ensuring security, but
Speaker 1: also ensuring that lawful actors are able to transact in
Speaker 1: a secure and private way.
Speaker 3: As such. A great point on the burn feature that
Speaker 3: if someone whatever bad actor takes over some level of
Speaker 3: stable coin or an asset and you have the issue,
Speaker 3: they can burn that based on the hash the respective
Speaker 3: wallet addresses and.
Speaker 2: Anywhere in the wild, anywhere in the wild.
Speaker 1: And you know, like we we have a very cool
Speaker 1: initiative called t three where we've partnered with Tron and
Speaker 1: Tether to investigate cases of ill listed activity only on
Speaker 1: only in USDT on Tron, we've seized back hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions by last count, about four hundred and fifty million,
Speaker 1: I think is higher than that today over the couple
Speaker 1: of years that this has been operational, And that's just
Speaker 1: because of those native qualities of of you know, tokenized
Speaker 1: US dollars from Tether, from Circle, from other types of
Speaker 1: issuers like this, so super powerful compliance tool aery.
Speaker 4: I want to just wrap up with a couple questions
Speaker 4: for audience that kind of we get to know you
Speaker 4: outside of crypto so quick early bird or night owl?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: You know I might be both, and I'm not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure. Like I travel a lot, and when
Speaker 1: I travel, I don't sleep that much, so people always like,
Speaker 1: how are you out? And then you know, I do
Speaker 1: these TRM run clubs where I get everyone out at
Speaker 1: like six o'clock.
Speaker 2: In the morning to go running with me all over
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: So if you guys are ever traveling to a crypto conference,
Speaker 1: try to find the TRM run club.
Speaker 2: But so I think I might be both.
Speaker 4: Okay, windows seat or aisle when you travel.
Speaker 2: I'm an aisle guy. I'm an aisle guy.
Speaker 4: You don't get hit with the cart that comes down
Speaker 4: the middle.
Speaker 2: Oh I always get hit by the You always get there?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah? Text email or call.
Speaker 2: I love to text.
Speaker 4: Text. What is one company outside of crypto that you admire?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I that's such a great question. They're a
Speaker 1: whole bunch, you know. I think you know, people ask
Speaker 1: me like, why'd you do that crazy thing joining TRM
Speaker 1: when we were seven people, when no one knew who
Speaker 1: we were. And for me, it was really the mission.
Speaker 1: How do we stop bad actors from engaging with this new,
Speaker 1: really special financial institution that we're building together. So I
Speaker 1: think I look around the world and I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: what are like mission companies out there? Like you know,
Speaker 1: I love Patagonia, right, Like, I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is a company that's thought about like how do we
Speaker 1: use recycle materials? How do we like make the world
Speaker 1: better by how do we how do we I don't
Speaker 1: know what's what's the term. How do we do well
Speaker 1: by doing good. That's how I think about TRM, and
Speaker 1: that's I love companies that that have kind of lived
Speaker 1: that ethos.
Speaker 4: I love that if you could have dinner with any
Speaker 4: person living or dead, who is it?
Speaker 1: Oh? Anyone who knows me knows that I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton. He was the first Treasury Secretary. As you know,
Speaker 1: I worked for a couple of years the US Treasury Department.
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with the musical, you know. I uh, I'm
Speaker 1: never thrown away my shot, always being young, scrappy and hungry.
Speaker 1: So I would love to sit down with Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 1: If Linn Manuel Miranda was willing to meet us for dinner,
Speaker 1: then like, that would be just best night ever.
Speaker 2: I'm paying for that meal.
Speaker 4: Best advice you've ever gotten?
Speaker 1: Wow, Oh my gosh, I love that. The best advice
Speaker 1: I've ever gotten is lead with value. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us are always like asking for stuff like hey,
Speaker 1: how can you help me with this? Or how can
Speaker 1: you know? What can you do for me? And I
Speaker 1: think what I've learned over the years, especially at TRM,
Speaker 1: is like how should we approach every moment and be like,
Speaker 1: what is the value that I could provide you, And
Speaker 1: for us, it's like, how do we solve the problem
Speaker 1: that you face? And a lot of that problem is
Speaker 1: like really bad, really bad activity, really really bad actors.
Speaker 1: And even when I was a prosecutor, you know, I
Speaker 1: cut my teeth doing domestic violence misdemeanor cases and child abuse,
Speaker 1: and I think, my, my, you know what I learned
Speaker 1: there is that like you get so much from giving
Speaker 1: of yourself. So I think it's it's lead with value,
Speaker 1: like what are the things you can do to help
Speaker 1: most as you build your career.
Speaker 4: Well you certainly take that advice to heart. So Avery Redboard,
Speaker 4: thank you so much for joining us, and thank you
Speaker 4: for all the work you're doing in this industry.
Speaker 2: Amanda, thank you so much. Tony. It was awesome. You
Speaker 2: guys are great. I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit the
Speaker 3: like button subscribe if you haven't as yet. If you're
Speaker 3: listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple,
Speaker 3: please follow and leave a five star rating. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much,