TRM Talks

EP. 118 | Inside Australia’s Historic AML Reform with AUSTRAC’s Brad Brown

Australia just rolled out its biggest anti-money laundering reform in two decades — and it didn't just tighten existing rules, it more than doubled the number of businesses AUSTRAC regulates almost overnight, from roughly 19,000 to over 50,000, sweeping in lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, and dealers in precious metals and stones for the first time. Brad Brown, AUSTRAC's National Manager for Regulatory Operations, joins Ari to walk through what changed, why AUSTRAC redefined digital currency exchanges as "virtual asset service providers" to align with FATF standards, and what that reclassification means in practice for crypto businesses now covering custody, wallets, and transfers, not just cash-to-crypto conversions. Brad has spent more than two decades at AUSTRAC across intelligence, policy, international engagement, and now supervision, following a career in Australian law enforcement. The conversation digs into AUSTRAC's focus on outcomes-focused, risk-based supervision, the scale of the fraud threat Australia is confronting — part of an estimated USD 500 billion in global fraud losses in 2024 and 2025 — and how the Beacon Network, the largest public-private information-sharing and seizure network in the crypto ecosystem, is helping regulators and exchanges move faster against bad actors.

EP. 117 | A 1934 Footnote Predicted Governance Tokens: Rethinking Crypto Law with Teresa Goody Guillén

In 1934, legal scholar Adolf Berle wrote a footnote speculating that someone might one day hold a passive property right in active property — what we'd now call a governance token. He called it a problem for another day. For Teresa Goody Guillén, founding partner of Bellamentis and founder of the legal AI platform Sophie Lex, that day is now, and it's reshaping how she advises clients building in digital markets. Teresa joins Ari to trace a career that runs from a plaintiff's law firm and a federal clerkship for Judge Urbina of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, through the SEC's Office of General Counsel and a stint working alongside former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, to launching her own law firm built around the convergence of traditional and digital financial markets. Her name has even come up as a potential contender for SEC Chair. The conversation moves from the day-to-day of her practice — clients navigating exemptive relief, subpoenas, and the "security or commodity" question she thinks misses the point — to what she's building next. Through Sophie Lex, she's developing proprietary AI trained on her own legal reasoning to help lawyers work faster without losing judgment, arguing AI should scale lawyers rather than replace them. She also shares her take on SEC Chair Paul Atkins' modernization push and why she thinks exemptive relief, more than new legislation, could unlock effective crypto regulation today.

EP. 116 | Treasury’s War: Then and Now — Economic Statecraft in the Age of Technology with Juan Zarate

Juan Zarate joined the US Treasury just three weeks before September 11, 2001, and helped build the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI), transforming Treasury into a cornerstone of American national security. He later chronicled that evolution in Treasury’s War, the definitive account of how financial intelligence, sanctions, and economic power became central tools of US statecraft. In this episode, Juan joins Ari to discuss how the post-9/11 financial architecture still underpins U.S. national security—and how it must evolve for an era of cryptocurrency, AI, and emerging technologies.

EP. 115 | Criminals Don't Have Compliance Officers: The AI Arms Race in AML with ComplyAdvantage’s Vatsa Narasimha

Criminals have no compliance officers and no regulators looking over their shoulder. That means their barrier to adopting new technology — including AI — is effectively zero. They don't need a tool to work for five years. They need it to work for the next five hours. Vatsa Narasimha, CEO of ComplyAdvantage, has been watching this asymmetry define the fraud landscape for years, and his answer is a platform built to match it. Vatsa joins Ari to talk through what building ComplyAdvantage have taught him about fighting financial crime as a network problem rather than a point-in-time compliance exercise. The conversation covers the industrialization of fraud (synthetic IDs, money mule recruitment at scale, AI-enabled targeting of retirees and immigrant workers), the architecture behind ComplyAdvantage's new Mesh platform, and the case for information sharing as a structural defense against crime networks whose strength lies in their interconnection. TRM focuses on the on-chain world; ComplyAdvantage focuses on the off-chain. Together, Vatsa argues, they cover the full picture.

EP. 114 | The Women Rewriting Crypto's Rulebook with DEX in the City

On this TRM Talks, Ari sits down with the team behind Unchained DEX in the City — three of the sharpest legal minds in crypto and three of his closest friends — for a wide-ranging conversation about the regulatory questions reshaping the industry in real time. TuongVy Le, Jessi Brooks, and Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos bring their distinct backgrounds as prosecutors, general counsels, and enforcement attorneys to bear on what investor protection, custody, and market integrity actually look like in a market structure with no historical precedent. The SEC has provided guidance and clarity, the CFTC is emerging as a consequential voice on digital assets, perps and prediction markets , and the work ahead is proving that a new market structure can deliver on those fundamentals. The conversation covers the legal architecture being built right now, the national security stakes of DeFi exploits, the case for privacy as a precondition for institutional capital, and the founding mission of the show: amplifying the women writing crypto's rulebook. No Mr. Big’s on this one, just the Carrie Bradshaws of crypto providing cutting edge legal insights. Origin stories, journeys, and genuine friendship make this one of the most fun episodes of the year.

EP. 113 | Quantum, Hacks, and Privacy: Inside Blockchain Security with Penn's Brett Falk

If a sufficiently powerful quantum computer came online tomorrow, every token on every blockchain would be a target — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana all share signature schemes that pre-date the post-quantum era. The math has been clear since the 1990s. What's been missing is the machine. That uncomfortable truth anchors this week's TRM Talks. Brett Falk, research faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Crypto and Society Lab, joins Ari to work through what that actually means — why Shor's algorithm threatens every chain, what NIST's 2024 post-quantum standards mean in practice, and why Ethereum is better positioned than Bitcoin to respond. They also dig into the back-to-back Drift and Kelp DAO exploits and what made the DPRK playbook behind them unlike anything we've seen before, and into the cryptographic tools — zero-knowledge proofs, secure multi-party computation, credential-based KYC — that let users prove compliance without turning every business into a ransomware target. The math to thread that needle already exists.

EP. 112 | The Golden State of Crypto: Regulating Digital Assets with Brynly Llyr, California DFPI

Brynly Llyr has deep roots in fintech and blockchain — in-house at eBay, PayPal, and Ripple, where she served as one of the first general counsels in crypto, then founding team at Celo, then Head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at the World Economic Forum. Now she’s Deputy Commissioner for Digital Financial Assets at the California DFPI, leading the rollout of the Digital Financial Assets Law, which goes live July 1, 2026, covering exchanges, custodians, stablecoin issuers, and crypto kiosks across the world’s fourth-largest economy. Ari Redbord, TRM’s Global Head of Policy, sits down with Brynly to talk through what California is actually trying to solve. IC3 data puts the state at the top of the country for crypto-related fraud losses, with serious harm to elderly residents and teenagers under 17. Her thesis: licensed intermediaries that recognize fraud patterns are the most powerful lever a regulator has. They also dig into how blockchain’s public visibility changes what supervisors can see in real time — and what that means for every licensed business managing its own risk. The conversation covers AI’s role in regulation, what success looks like a year from now, and the universal experience of feeding teenage boys.

EP. 111 | Compliance Built In, Not Bolted On: Inside Zodia Custody's Institutional Playbook with Sophie Bowler

Behind every laundered transaction is a real victim, a real crime, and a real reason to do this work well. That conviction has shaped Sophie Bowler's entire career — from her first job working on the EU's Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive as an intern in Brussels, to her current role as Global Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Zodia Custody. In this conversation with Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs, Sophie traces her path from the European Parliament to leading risk and compliance across six jurisdictions. She unpacks what it really took to secure Zodia's MiCA license in Luxembourg in December 2024 and explains how the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) has forced firms to rethink vendor risk, criticality assessments, and continuity from the ground up. Sophie shares why Zodia joined TRM's Beacon Network, how real-time information sharing across the industry has changed the speed at which illicit funds can be identified and interdicted, and why this kind of coordinated response is uniquely possible in crypto.

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EP. 110 | The Decentralization of Money: Building the Internet Capital Market on Solana with Catherine Gu

Catherine Gu has always been at the center of the shift toward the decentralization of money, a transformation that was once theoretical but is now actively reshaping global financial markets through stablecoins and on-chain infrastructure. Inspired in part by Hayek’s vision of competing private forms of money, Catherine’s work sits at the intersection of that idea and its real-world implementation. As Head of Product for Digital Assets at the Solana Foundation, she is helping build what is increasingly viewed as the internet capital market, where speed, scale, and global access redefine how value moves. Before joining Solana, she was one of the earliest members of Visa’s crypto team, where she spent years bridging traditional finance and blockchain and leading the development of tokenized asset infrastructure designed for financial institutions. In this conversation, Ari and Catherine trace that journey and explore what it means for the future of financial markets. We discuss why Solana has emerged as a critical platform for stablecoin activity, what it means to embed compliance and trust into infrastructure from the outset, and how performance, liquidity, and developer resilience are shaping the next phase of institutional adoption. This is no longer a debate about whether money will evolve. It is a conversation about how that evolution is being built in real time.

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EP. 109 | Building Institutional Rails On-chain — A Conversation with Canton Co-Founder Shaul Kfir

When the Bitcoin white paper landed in 2008, most people saw a payment system. Shaul Kfir saw a privacy problem — because he had spent years working on the zero-knowledge proof technology that would eventually make private transactions possible on blockchains. That instinct shaped everything that followed, including the Canton Network, the blockchain he co-founded that now moves trillions of dollars a month for some of the world's largest financial institutions. Shaul's path is unlike most in this space. He co-authored libsnark, the seminal zkSNARK library that helped bring zero-knowledge proofs to blockchains, studied under Turing Award winner Ron Rivest at MIT, and built one of Israel's first Bitcoin brokerages before turning his attention to the infrastructure problem that would define his career: how do you build a blockchain that institutions can actually use? In this episode, Ari sits down with Shaul to explore why privacy was a non-negotiable design principle from day one, why the industry is now at a genuine inflection point as institutions move from private to public blockchain environments, and what the beginning of institutional DeFi actually looks like in practice. They also dig into the tension between privacy and compliance and why regulators should focus on desired system properties rather than prescribing specific technologies. When he is not building financial infrastructure, Shaul is on the water — a former Israeli Navy Lieutenant Commander who still races sailboats, once captured a whale breach on his Ray-Ban Meta glasses mid-race, and finds the parallel between navigating a storm at sea and building in crypto surprisingly easy to draw.

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EP. 108 | Policing in the Age of Technology with Det. Anoop “Snoop” Dattani, West Midlands Police

Crypto investigations are becoming a core part of modern policing. From ransomware and darknet markets to fraud and organized crime, digital assets increasingly appear in criminal investigations. Det. Anoop “Snoop” Dattani of the Regional Organized Crime Unit at West Midlands Police joins Ari to discuss how investigators are adapting. Drawing on nearly two decades in policing and extensive cyber investigative experience, Snoop explains how crypto cases often move in two directions: reactive investigations that begin with a wallet address or victim report, and proactive investigations that start with a small intelligence lead and grow into broader criminal networks. The conversation explores why blockchain evidence can be so powerful, how crypto fits into wider criminal typologies, and why training across frontline policing is increasingly important. Snoop also highlights the importance of protecting the legitimate crypto ecosystem — and shares a bit about his own interest in the growing gaming ecosystem on Solana. A practical conversation about how law enforcement is adapting to technology — and where crypto investigations are headed next.

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EP. 107 | Building a Bank with a Heart: Inside DBS’s Approach to Crypto, Compliance, and AI with Chee Kin Lam

Chee Kin Lam, Head of Legal and Compliance at DBS Bank — one of the world's first major banks to receive a digital payment token license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore — joins Ari on this episode of TRM Talks. Chee Kin shares a career spanning 30-plus years across JP Morgan, Standard Chartered, and DBS Bank, and what he learned along the way about people, culture, and getting things done across continents. He walks through DBS Bank's digital-first roots dating back to 2013–2014, how the bank thinks about blockchain as both an emerging asset class and the future of financial infrastructure, and how his own thinking on crypto risk evolved from early conversations about "poison tokens" and coin purity to today's more mature, technology-augmented risk management landscape. The conversation covers the growing scams and fraud epidemic — including the critical shift from unauthorized to authorized scams that exploit human psychology — and why Chee Kin believes every stakeholder in the digital economy, from telcos to social media platforms to device manufacturers, shares a corresponding duty to protect it. He also shares how DBS Bank is deploying generative AI to write suspicious transaction reports at scale, why framing AI as an employee value proposition matters, and what it means in practice to be an "AI-enabled bank with a heart." Plus: balut in the Philippines, life-changing homemade adobo, fast cars, computer games, and a compliance lawyer who would have been a rock star in another life.

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EP. 106 | Freestyling on Stablecoins, Privacy, and National Security with Yaya Fanusie

Privacy and transparency sit at the heart of the digital asset ecosystem. As blockchain technology continues to reshape global finance, policymakers and builders face a critical question: How can financial systems preserve privacy while still protecting against illicit activity? In this episode, Yaya Fanusie, Global Head of Policy at Aleo, join's Ari to explore the evolving intersection of privacy, national security, and blockchain innovation. Yaya brings a uniquely multidisciplinary background to the conversation. Before working in crypto policy, he spent seven years at the CIA as an economic and counterterrorism analyst, briefing senior US military leaders and White House officials on national security threats. After government service, he led research on sanctions evasion and the illicit use of digital assets at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where his work helped surface some of the earliest cases of terrorist crypto crowdfunding. The conversation explores how those early days shaped Yaya's perspective on blockchain technology and its broader implications for the financial system. Key topics include: How early terrorist crypto fundraising campaigns revealed the transparency of blockchain networks Why nation-states are exploring blockchain infrastructure as an alternative financial architecture The role of privacy-preserving technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs How stablecoins and regulatory frameworks may reshape the future of digital finance Yaya also reflects on his unconventional career path—from teaching high school math to intelligence analysis to crypto policy leadership—and how creativity continues to influence his work today. As digital finance evolves, understanding the balance between privacy, security, and innovation will be essential. This episode offers a thoughtful, and freestyling look, at how that balance might take shape.

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EP. 105 | Tracing a Romance Scam: A Survivor’s Story and the Investigation Behind It

Romance and “investment” scams are not random. They are engineered — built on trust, pressure, and highly scripted manipulation. And while crypto is often the payment rail, the underlying crime is familiar: fraud that targets everyday people and drains life savings. In this episode, Detective Matt Hogan of the Connecticut State Police and scam survivor Jackie Crenshaw join Ari to walk through how these schemes unfold, how investigators trace funds once they move on chain, and why faster reporting and better education can make a real difference. Jackie shares her story of meeting someone on a dating platform and gradually being pulled into an investment narrative that felt credible — complete with convincing documentation, coaching, and escalating requests. She also describes the warning signs she tried to validate, and what it was like to seek help before realizing the full scope of the scam. Det. Hogan breaks down what it takes to investigate cases like this at the state and local level — including the operational and legal hurdles that can prevent recovery once funds move through wallets and exchanges. He also explains why many scams blend multiple typologies, from crypto transfers to gift cards, and how victims can be supported through the process. This episode is a candid look at modern fraud — and a roadmap for how the ecosystem can respond.

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EP. 104 | Pioneering Payments: Turning Sandboxes into Infrastructure with UOB’s Kah Kit

Kah Kit Yip has spent his career turning bold ideas about the future of money into working infrastructure. After nearly two decades at Malaysia’s central bank and leading breakthrough initiatives at the Bank for International Settlements, he helped pioneer new models for instant cross-border payments, programmable compliance, and faster, safer FX settlement. Now, as Head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at UOB, he’s bringing those concepts out of policy sandboxes and into production across Southeast Asia. In this conversation, Ari and Kah Kit explore how interoperable payment rails, wholesale CBDCs, and tokenized assets can move value across borders in real time — while meeting the highest standards for compliance and risk management. They discuss why legal clarity and shared standards are essential for adoption, how institutions can match the speed of digital payments with equally fast safeguards, and what it takes for regulators and industry to build global financial infrastructure together. Along the way, Kah Kit reflects on marathon running, crime novels, and the grit required to solve complex, long-horizon challenges in finance and technology.

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EP. 103 | Climbing Capitol Hill: Breaking Down Crypto Market Structure with Chainlink’s Adam Minehardt

From the Federal Reserve on 9/11 to Capitol Hill during the 2008 financial crisis, Adam Meinhardt’s career spans some of the most pivotal moments in economic policy. Now, as Head of Public Policy at Chainlink, he's helping shape crypto regulation during a historic legislative push. In this episode, Adam joins Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs, to explore what it takes to engage policymakers, why market structure legislation matters, and how Chainlink is enabling the next generation of decentralized infrastructure. Key takeaways from their conversation: Why the US market structure debate hinges on five critical issues How traditional finance is entering crypto — and what that means for innovation The role of Chainlink oracles in powering secure, data-driven smart contracts What regulators can learn from blockchain’s broader use cases across government Backed by decades of experience in policy and financial services, Adam offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how decisions in Washington will shape the future of crypto. This episode cuts through complexity to surface what matters now — and what's coming next.

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EP. 102 | Legal Clarity in a Tokenized Financial Future with Joshua Klayman

Crypto law has matured quickly — and few people have been closer to that evolution than OG crypto lawyer Joshua Klayman. In this episode of TRM Talks, Joshua Klayman, US Head of Fintech and Head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Linklaters, joins Ari for a wide-ranging conversation on how legal frameworks around digital assets, tokenization, and blockchain-based finance are taking shape in real time. With nearly two decades of legal experience — and more than a decade working in crypto — Josh walks through how early blockchain work was shaped by skepticism around smart contracts, why the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has become foundational to tokenized finance, and how lawyers and regulators continue to wrestle with the question of when a token is, or is not, a security under US law. They also dig into how global banks and startups alike are navigating stablecoin regulation, including emerging frameworks like GENIUS, and what it means to advise clients in an environment where precedent is still being built. From regulatory risk to tokenized treasuries, this episode is a clear, grounded look at where crypto law stands today — and where it’s heading — from one of the lawyers helping define it.

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EP. 101 | 2026 Predictions from the TRM Team

What does the future of crypto look like in 2026? TRM’s global team weighs in. In this special New Year’s edition, Ari is joined by TRM colleagues from around the world — investigators, compliance leaders, product strategists, and policy experts — to share their bold predictions for 2026. Across the episode, TRM team members explore: The end of theory, and the beginning of execution How AI is accelerating financial crime, and how teams are adapting with AI-powered compliance Why stablecoins are now a primary asset for both regulators and criminal networks The rise of behavioral intelligence as the new frontier in blockchain investigations The push for harmonized global regulation and the shift from pilots to implementation What talent, recruiting, and training will look like in an AI-enabled crypto ecosystem From law enforcement disruption to public-private partnerships and machine-assisted investigations, our predictions reveal how 2026 is poised to reshape the crypto risk landscape. This episode is more than a prediction party — it’s a look into how leading experts at TRM are building the future.

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Flash TRM Talks: The Year of Stablecoins — How 2025 Reshaped Crypto Regulation with Dante Disparte

2025 was the year of stablecoins — and there’s no better person to look back (and ahead) with than Dante Disparte of Circle. In this Flash TRM Talks, Ari and Dante reflect on Circle’s big year, the passage of the GENIUS Act, shifting US market structure, and accelerating global regulatory alignment. They also share predictions for 2026 — including why privacy and global coordination will define crypto’s next chapter — and have a great time doing it.

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EP. 100 | Inside the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Digital Asset Strategy with Kenneth Gay

How do you build a forward-looking regulatory framework while keeping innovation moving at internet speed?In this episode, Ari is joined by Kenneth Gay, Chief FinTech Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), for a wide-ranging conversation on technology, regulation, and the future of finance. Together, they trace Kenneth’s 21-year journey across enforcement, markets, macro-financial analysis, and hands-on experimentation — right down to spinning up a Bitcoin node to understand blockchain data from the ground up. Kenneth explains how early explorations such as Project Ubin laid the foundation for Project Guardian, a cross-border sandbox that brings together regulators and financial institutions to test real-world tokenization of funds, bonds, stablecoins, and bank liabilities. He highlights the emerging frameworks MAS has developed to help the industry operationalize tokenization across asset classes, and why collaboration and shared standards are essential to scaling safely. The conversation also dives into artificial intelligence, outlining MAS’s four-pillar approach — capabilities, adoption, governance, and workforce — and explains why curated pathways, including solution marketplaces and centers of excellence, will be critical to responsible AI deployment.Grounded, pragmatic, and optimistic, this episode shows how a regulator can be both rigorous and innovation-minded — without losing sight of risk. Listen in to learn how the next phase of finance is being built in public, with standards, sandboxes, and shared incentives at the core.

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