TRM Talks

Today 114 countries across the globe – 95% of the world’s GDP – are working on a central bank digital currency including the United States which continues to study the efficacy and design of a digital dollar. At the same time, we are seeing the growth of decentralized finance, the proliferation of U.S. dollar backed stablecoins, and continued adoption of cryptocurrencies globally despite the “cryp...

Over the last few years North Korea has been attacking cryptocurrency businesses at alarming speed and scale stealing billions of dollars in crypto to be used for weapons proliferation and other destabilizing activity. As North Korea’s tactics have become more and more sophisticated so has the response with law enforcement, regulators and industry using new tools to harden cyber controls and add f...

TRM’s Ari Redbord sits down with former U.S. Treasury Official Caroline Hill of Circle to discuss recent activity on Capitol Hill, potential stablecoin legislation and the importance of legal clarity.

Ari Redbord sits down with Unchained’s Laura Shin for a TRM Talks to discuss her journey to 500 episodes, her most memorable guests and for a wide ranging discussion of policy, regulation and illicit finance risks. She even turned the tables on Ari a few times. 

In late March, the UK government announced the second Economic Crime Plan, setting out how the government will respond to economic crime between 2023-2026. It centers around three main outcomes: reducing money laundering and recovering more criminal assets, combating kleptocracy and driving down sanctions evasion and finally, cutting fraud. For the first time, the Plan includes a dedicated section...

As 114 countries across the globe experiment with a central bank digital currency (CBDC), regulators and policy makers have been discussing and debating fundamental issues of privacy, security, and the impact on existing financial systems. In the United States, policy makers all the way from the White House to the Federal Reserve, Treasury to Capitol Hill, have continued to discuss the promise and...

TRM's Ari Redbord sits down with US Treasury's Caroline Horres to discuss the much anticipated Risk Assessment For Decentralized Finance and how Treasury views the emerging technology.

As we move to a more decentralized world, policy makers globally are asking the same question: what does regulation look like for DeFi? In this TRM Talks, we are joined by an all-star panel of builders and innovators, former regulators and law enforcement officials, for a roundtable discussion on the unique regulatory challenges and opportunities in decentralized finance.

Over a year ago, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) released guidance on best practices for cryptocurrency businesses as they navigate sanctions in the crypto space.  As part of that guidance, OFAC recommended that companies in the virtual currency industry develop a sanctions compliance program and conduct routine and, if appropriate, ongoing risk assessments to identify...

The exponential growth of the Internet of Money has created a broad attack surface for threat actors. The same properties that make crypto a force for good — permissionless, programmable, and instantaneous value transfer — are being hijacked by ransomware groups, scammers, and hackers to attack at unprecedented speed and scale. Hacks have become a part of everyday life in the cryptoverse. In 2022...

Hosting the largest number of internet users per capita in the world, Latin America has seen a booming wave of technological advancement in recent years. In just the last two years, we have seen an explosion of interest in digital assets in the region. Just last year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to approve a cryptocurrency as an official legal tender, leading to a global disc...

A year ago next month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET), building upon their Digital Currency Initiative (DCI),  with a mission to “to tackle complex investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency, particularly crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services and mone...

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) recently sanctioned cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash, which has been used by North Korean cyber criminals such as state-sponsored Lazarus Group to support cyber activities and launder the stolen proceeds of hacks against cryptocurrency businesses. This designation of Tornado Cash is a watershed moment, not only for the...

Over the last few years, we have seen global regulators walk a fine line as they attempt to regulate digital assets without stifling innovation even as the technology moves at the speed of the internet. Nowhere has this been more true than in Singapore, where regulators have sought to launch a framework for digital assets focused on creating a welcoming environment for cryptocurrency businesses wh...

While the headlines coming out of London this week may have been related to politics, scandal, and upheaval at 10 Downing Street, financial regulators have been hard at work the last few months providing consultations, reports, responses, and guidance or issues related to cryptocurrency. Ari Redbord sat down to talk discuss UK crypto regulation James Gillespie, Policy Advisor, Sanctions & Illi...

As global policymakers continue to build legal and regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrency, compliance professionals at cryptocurrency businesses and financial institutions are working to ensure that they are building robust policies and procedures to mitigate the risks of fraud and financial crime.    In this TRM Talk, we’ll look at today's key issues and challenges for compliance team...

Decentralized finance – DeFi – has created an entire on-chain Wall Street – a digital financial services industry where users engage with software called smart contracts. With DeFi, you can do most of the things that banks support — earn interest, borrow, lend, buy insurance, trade derivatives, trade assets, and more — but at the speed of the internet. Only a handful of regulators globally have we...

We saw a series of calculated and coordinated actions leading to the takedown of Hydra, the world's largest and longest-running darknet market. In 2021, Hydra accounted for an estimated 80% of all darknet market-related cryptocurrency transactions, and since 2015, the marketplace has received approximately $5.2 billion in cryptocurrency.   In the wake of these actions, a panel of subject matt...

Earlier this year, President Biden signed a long-awaited crypto executive order on “Ensuring Responsible Innovation in Digital Assets (Order),” and issued this fact sheet. While regulatory agencies have been providing crypto-related guidance and taking enforcement actions for years, the White House, with this executive order, intends to outline “the first-ever, whole-of-government approach to addr...

In the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, we have seen a wave of U.S. and European sanctions targeting Russia. Key financial institutions, the Russian Central bank, elites, key sectors such as energy, mining, telecommunications, and transportation have all been hit. Will Russia turn to cryptocurrency to evade sanctions? In this TRM Talks, Ari Redbord, Head of Legal and Government Affairs at TRM, is...

A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is a community-governed entity with no central authority. Imagine a corporation — made up of a network of individuals with a common interest — where the governance rules and decision-making are executed by software programs and the community shares a bank account funded with cryptocurrency for the purpose of fulfilling their shared vision. We have seen...

In April 2021, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed the state’s DAO-focused Bill 38 into law, allowing Wyoming to recognize DAOs as limited liability corporations (LLCs). The law went into effect in July 2021. LLCs are hybrid entities that combine the characteristics of a corporation with those of a partnership or sole proprietorship. As explained to Coindesk by TRM Talks alum, Wyoming Sen. Chris Rothf...

Over the last few years, we have seen global regulators — from Singapore to Hong Kong, the U.S. to the U.K — zero in on crypto transactions. And much of that discussion has centered around one regulation: the Travel Rule.   While the Travel Rule has been discussed and debated, we are now hearing a louder drumbeat for implementation. What does that mean for crypto compliance and how should fir...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it has arrested and charged two individuals with laundering funds associated with the 2016 hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. According to charges filed in federal court, the hacker stole 119,754 thousand BTC, which at the time of the breach, was worth around $71 million. Today that bitcoin is worth around $4.5 billion. The Bitfin...

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) — unique crypto assets hashed to a blockchain — have taken the world by storm. From Cryptopunks to NBA Top Shot, Beeple to Bored Apes, NFTs have impacted sports, pop culture, gaming and art.  There are discussions of NFTs in healthcare, real estate, record keeping, and myriad other use cases where certification of authenticity is critical. How can businesses get inv...