In a recent interview, Ari Redbord, Head of Legal and Government Affairs at TRM Labs, a Blockchain intelligence company, explains that TRM Labs serves as a tracing tool for Cryptocurrency fraud and financial crime, primarily for law enforcement. The company works with regulators who want to understand the risks of illicit actors within their regulated ecosystems and with traditional financial institutions and Cryptocurrency businesses for anti-money laundering for crypto.

Three key takeaways from this interview include:

• Cryptocurrency is an attractive space for illicit actors as it allows for faster and larger amount transfers, but also provides a traceable and immutable public ledger that enables investigators to track and trace the flow of funds in ways that were impossible before
• While many virtual asset service providers (VAPs) have compliance officers and policies in place, there is also an entire ecosystem of noncompliant VAPs, and many of those exist in places like Russia that has built an impressive infrastructure of illicit finance over the years
• There are many challenges within the crypto ecosystem, and the industry needs to be regulated to make it more compliant and safe for users