TRM Talks

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.