Key Insights from the Digital Asset Compliance Talent and Salary Guide

In this episode of Compliance Champions, Delphine Forma, Head of Policy at Solidus Labs, speaks with Toms Platacis, Head of Latvia's Financial Intelligence Unit and Head of Delegation to both MONEYVAL and FATF — one of Europe's most experienced financial intelligence authorities and a leading voice in the global AML/CFT community. They explore how financial crime has evolved in practice — how funds now move fluidly across banks, payment providers, crypto exchanges, self-hosted wallets, money mules, and DeFi protocols, and what that means for how FIUs investigate, coordinate, and share intelligence. Toms shares concrete typologies and real investigative examples that illustrate how the threat landscape is shifting, including the most common crypto-related money laundering and sanctions circumvention patterns Latvia is seeing on the ground today. The conversation goes deep on digital assets — addressing the persistent misconception that crypto is the criminal's tool of choice, and exploring cases where blockchain transparency has actually made investigators' work easier rather than harder. They also tackle DeFi, including Latvia's practical approach to arrangements that present as decentralised but involve identifiable controlling parties, and whether DeFi is already featuring in live investigations. Rounding out the episode: how Latvia's strong public-private partnership model works and why it matters, how international FIU cooperation functions in practice, and what it meant for Latvia to be the first country assessed under FATF's new mutual evaluation methodology — with hard-won advice for any authority preparing for their own evaluation. A frank, experience-led conversation for compliance professionals, financial crime investigators, and policymakers who want to understand what effective financial intelligence really looks like — and where the fight against financial crime is heading next.

In this episode of Compliance Champions, Delphine Forma speaks with Dr. Ju-Chun Ko, Member of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan and one of the lead sponsors behind Taiwan’s Virtual Asset Service Provider Act and AI Basic Act. They discuss Taiwan’s move from AML registration towards a full licensing framework for digital asset businesses, the challenges posed by fraud and financial crime, and the opportunities around stablecoins, tokenisation and tokenised securities. The conversation also explores Taiwan’s approach to AI regulation and how the country can combine its strengths in technology, semiconductors and capital markets to build its next chapter in digital finance. A sharp, forward-looking conversation for compliance professionals, policymakers, and business leaders tracking how Asia's most technologically advanced economies are building the regulatory foundations for the next phase of digital finance.

Join Delphine Forma, Head of Policy APAC & Europe at Solidus Labs, as she sits down with Alex Tsilipanos, Head of Market Surveillance at Perpetuals.com — a regulated MTF bringing institutional-grade infrastructure to crypto perpetual futures. They unpack what it really takes to build a market surveillance function from scratch for crypto perps trading — from detecting funding rate manipulation and cross-venues abuse, to combining on-chain and off-chain data into a single surveillance framework. Drawing on years of experience at Interactive Brokers and now at the frontier of crypto derivatives, Alex brings a rare practitioner's perspective on one of compliance's most technically demanding disciplines.

In this episode of Compliance Champions, Delphine Forma speaks with Val Smith, Head of Payments and Digital Assets Authorisations at the FCA, about the UK’s transition from AML registration to full FSMA authorisation for crypto firms. Val explains what the FCA will look for when assessing applications, what it means to be “ready, willing and organised,” and what the FCA has learned so far from its Pre-Application Support Service. They also discuss realistic authorisation timelines and what can slow the process down. The conversation also covers MARC and market abuse surveillance, including the FCA’s expectation that effective surveillance considers both on- and off-chain activity, as well as orders, transaction flows and communications. Finally, they explore what the FCA expects from international crypto firms operating global models, including UK presence, governance and the ability to demonstrate that UK regulatory standards can be met on an ongoing basis.

In this episode of Compliance Champions, Delphine Forma speaks with Sugandhi Govil, Director Compliance, APAC at Circle, about what it takes to build trust and operate a compliance programme for regulated stablecoins — from governance and compliance by design to managing financial-crime risk at network speed. They explore how the speed and transparency of blockchain networks shape compliance, providing visibility into risks beyond an issuer’s direct customer relationships and enabling secondary-market monitoring and faster identification of emerging typologies. They also discuss why effective risk management requires collaboration across the ecosystem and how blockchain analytics and AI are changing financial-crime monitoring and investigations. Finally, Delphine and Sugandhi look at the evolving regulatory landscape across APAC, including growing convergence around governance, reserve backing, transparency and AML/CFT controls, and why regulated stablecoin issuers should not simply be viewed through the same lens as the broader crypto ecosystem.