External Podcasts

International asset forfeiture programs with Chainalysis' Public Key podcast

Author
Joanna Summers
SVP - Client Relations

Our SVP of Client Relations, Joanna Summers, recently sat down with Ian Andrews, the Chief Marketing Officer at Chainalysis and host of the Public Key podcast, to discuss the realities of asset seizures on their latest episode.

Listen to the full episode to:

  • Uncover the unique challenges being seen by practitioners throughout the asset forfeiture lifecycle
  • Gain exclusive insight into the challenges Joanna faced while working with the United States Marshals Service (USMS) to manage the country’s first Bitcoin seizure during the infamous Silk Road case
  • Discover how Asset Reality's seized asset management platform is poised to make asset recovery simpler, more effective and more impactful from seizure to sale

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Read a summary of their conversation on the Chainalysis blog.

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Listen to the full podcast:

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Episode Notes

The following text was extracted from the original show notes of the episode.

Whether it is seizing restaurants, hotels, cars or Bitcoin, our guest, Joanna Summers, SVP of Client Relations at Asset Reality, has done it all with over a decade of experience working in both the public and private sector on complex asset forfeitures.

In this episode, Ian Andrews (CMO at Chainalysis) speaks to Joanna about developing up asset forfeiture programs for countries all over the world and working with the Asset Reality team on their new platform to streamline the asset seizure process.

Joanna shares her history at the US Marshal Service Asset Forfeiture Division and how cryptocurrency slowly started to play a bigger role in investigations and seizures, including major cases like Silk Road.

Joanna also explains why she has recently taken on a role as an ambassador for the Association for Women in Crypto and the importance of having women’s voices in the tech and crypto sector be amplified.

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Timestamps

02:15 – The role of asset forfeiture and the process of seizing and selling complex assets

06:40 – Joanna’s first encounter with cryptocurrency during 2013 Silk Road investigation

08:55 – Joining Asset Reality and helping countries improve their asset forfeiture programs

13:13 – The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) focus on global asset recovery

17:21 – The digital asset recovery procedures and importance of moving crypto quickly into law enforcement controlled wallets

21:40 – The emergence of pig butchering scams and how to protect consumers

26:15 – Joanna’s role as an ambassador for the Association for Women in Crypto

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Transcription

Ian:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Public Key. This is your host, Ian Andrews. Today I’m joined by Joanna Summers, who is the chief recovery officer at Asset Reality. Joanna, welcome to the show.

Joanna:

Good morning. Thank you for having me, Ian.

Ian:

I have to ask, what is a chief recovery officer, and how does one become that title?

Joanna:

I run client relations here at Asset Reality. I help countries with their professional services, like managing and disposing of all different asset types. I help them build their asset forfeiture programs by developing their standard operating procedures, and also implementing our platform use. That’s a little bit of what I do externally as a chief recovery officer. Internally, I’m helping our team by providing some feedback on our platform development and meeting with various crypto exchanges, discussing partnerships and integration opportunities. A little bit of a unique title, but maybe it’ll become more common as the FATF recommendations are starting to be followed more.

Ian:

It sounds like a really exciting job, we’re going to unpack all of the things that you talked about there as we get into it. But I noticed on LinkedIn, before joining Asset Reality, you spent a long time at the Justice Department. Tell us about what you were doing there.

Joanna:

Sure. I was at the U.S. Marshals Service, asset forfeiture division, and I started in the complex assets unit in about mid-2013. And my role was working on any type of ongoing business or complex financial instrument that was subject to federal forfeiture. It could be all across the board from gas stations to franchised restaurants, hotels and motels, ranging from ones that need to be torn down and just resold as real property, all the way up to L’Hermitage, Beverly Hills Hotel, and the one MDB case. In terms of legacy work, we were valuing or ascertaining if there was any value to some of the Madoff LLCs. That was really the background when I first started. But before the end of the year, we had our first Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency program took off from there.

Ian:

That sounds amazing. But before jumping into digital assets, I want to talk a little bit there, because I fortunately have never had the marshals tell me I needed to forfeit any of my assets. What’s the scenario where that would happen? I’ve been convicted of a crime and then everything that I own gets sold off? What’s a scenario where you would be brought in?

Joanna:

Sure. One of the seizing agencies, like an FBI or a DEA, let’s say DEA would have a drug case. And in that case they have found the proceeds of crime include a Ferrari, a Rolex, some mansions, and some business interests that the defendant, thinking like Breaking Bad, had moved their money into the carwash, let’s say. Which is actually the impetus for a lot of the franchise restaurants that we had seen.

Ian:

Wow. So FBI determines, or they suspect me of committing a crime. I am arrested, charged, I go to court. At that point are you getting involved, or is it after conviction where a seizure and recovery would kick off?

Joanna:

Ideally, you want to be involved as early as possible. We talk a lot about pre-seizure planning. Pre-seizure planning is so important, especially on the complex assets side of the house. If you’re talking about taking over a business, you need to be prepared to have that business managed so that day-to-Day operations can continue. The Marshal Service would come in that custody and management phase. But ideally, you’re involved with the US attorney’s office on the front end and the seizing agency on the front end to have a game plan before the seizure happens.

Ian:

Wow. In the case of a restaurant franchise where you’ve got a number of locations, are you going in and running payroll and hiring and firing employees who are working the cook line or serving food in the restaurant?

Joanna:

Yeah, ideally, absolutely not, because that type of workload is just not sustainable. For a federal agency, it’s a one case of many. The idea is that you’ve got a management company in place that’s handling those day-to-day operations for you. Especially in a lot of the hotels, I would get say a weekly report on the financials, anything that’s significant that had occurred on the property, and then you’re looking at a monthly call with management to review how the month went and see what’s on deck for the next month. It’s more of that management capacity of you want to be overseeing the contractor. You need an idea of what you’re looking at, maybe to be able to read some financial statements or have a general idea of the industry. But ideally you’re not involved in any of that day-to-day work, because you probably have hundreds of cases on your desk to get through.

Ian:

Yeah, I would imagine that would be tricky. And is the ultimate goal to actually then sell the asset off, or is the government actually operating all of the franchise restaurants in my neighborhood and I don’t know it?

Joanna:

No, the goal is absolutely to sell the assets as soon as you’ve got that court order authorizing you to do so. It’s actually one of the most tracked metrics is, it forfeited and has it been disposed of yet? Is that aged inventory, it’s called. You really want to make sure you’re following that process as quickly and efficiently as possible. So no, you’re not sitting on assets or playing the market just because, hey, there’s a stock in this brokerage account I really like. And I think it’s going to go up in value, so I’m going to hold onto it for three more months. That’s not the idea. The idea is to follow the process. And to your point, you really want to get to that recovery stage so that you’re putting those funds back into an asset forfeiture fund or you’re giving them back to victims. A lot of the time we hear the headline, the flashy headline of the really cool seizure that just happened, but it’s the follow-up where it really counts to make asset forfeiture programs work.

Ian:

Yeah, I was going to say, I think a lot of people assume the government seizes a car or a restaurant, or maybe a hotel in the example you gave earlier, and then after they’ve sold it on that money stays with the government. But that’s not usually the case, right?

Joanna:

Yeah, a variety of things can happen when the funds go into an asset forfeiture fund. They could go back to public service, such as building highways, building roads, building hospitals or schools. They could be put into building a new rehab facility. There’s a variety of uses that they’re used for. Law enforcement training would be another big one. And then in the case of victims, you do have the availability for victim restitution, so paying back victims proceeds of crime.

Ian:

Yeah, amazing. You said earlier that about a year into your job was the first time you ever encountered cryptocurrency. Had you heard about crypto or had any familiarity with it before it came up in the work context?

Joanna:

I had vaguely heard of it in 2013. We all kind of knew what it was in our unit, but we hadn’t had a chance to really dive into it and look into it further until we got that call and it was like, “Hey, you’re getting cryptocurrency and you’re going to have to sell it pretty soon.” That’s when the deep dive into researching the best custody management and disposal methods started.

Ian:

Can you share what case that was back in 2013?

Joanna:

Yeah. We started off with a pretty big one, it was the Silk Road case.

Ian:

Okay, that was going to be my guess.

Joanna:

Yeah. And the order was entered in January of 2014 to sell the assets. There were four separate sealed bid auctions that we held across 2014 and 2015 to sell about 175,000 Bitcoin that were seized from the Silk Road servers and the defendant. And we kept that auction model going in a variety of cases through March of 2018, maybe 2020, as we developed the program.

Ian:

By the time you left Marshals, it sounds like pretty robust program in terms of how to handle virtual assets.

Joanna:

Yeah, absolutely. By then we had started to see a variety of currencies, it wasn’t just Bitcoin anymore. And that’s something that we’ve heard around the world is we’ve got all these different currencies, and how do we manage all of them? We thought we figured it out because we figured out Bitcoin, but now we’re having more and more currencies to manage and not every exchange allows us to liquidate them. So what do we do from here? Yeah.

Ian:

You said you had to figure out custody pretty quickly when this first case came up. What was the solution back then, and did that change over time?

Joanna:

The solution back then was cold storage. The Mt. Gox exchange had just collapsed, so there was a lot of fear over using any type of centralized exchange to store the currency. And I would say that’s changed over time in the sense that there’s just more options now. And that’s one of the things that we have built into our platform, is that flexibility to use a variety of cold storage methods, a variety of exchanges, and a variety of platforms to really be able to handle anything that comes our way.

Ian:

So even the Marshal service believes in not your keys, not your coins. Is that what I’m hearing?

Joanna:

Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a message we try to preach around the world. Yep.

Ian:

Now, it sounds like it was an amazing job. What led you to joining the Asset Reality team?

Joanna:

I was fortunate enough in my government career to not only work with US agencies, but to speak to a lot of agencies internationally. Especially once crypto became more prominent, it was a lot of the same questions internationally. And I saw the need for a comprehensive seized asset management platform that included monitoring cryptocurrency. And I really wanted to help build that platform, and I really wanted to help countries around the world improve their asset forfeiture programs. So speaking with Aidan and with Asset Reality, it was very similar to a private sector Marshal Service looking to simplify the process of asset recovery.

Ian:

When you say working with countries around the world, where are you spending most of your time today? Where is the biggest concentration of interest on digital asset recovery?

Joanna:

Yeah, offshore jurisdictions, the Caribbean, Africa, the EU as well. It’s a little bit all over the place, which is exciting and fun.

Ian:

Yeah. So you’re spending a lot of time on a plane, I would imagine.

Joanna:

Yes. A lot of travel, which I also love.

Ian:

Now, I’m curious, you mentioned back in 2013 obviously Bitcoin was the big thing, and then you saw a widening of the aperture as other cryptocurrencies came into play. I would imagine things like Eth became much more significant. I’m curious today how much you’re seeing things like NFTs, which probably present their own challenges in terms of recovery.

Joanna:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s something that we see mostly with the EU or the US. It’s not something that we see seized as frequently in some of those other jurisdictions that are maybe working their first crypto case or just starting to get involved in crypto. It’s still a little beyond what those jurisdictions are identifying for seizure.

Ian:

I’m curious, you’ve mentioned a couple of times the platform that the team is building. What actually is that? And maybe if you can answer in the shape of how you would work with a government that calls you up and says, “Hey, Joanna, we need some help. We’ve got some really complex things that we want to seize here.” What happens from that point forward?

Joanna:

We handle the entire seized asset process from end to end. From a crypto perspective, we’re integrated with Fireblocks and several other custodian options like a Fidelity Digital Assets, a Coinbase, and we work with a variety of different exchanges. We’re agnostic on that front. We will be flexible and work with whatever the country deems as an acceptable platform to use or to not use. And I think one of the key differences is that we don’t offer retail, so everything we do has a court order nexus to it. Whether that’s an insolvency practitioner, a bankruptcy proceeding, or it’s a government agency that’s looking for crypto and physical asset storage, everything has to have a court order nexus to it. And as far as I know, that’s not available anywhere in the world.

Ian:

Why the court order nexus? It seems like there’s lots of people out there who have had fallen victim to a scam or something else. I would imagine they call you all the time. I know we get lots of calls here at Chainalysis from individuals who say, “Help, I’ve lost my crypto.” But it sounds like you’re not focused on serving that audience.

Joanna:

Yeah, absolutely. We’ve never really serviced the retail customers for crypto, but we did a lot of victim support when I first started at Asset Reality, and we shifted away from that to keep our focus on the professional services and on building our platform. And we realized if we can focus on supporting jurisdictions with infrastructure, that long-term that will empower them to be able to work those types of cases more efficiently. If the government has the capacity to do the work from investigations to management and liquidation, then they’re in a position to help with victim support. And that’s especially true of these overseas jurisdictions, many of whom lack that infrastructure. Even if you were to send something over to them from a victim that lost something, you’re not going to get any information back if they don’t have the infrastructure upfront to help you. But yes, when I first started, I did speak to a lot of victims, it was interesting.

Ian:

Yeah. I can imagine going upstream in serving that infrastructure is actually really important. It enables law enforcement and the rest of government to do their job much more effectively if they’ve got the right tools. I’m curious, what’s the perspective of the financial action task force when it comes to asset recovery? I know my experience, FATF has done lots of work around anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing. Have they started to look at this space and give guidance to countries on how they should develop their programs?

Joanna:

One of the stats that we see quoted a lot from FATF is a UNODC statistic stating that countries intercept and recover less than 1% of global illicit financial flows. And that’s a pretty scary statistic when you think about it. Especially because that statistic came out almost a decade ago at this point, so it’s almost pre-crypto forfeitures and the world really getting involved in crypto asset forfeiture. I’d imagine at this point that 1% could even be a lot lower now. And countries do need to do a better job with it, and that’s what we’re planning to help them do. FATF highlights seizing expeditiously, which is what our app can do by helping generate a crypto wallet address. And I think it’s a great focus that FATF has, because it’s really needed worldwide when you look at the lack of infrastructure and those scary statistics like a 1% recovery.

I think FATF is going to be focusing on it a lot more in the next few years to come. They’ve already said, according to REC 15, that countries and financial institutions should identify and assess for money laundering and financing risks, and that they’re going to be focused on it by making sure these countries are developing new products to help combat those risks. This has led to the EU directive to have an asset management platform, and it’s also led to FATF stating they’re going to produce another targeted update report focusing on the jurisdiction’s progress, so who’s complying, who’s not complying. And I think that follow-up comes from the fact that three-quarters of jurisdictions were viewed as only partially or not compliant with those FATF requirements.

Ian:

Wow. That 1% statistic blows me away, because I think the estimate is something like $2 trillion in illicit finance. So 1% of a very, very big number. And your guess is it’s actually gotten worse, not better, since that statistic was formulated.

Joanna:

Yeah, I’d love to see an updated statistic on that because I do think it’s gotten a bit worse. And I hate to see that, because I think that’s so much money that’s being left in the hands of criminals that should be given back to the government and to victims of crime.

Ian:

The saying goes, crime doesn’t pay, but it sounds like in this case maybe it does for some people. Unless we can solve this problem.

Joanna:

Yes. And I think we will. No one wants to get grey listed. We have seen countries go on the FATF grey list, and come off the grey list, but that leads to just a whole set of consequences economically. If a country is grey listed, it’s a decrease in international financial assistance, international financial aid due to de-risking. I understand that countries want to focus on making sure that they’re not part of that grey list. Or if they are already, improving so they can come off it because that can be a huge hit to the economy.

Ian:

Yeah. We’ve had some law enforcement professionals on the podcast in the past, and they’ve told some pretty fantastic stories about arresting a suspect and seizing a thumb drive or maybe another hardware wallet implementation and treating it traditional evidence, like putting it in a bag and throwing it in an evidence locker. And then finding out much later that what they thought at the time contained a large amount of digital assets, it was gone by the time somebody came back around to it. And that story has always stuck with me because I imagine that is a fairly common practice, and I feel like you might know this and can guide on why that’s a bad idea. What would be the right approach in that scenario?

Joanna:

Yeah. Unfortunately, that’s something that we have definitely heard, especially as we work in countries that are just getting started with cryptocurrency. We hear either a lot of… I’ll do a training and I’ll show a picture of a hardware device, and I’ll be like, “Has anyone seen this before?” Because some jurisdictions go, “Oh, we don’t have crypto in our country.” I’m like, “Okay, have you seen these before?” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen those on a lot of different takedowns that I’ve been on, and cars we’ve pulled over.” And it’s like, “Okay, well that was crypto, so who knows what was on it.”

But I’ve definitely had that exact scenario happen where people didn’t understand you need to transfer the currency immediately. Not your keys, not your coins. If you’re not controlling those private keys and you’re not transferring the crypto to an agency controlled or a contract or agency controlled wallet right away, whatever you put in evidence and decided to check a year later is probably not going to be there. And we’ve heard that too where people have said, “I don’t know what this guy was doing, but we went to go arrest him, and he just wouldn’t stop sending this text message. We had to rip the phone out of his hands.” And it’s like, “Yeah, he was giving the signal to everyone to go move all the assets immediately.”

Ian:

What’s the right approach? With your platform, it sounds like you make it very easy to set up a new digital wallet that’s controlled by the government. How do you get a suspect to give up access, that seed phrase to the hardware device? How does that process actually play out?

Joanna:

A few different things happen. Sometimes the seed phrase is sitting out and it’s easy to find. Sometimes the suspects are just willing to give it up. In cases where they’re willing to give it up, it’s usually because they’re going to be facing a very stiff money judgment and they just realize that the gig is up. They either don’t want to do as much time in jail, they want their money judgment paid, and they’re just going to go ahead and comply at that point.

Ian:

Yeah. Often you can form some sort of cooperative encouragement.

Joanna:

Yes. Yeah, sometimes. Yes.

Ian:

And then, how does the digital assets typically get disposed of? You mentioned the platform plugs into a bunch of different trading venues. Is it like the auction process you described it at Marshals, or is it a case where you just go and sell on the open market on a platform like Coinbase?

Joanna:

The great thing about having a platform to manage the disposal process is having that variety of options and being able to get really competitive pricing. We can ask around to a variety of different exchanges and see what’s going to work best. And sometimes it’s a case of not only are we liquidating an asset, but then we need to convert the fiat into a different currency, to either British pounds, or to the dollar, to the Euro. So you’re doing multiple steps in that liquidation. I’d say it’s similar to the auction process in the sense that you expect there to be KYC and AML compliance, and bidders need to be vetted.

One of the things we focus on with countries when we help them develop their standard operating procedures is having those processes in place. If you’re going to hold an auction or you’re going to liquidate cryptocurrency, how are you making sure that none of those bidders were the brother or the sister of the defendant? You don’t want something being resold back to the defendant and his family. In some situations, you can only do your best, it’s out of your control what happens once that next person buys it. But doing that type of a compliance check and just really asking around for the best price is important.

Ian:

Yeah. I remember there used to be a time where, in the US at least, people would advertise these seized car auctions where you could go get a great deal on some luxury automobile that had been presumably seized from some criminal somewhere. But I would imagine with digital assets, Bitcoin is Bitcoin, no one really cares about the provenance. So you’re looking to maximize the value of that, right? You want to sell in such a way that you’re getting market price in every case.

Joanna:

Yeah, you want to be getting market price and you also want to make sure you’re not affecting the market. This was true working on the liquidation of brokerage accounts and stock portfolios, and also for crypto as well. If you start affecting the market, then there’s innocent people who had nothing to do with this crime that they’re seeing everything take a hit in price. You want to be careful not to have that happen. And a lot of the exchanges now have really sophisticated trading algorithms that make sure that doesn’t happen. And you’re also in control to stop or slow down the sale process if you do see the market slipping. That’s definitely an important consideration when liquidating.

Ian:

Yeah. Now, one of our most popular topics on this podcast over the last two years has been pig butchering, this romance flavored scam that victims are often contacted out of the blue and then they’re established some sort of ongoing relationship with the scammer. I know that you mentioned you had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with victims early in your career at Asset Reality. How do you see that type of scam resolving? Is it something where we can just raise the sophistication level of government, or do we also need to establish some sort of protective solution for victims as well? What are your thoughts there?

Joanna:

It’s such a hard situation because there’s so many of these scams. And when you look at IC3, which is the internet crime complaint center run by the FBI, you can see that cryptocurrency investment fraud has increased 183% in 2022. We’re looking at $2.57 billion lost to investment scams. And that’s just the number that has a USA nexus to it and just what was reported. And we know a lot of victims don’t report because they’re too embarrassed too.

One of the things I saw a lot of in these cases was the revictimization of victims. And the first question I was always asked was, how do I get my money back? And they’re asking that to a good trusting party. They’re also asking that first question to any type of scammer who’s just exploiting fact that they’re vulnerable and ready to pay some amount of money again to just have the problem solved.

I think part of the problem is education, just making sure people understand that there’s a lot of red flags to look for if you’re going to be speaking to a firm that claims they’re going to help you with crypto asset recovery. It’s education on all sides. In terms of victim education, you shouldn’t be working with someone who’s requesting a non-refundable payment up first. You shouldn’t be working with someone who’s guaranteeing you a return. It’s very difficult to get a return. And recovery litigation is very expensive. You also want to make sure someone’s working with law enforcement. You cannot do this without law enforcement assistance, you still need a law enforcement agency to help you seize.

And I’d say last and probably most importantly is working with blockchain analytic companies. Making sure that asset recovery firm you’re talking to, that they’re working with a Chainalysis in order to trace those token types and use some of the best technology available. And then on the government side it’s also education. It’s making sure no one says, “Oh, I don’t do crypto investigations,” or “That stuff goes in the too hard pile. We don’t take custody of that stuff.” It’s making sure that everyone’s willing to pitch in and work those types of cases from the investigators to the prosecutors, everyone, every step of the way.

Ian:

Yeah. If you’ve been unlucky enough to be a victim, it sounds like step one is get law enforcement involved as soon as you can. And then step two, be very wary of anyone promising that they can get all your money back and that they can solve the problem with just yet another payment, because there’s a good chance that they’re actually running a scam as well.

Joanna:

Absolutely. If you’re a US citizen, you should make sure you’re reporting through IC3. And that’s not to say that there aren’t good crypto asset recovery firms out there and good public sector divisions working on this, you just need to be leery and be aware of the fact that it’s probably going to be very expensive. If you look at some of the work Erin West and Operation Shamrock are doing, it’s really impressive on the pig butchering schemes and raising awareness to what they are, and how to proceed if you’ve been a victim of one. Cybera, also in the private sector, they’ve been a great company that helps victims with these types of cases.

Ian:

Two former guests on the podcast, Erin West and Nicola from Cybera.

Joanna:

Fantastic.

Ian:

Perfect shout-outs, I love it. Any other former friends of the podcast you’d like to plug while you’re at it?

Joanna:

No, I’ll leave it there for now.

Ian:

Okay. Different topic for you. I saw on your bio that you are an ambassador for the Association for Women in Crypto. They’re doing some terrific work in the ecosystem. Maybe share with the audience a little bit about what the association does and what your role as an ambassador is all about.

Joanna:

I am the DC regional ambassador for Women in Crypto. And I’ve known Amanda for a long time from my DOJ days when she was in AUSA and I was working at the Marshal Service. I was really, really excited when she launched this initiative. I believe it actually started with her days at Chainalysis, and starting to interview women leaders in the industry. And then it snowballed into the Women in Cryptocurrency Association. The idea is that it helps bring different voices and diverse ways of thinking that can help build better solution. We want to ensure that the future of digital finance and innovation is built with equality for women. And I do see sometimes people ask, is there going to be pushback on some of the events if you’re pushing for women to be a part of it? And I think when you come to these events, it’s really a benefit of the doubt.

A lot of the organizers of conferences, they don’t always know how to find qualified women speakers. Sometimes they’re hosting a conference, but they’re not necessarily in the crypto space, they’re planning an event. Whereas, you or I might know a lot of great speakers off the top of our head, I think sometimes it’s just knowing where to look. One of the initiatives that we’re doing in Women in Crypto is we are launching a global speaker directory of qualified women who are willing to speak on panels or willing to speak solo at conferences.

Ian:

Awesome.

Joanna:

Yeah, I think so too. And I think it’s especially fun for me to work with just women right out of college who need mentorship, who are maybe a little intimidated by speaking on a panel or by doing a podcast, or they just need some help and some reassurance that they know how to do it and do a dry run with someone. We love to offer any type of mentorship opportunity as well.

I really, really enjoy my work on that, and I expect us to be rolling out a lot more events this year and next year as well. I was amazed at how many people joined the association over the last year. Not at all surprised, just really excited about it. And now I think we’re into that next phase of really making sure that we’re holding events and a variety of great events, whether that’s a happy hour in the evening, a crypto and coffee session in the morning, or tacking on a network event pre or post-conference, just to make sure everyone can get to know each other a little bit better.

Ian:

It sounds like an amazing organization. Love the mission and the focus on bringing more women into the industry. If listeners want to find out more, where should they go? How do we follow along?

Joanna:

I would follow along by going to the Women in Crypto LinkedIn page, and you can also go to womenincrypto.org, that’s the website. Highly recommend you join. We also have events that you don’t need to be a member to be a part of. So if you just want to come check it out, see what we’re all about, we’re happy to host as well if it’s something you want to just think about before you go right in.

Ian:

Amazing. We will link to both of those in the show notes so people can follow along.

Joanna:

Thank you.

Ian:

Last question for you, what should we expect coming up in 2024 for you and Asset Reality?

Joanna:

Well, speaking of FATF from earlier, the FATF effect from 2019 and that push towards these better systems to regulate virtual assets, that led to such an explosion in your field and the blockchain analytic companies. And now I’m really excited to see that asset recovery is this next focus, and we’re super excited to be the world’s first company dedicated to this sector with software and services to make it easier to seize assets. I think the thing I’m most excited about is our platform launch in April, which is absolutely perfect timing to be at Chainalysis Links and have a booth there. I really hope everyone stops by our booth at Chain Links, because I’d love to show our demo of how we can seize assets in under 60 seconds and have them on the platform, and show how we run reports and just how the whole platform works.

Ian:

I can’t wait. I will be there. I maybe will be the first person at the booth to see that demo, but I’m sure many of our listeners will line up behind me. And look forward to seeing you in April.

Joanna:

Fantastic. I can’t wait. Thanks, Ian.

Ian:

Thanks so much.

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