Yes, you heard it right – next week on February 21st, 2023, I am offering a brand new one-of-its-kind 90 min workshop on the End-to-End Scope of Crypto Compliance and following the recent SEC actions against Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, #busd, #stablecoins, and #staking in general, I have just added another section to our agenda – to make sure your company can navigate the regulatory uncertainties.

Most of my clients have received and continue receiving additional questions from their banking partners, regulators, auditors, card processors, and other partners, which can be summarized as follows:

• Were you in any way impacted by the FTX collapse and the following series of crypto bankruptcies and litigations? 
• How can you prove to us that your company is better than FTX & Co and did not deploy any of the malpractices, abuses, and opportunistic regulatory arbitrage that seemed to be so common?

The easiest way to answer these questions would be to share with all these stakeholders that your entity has actually implemented many of the common compliance best practices that go beyond AML and cover the areas such as:

• how do you maintain a sound financial position of your entity and, more specifically, what do you do with respect to vetting your potential partners and projects and protecting your customers’ funds (even if segregation is strictly not required by your regulator just yet)?
• how do you maintain your entity’s liquidity and ensure that your business can continue regardless of crypto price volatility? how do you assess and calculate the value of your assets, especially if they are not liquid or if this is your own token?
• how do you manage and report inter-company positions?
• what business conflicts of interest exist in your business and how do you manage them, especially if you are having a marketplace and simultaneously doing market-making and trading your own token?
• what do you do to protect your business and your customers from possible risks of market manipulation and how do you implement your duty of due care as it relates to your fiduciary duty towards your customers?
• what is your approach to innovative products, how do you assess the risks associated with new tokens you support or new services you offer and what controls do you have in place?

The NEW REALITY of crypto compliance in 2023 is that the industry must do more. 

WHAT IS CERTAIN?

VASPs almost everywhere in the world (exchanges, card and wallet providers, custodians, token issuers, brokers…) absolutely must go beyond AML/KYC and implement additional compliance requirements related to funds segregation, insider trading, best execution, fees transparency, own token valuation disclosures, conflict of interest, fraud protection, the sufficiency of own funds (and more).

We know that regulators rarely create new rules from scratch, they tend to adapt existing frameworks, right? This is why the MICA draft and SEC enforcement actions are good leading indicators of where new requirements may expand.

To answer these questions and help you create a regulatory plan, I am offering a new Crypto Compliance 90-minute workshop that will take place on February 21st, 2023 at 13 PM CET (Zurich time) and will cover the end-to-end complete scope of must-have (yet pragmatic) crypto compliance and will offer you simple and easy to implement implementation guidelines that make sense.

AGENDA:

WHEN and HOW: February 21st, 2023 at 1 pm CET (Zurich time) via Zoom. If you cannot attend the workshop live, the recording will be available. We will cover:

• MICA draft and SEC announcements implications (especially for stablecoins and staking)
• AML/CTF Compliance (least of your problems, but still important)
• Clients’ fund segregation
• Funds sufficiency/own capital requirements and own token valuation
• Token listing criteria and token risk assessments
• Conflicts of Interest (for example related to own token, market making, best execution principles)
• Fraud and risk management
• Insider trading controls and trading integrity compliance
• Products/services bundling and pricing transparency principles.

As a bonus, I will share with you my Blockchain Compliance Operational policy template, so that you can start implementation and adapt the requirements to your business model asap.

I am fairly certain that your regulators, auditors, and banking partners will be asking you about how compliant your VASP is in these areas very soon (if not already).  So – sign up for this workshop and get clarity!

DM me if you have questions!