As a follow-up to the RANE 2019 Risk Management Summit hosted by Sullivan & Cromwell on April 3, 2019, we’ve conducted several follow-up podcasts with some of the panelists.

Today’s podcast focuses on the panel entitled Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and the Implications for Financial Crime Compliance.

The increasing use of blockchain technology presents significant legal, operational, and compliance challenges. Cryptocurrency transactions are supposed to be anonymous and untraceable raising the risks of their use in money laundering, terrorist financing, and other illicit activities. Despite the perception, cryptocurrency transactions are not entirely anonymous, however, identifying the entities and locations of blockchain participants requires sophisticated analytics and changes in customer onboarding and transaction-monitoring approaches.

In this podcast, RANE founder David Lawrence sits down with the moderator for this panel discussion Thomas Baxter, Of Counsel, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. As a member of the Firm’s Financial Services Group, Mr. Baxter focuses his practice on advising clients in the financial services, insurance, securities and FinTech spaces. Mr. Baxter’s advice relates to complex issues arising from supervision and regulation, investigations and enforcement actions, governance, compliance and risk management, crisis management and organizational culture. He also brings extensive experience dealing with central banks from around the world, and with sovereigns and their instrumentalities, as they address sovereign debt and dollar-liquidity issues. Mr. Baxter’s deep knowledge in these areas comes from more than 35 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, most in senior leadership roles, including as General Counsel and Executive Vice President for more than 20 years.