Solidus Labs

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, Head of Policy Europe and APAC at Solidus Labs, continues her special series with Jason Sandoval, former DEA Special Agent and VP, Head of European Operations at Asset Reality.
Episode two takes listeners inside two of Jason's most remarkable investigations. The first is Operation Rogue Lion — the multinational case that traced over 45 tons of Captagon and billions in drug revenues back to Maher al-Assad and the Syrian regime, spanning 29 countries, triggering new US and European sanctions, and contributing directly to the fall of Assad. Jason explains how a single container seizure in Salerno, Italy, a Lebanese source network, and a pivotal briefing with State Department officials came together to produce a case that literally changed policy — culminating in the Captagon Act, legislation mandating an interagency response to narco-state drug trafficking. He also reveals how following the money connected the Captagon network to CJNG, the Sinaloa cartel, and shared money launderers — with crypto fingerprints on payments flowing back to the regime.
The second investigation moves to Italy, where Jason's Rome office connected a dark web counterfeiter in Piacenza to a Crips gang member running a fentanyl distribution network from inside a US state prison in Cleveland, Ohio. Jason walks through how recorded calls, international search warrants, and Bitcoin transaction analysis led to 19 arrests across two countries — and how a distribution-resulting-in-death charge was built from a call where a supplier coached a customer through the fentanyl formula that had already killed someone.
Rounding out the episode: Jason's defining moment in Charleston, South Carolina, where a seemingly ordinary dark web dealer turned out to be sitting on 150 Bitcoin across five Ledger wallets — selling synthetic drugs to 24 states and two foreign jurisdictions from a small duplex, using the US Postal Service as his unwitting distributor. A case that became his wake-up call about how technology, crypto, and synthetic drugs are fundamentally transforming both the criminal landscape and what investigators need to do to keep up.
A gripping, unfiltered conversation for compliance professionals, financial crime investigators, and anyone who wants to understand what crime without borders really looks like — and why following the money across cartels, regimes, and crypto is the only way to get ahead of it.

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.

In this special episode, recorded for DACOM NYC 2026, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce joins Solidus Labs’ CXO Chen Arad to explore her journey, the landmark rulemaking work underway, how that work connects to broader capital markets reform, and her reflections on what has changed and what still needs to be done.

In 2019, Solidus had the honor of hosting SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce as a keynote speaker at the inaugural DACOM NY Summit. At a time when the SEC was repeatedly rejecting Bitcoin ETF applications and regulation by enforcement was the norm, Commissioner Peirce emerged as a principled dissenting voice within the agency, earning her the iconic nickname "Crypto Mom."

In November this year, she will be departing her role, leaving an agency with a completely different posture towards digital assets and innovation. Over the past eighteen months as head of the SEC's Crypto Task Force, she has steered a significant shift in the agency's approach: from regulation by enforcement toward fit-for-purpose frameworks, industry engagement, and realistic compliance paths.

Join Delphine Forma, Head of Policy Europe at Solidus Labs, as she sits down with Mai Kaneko, International Business Lead at DCP — the company behind the DCJPY Network, Japan's multi-bank tokenised deposit infrastructure.
They explore one of the most consequential and least understood developments in digital finance — the rise of tokenised deposits as a distinct and complementary form of digital money. Drawing on Japan's position as one of the first markets where tokenised deposits are becoming a commercial reality, Mai brings a rare insider perspective on what it takes to build shared financial infrastructure across competing banks, regulators, and borders.