Threat Intelligence at Match Point: Disrupting Malicious Actors with Flashpoint CEO (and Tennis Champion) Josh Lefkowitz

Ari Redbord (00:02):

I am Ari Redbord and this is TRM Talks. I'm Global Head of policy at TRM Labs. At TRM, we provide blockchain intelligence software to support law enforcement investigations and to help financial institutions and cryptocurrency businesses mitigate financial crime risk within the emerging digital asset economy. Prior to joining TRM spent 15 years in the US federal government, first as a prosecutor at the Department of Justice, and then as a Treasury Department official where I worked to safeguard the financial system against terrorist financiers, weapons of mass destruction, proliferators, drug kingpins, and other rogue actors. On TRM Talks, I sit down with business leaders, policymakers, investigators, and friends from across the crypto ecosystem who are working to build a safer financial system. On today's TRM Talks, I sit down with Flashpoint's Josh Lefkowitz, but first Inside the Lab where I share data-driven insights from our blockchain intelligence team.

(01:05):

In early June, 2025, the US Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint seeking the seizure of approximately 225 million in UDT marking the largest crypto related enforcement action in US Secret Service history, and the biggest seizure tied to investment fraud ever recorded. The case centers on confidence scams, also known as pig butchering, where fraudsters build trust over time, often via romance or investment pretext before luring victims into fake crypto schemes. In this instance, more than 400 individuals around the world lost funds believing they were investing legitimately. The FBI's 2024 IC3 report notes that similar fraud cost victims over 5.8 billion last year. Law enforcement coordinated efforts across agencies led by the US Attorney's Office for DC, the Secret Service and the FBI San Francisco offices. Investigators traced a complex laundering network, comprising hundreds of thousands of untrained transactions. Labs is proud to have supported law enforcement in this investigation, investigators identified 35 intermediary wallets and identified over 90 scam deposit addresses as well as 144 accounts showing overlapping KYC or device indicators, both Tether and OKX assisted by freezing the targeted wallets, Tether then enacted an onchain burn of the tokens and issued equivalent new UDT directly to the US Government controlled wallets, an innovative process that enables recovery via civil forfeiture provisions. The linkage of intelligence, analytics and legal tools demonstrates how blockchain intelligence can empower institutions to recover illicit funds. Coordination between TRM, exchanges, issuers, and federal enforcement agencies combined with robust laws such as those articulated in the Genius Act recently, passed by the US Senate, underscores the evolving power of public-private partnerships in illicit finance disruption.

(03:14):

And now Josh Lefkowitz. I am joined today by friend and Flashpoint, CEO, Josh Lefkovitz. Josh, thank you so much for joining TRM Talks.

Josh Lefkowitz (03:29):

Thanks so much for having me. Long time fan. First time guest, as you noted.

Ari Redbord (03:34):

Long time listener. First time caller.

Josh Lefkowitz (03:36):

Exactly.

Ari Redbord (03:37):

You are the CEO of one of the most important threat intelligence firms. How did you get interested in this space and then ultimately into this role?

Josh Lefkowitz (03:45):

Yeah, so much in life that was entirely nonlinear. I thought I was going to spend my career on Wall Street, which was the path that I was on until 9/11 happened. I'm a native New Yorker. I grew up in New York City, graduated in the first college class after 9/11, so a 2002 grad. I'd spent the summer of 2001 right before 9/11 working at Merrill Lynch doing an equity sales and trading internship in the World Financial Center, which was part of the World Trade Center complex. I loved my summer there. I had a full-time offer to return. I accepted that offer and then 9/11 happened and it really led me to want to better understand the context. Behind 9/11, I began studying the Khobar Towers bombing, the embassy bombing, the USS Cole bombing. And really the more I learned about what had been transpiring over the last 20 years of jihadist terrorism, it made me want to contribute to the national security and counter-terrorism mission deeply.

(04:49):

And what I ultimately decided was that going down the path of a financial services career was not what I wanted to do. And 6:00 AM the morning that I was supposed to start onboarding and training at Merrill Lynch, I quit completely out of character for me, for the first 21 years of my life. I'd very much taken the middle of the fairway conservative path, and all of my friends and family were absolutely shell-shocked that I'd taken such a risky and uncertain path. I started knocking on doors trying to find a pathway into the national security community, which is not an easy community to break into, particularly if you don't have a security clearance. And as you know intimately, that's a lengthy process to get your tickets. And so ultimately found my way to a very unique organization that had been doing a ton of highly differentiated work looking at jihadist networks in the west in 1980s and 1990s at a time when very few across the national security ecosystem were paying attention to that problem set.

(05:51):

And so post 9/11, they were in a very privileged position to assist FBI, federal prosecutors, Treasury investigators, and allied investigators on the avalanche of investigations and prosecutions that were now on their desks. You also had a national security apparatus in the case of the FBI that was pivoting wholesale. You had FBI agents who had been working bank robbery and mortgage fraud on September 10th and on September 12th, they were tasked with being national security focused counter-terrorism agents. And so there was a real opportunity for this organization and the private sector to meaningfully support and add value to a whole suite of critical investigation that as a 22-year-old, it really blew my mind because you step in from the outside with a perception that the government is all knowing. It has all the answers and all the data and all the intelligence at is fingertips. And you never would've thought that there would be a role for the private sector to contribute meaningfully.

(06:54):

And at the same time, I was sitting next to a fellow analyst by the name of Evan Coleman who was diving deep into the internet. And of course this was at the time of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan. And what he was highlighting was that the internet, these deep web jihadist forums that were password protected were rapidly becoming the center of gravity for fundraising, for propaganda, for recruitment, funneling recruits into Iraq, Afghanistan, and a whole host of other hotspots. In the national security communit, there was some debate as to whether the individuals on these forums were kids in their mom's basement or in fact real threat actors that the national security community needed to be concerned about. It was clear at that moment in 2003 that the internet was going to forever change the threat landscape and that there was a real opportunity for the private sector to add significant value.

(07:49):

And so Evan ended up leaving that organization where we were working together, moved up to New York City, founded his own consultancy in his second bedroom in the West Village of Manhattan. And within a year or two had become the go-to expert witness that the FBI and federal prosecutors around the country began relying on as their expert witness for dozens and dozens of terrorism trials coming through the US Court system, SDNY, EDVA the center of gravity for where the War on Terror was being prosecuted. And at the same time, he became NBC News's on-airt terrorism analyst. So it was building a deep network of contacts and credibility across the national security ecosystem, the Brits, the Australians, the Canadians being following suite and hiring him in a similar capacity and also building a public profile as a result of his work on NBC and MSNBC. And for the next couple of years, we would always brainstorm about the potential to really scale out what was a very manual labor intensive workflow.

(08:46):

It was Evan and an Arabic language speaking analyst, 18 hours a day, seven days a week, hands on keyboard, eyes on glass. And we said to ourselves, where can technology come into the equation to really automate and scale data collection from the most austere, the most challenging to navigate communities where jihadist activity was taking place and core to our philosophy from the earliest days when we eventually founded Flashpoint in 2010, was that you needed to have this fusion, this marriage of scaled technology with subject matter expert analysts who were language fluent, who were deep experts in their particular domain and also had technical acumen. And fast forward to today, 15 years later, where we're privileged to support over 800 of the most demanding and discerning customers across the public sector and the enterprise, that's still foundational to our approach with an analyst team of a 100, speaking 35 different languages with that deep domain expertise and that deep technical acumen working hand in glove with our engineering team to stay in lockstep with threat actors cross the physical and cyber domains because it's a constant game of cat and mouse where threat actors are continually evolving the communities and platforms in which they're operating. And that's why you need that convergence of the analysts and the technologists to keep pace.

Ari Redbord (10:11):

Really extraordinary backstory. And there's so many things I feel like unpack there. One that really struck me is something I haven't thought a lot about, and that as you think about this incredible watershed moment in world history, that was the internet and you think about this watershed that was 9/11, and I don't always necessarily think about them as really essentially the same moment within a few years of each other. And what you're really saying is what the internet really allowed us to or us the national security community to do collection better. It also supercharged a lot of the operations that Jihadists were doing globally. And I think it's really interesting that there was this flashpoint. Am I making sense of that?

Josh Lefkowitz (10:50):

No, you're spot on. When I look at the scale of the ecosystem that we were focused on back in the early days, you were talking about single digit number of deep web jihadist forums, but even then, the challenges that we were encountering as intelligence analysts were profound. Even trying to run a search on a username across three forums to see where a particular red actor was operating was extraordinarily complex. You had the administrators on the other side that were looking at their search histories, that were looking at logs with a fine tooth comb, and if they saw anything that looked suspicious, they would ban you. And keep in mind, most of these forums were closed to new registration. So you may only have had three or four login credentials to these privileged environments, and if you were burned and you lost your account, you could be shut out. And so there was a tremendous amount of trade craft that needed to be developed in terms of the automated collection to look as human and as authentic as possible in order to blend into those environments. And part of what we've finally honed over the last 15 years is that collection tradecraft where you're able to blend in a very seamless and natural way to be able to collect the most valuable and relevant data, but also ensure that you're doing it in a very lightweight way,

Ari Redbord (12:10):

Really extraordinary. So we talked a little terror financing, especially in the Wake nine 11, but really how you use technology at Flashpoint to scale from a intelligence gathering perspective. Let's talk about some other threats too. You have at Flashpoint put together the best in class primary source data, but not just on counter-terrorism, really across the spectrum of different threats. Talk me through what are the categories that you are engaging with most often or the ones that you're most concerned about today?

Josh Lefkowitz (12:39):

Yeah, I know we've only got about 20 or 30 minutes. We could certainly talk the entire day about this topic. One of the areas that across the Fortune 500, our customers are putting at the top of their threat priority list as the mass scale infiltration by DPRK remote IT workers, and your listeners likely know this story intimately, but you could not write a Hollywood script that is as bizarre and as fantastical as what's transpired over the last two to three years where the North Korean regime has successfully built a scaled operation that has penetrated hundreds of Fortune 500 enterprises and discoveries are being made on a nearly daily basis. This has been catalyzed and supported by a network of fake companies, AI generated personas, facilitators here in the US. It was just a great series that Bob McMillan from the Wall Street Journal did on a woman in Tennessee who was running a laptop farm facilitating these remote IT workers.

(13:43):

And the driver here is the North Korean regime is using these operations to fund their weapons program. They're raising hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the success of this operation. In some instances, they're also using the accesses that these IT workers are gaining for malicious purposes beyond fundraising to include exfiltration of sensitive data, facilitate breaches. And one of the key takeaways as the Fortune 500 has been really turning the full force of their focus on this problem set is how wide scale this is. And I think everyone across the Fortune 500 has been stunned at how successful the operation has been. Certainly the shift to remote work has been a significant facilitator of it, but it has been facilitated both through W2 full-time employees as well as contractors at third-party employment firms. And it's necessitating a full re-imagination of how interview processes are being done, how onboarding is being done, how reference checks are being done.

(14:52):

Some companies are taking some really creative steps in terms of how they can more effectively identify AI generated personas during interviews, AI generated resumes, how they can look into their payroll logs to see where they're actually multiple individuals using the same payroll details, which is clearly a bright red flag. And there's been a ton of really fruitful intelligence sharing amongst the Fortune 500 as well as the public and private sector. So that's one aspect that's top of mind. Another is on the physical security side, certainly after the Brian Thompson assassination, after the shooting at the NFL offices, organizations across the enterprise are leaning in with a urgency and a level of focus that I've certainly never seen before in the 15 years of building and running Flashpoint, where they're recognizing that their C-suite, their board members require a level of intelligence across the cyber and physical domains that's far more robust, far more proactive, far more integrated than they currently have in place.

(16:00):

And this is a no fail mission. And so really leaning in on a program that combines close executive protection in terms of the in-person close detail aspects, the understanding of where PII exists on the internet and with the data broker ecosystem, it's a constant game of whack-a-mole. And then also fusing that with web-based intelligence to better understand the cyber threat landscape and how that intersects with physical threats in the real world. So that's number two. And then thirdly is around something that's known as infostealer or malware. So infostealer or malware has become an epidemic and a true crisis over the last couple of years. It's been accelerated and accentuated by the bleed over between work from home and remote environments where often there's an intersection between personal devices and corporate devices. Your kid, for example, maybe downloading a mod to a video game that's laced with infostealing malware.

(17:02):

And why info stealing malware is so concerning is it is grabbing everything in your browser. So think about what you have saved in your browser in terms of credit card numbers, cryptocurrency, wallets, of course, your personal information, your passwords, it's grabbing your cookies, it's grabbing your download files. And why the cookies are so important is it allows bad actors to hijack sessions and can enable threat actors to defeat multifactor authentication. And so next to exploited vulnerability is what we've seen is that info stealing malware is the second most prominent threat vector for ransomware attacks or breaches more holistically, an 800% increase that we've seen in info stealing malware infections in 2025 alone, a staggering 1.8 billion credentials that have been compromised as a result of info stealing malware. And much like the RaaS, the ransomware as a service model, we're just seeing an explosion in the number of info steal families, which is further increasing the number of infections globally.

Ari Redbord (18:08):

Wow. That is just an extraordinary answer, and there's just so much there. One thing I thought was really interesting about the answer and that as you mentioned, fortune 500 companies several times in that you think about threat intelligence being something that governments law enforcement, national security agencies need to consume, but the reality is that more and more, threat intelligence is something the private sector needs. And you had great examples in terms of North Korean IT workers, malware that's infiltrating the system. And then obviously physical attacks is something in the crypto space. We're thinking about a lot too with this spate of wrench attacks over the last several months. But obviously you work with public and private sector, but really interesting that private sector is becoming more and more of a consumer of threat intelligence over the last several years.

Josh Lefkowitz (18:54):

Yeah, there's been a wholesale transformation of the enterprise over the last, I'd say five to seven years. Certainly that's been fueled largely by the threat landscape and the fact that these are massive issues that can dramatically impact brand reputation as well as bottom line and ability to support your customers. But on top of that, there's also been a wholesale talent transformation where folks who cut their teeth in the national security community, either in military service or as a civilian, have moved into the enterprise into intelligence roles, who bring a deep understanding of the intelligence cycle, who bring a deep understanding of the value that intelligence can bring as far as making more effective and more efficient decisions. And that has really upleveled the game and the private intelligence ecosystem across the Fortune 500 and beyond, and that's been energizing. You're also seeing OSINT emerging in the national security community as the first resort where the ODNI has put out their strategy and highlighted the remarkable impact that web-based and publicly available data can have. So I think all of those trends have really come together for a confluence of events where intelligence has never been more valued, it's never been more impactful, and in a world where there is just an avalanche of data, ultimately it's insights and it's speed to insights that everyone's craving.

Ari Redbord (20:21):

Absolutely. You talk about speed and you hit on AI a little bit. I think we are all seeing AI supercharge, lawful and illicit activity, right? It's certainly supercharging our workflows at TRM, I'm sure at Flashpoint is the same, but bad actors are always early adopters of new transformative technology. We put out a report recently that said we've seen about a 500% increase in the last year on AI enabled fraud and scams within the crypto ecosystem. I mean, this is absolutely moving at the speed of light. Talk me through a little bit about what you're seeing out there and maybe how flashpoints thinking about even using AI to combat this type of activity.

Josh Lefkowitz (20:59):

Yeah, I just came off an executive offsite last week and your commentary about the speed with which AI is transforming the landscape, but both for the good guys and the bad guys completely aligns with how we're seeing the world and on the bad guy approach first, it's across the spectrum. Certainly with social engineering attacks, phishing attacks, AI is a powerful force multiplier. Oftentimes, the clearest indicator of a phishing email is grammatical errors, spelling issues. AI enables them to clean and polish that approach with ease. Certainly, there've been some jaw dropping instances of deepfake impersonation on the audio side, on the video side, everyone of course is familiar with those horror stories where the CFO was impersonated and 25 plus million dollars was wired out. But if you double click in beyond those instances, and you look at more varied TTPs and how AI is informing them, Open AI has been doing a great job with providing transparency into how threat actors are leveraging their technology.

(22:08):

And their quarterly report that they put out is a phenomenal window into what they're seeing from behind the curtain, and it's across the spectrum. So if you look at nation state actors, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, they're doing a lot of experimentation with how AI can be a significant force multiplier for them on information operations, generating personas on social media generating mass scale content development. They're also using it for pressure testing, malware exploits or adversary reconnaissance or target development. It's being used across the board. I will caveat though, from our experience, from our observation, it's still early days and the good news and the bad news is that there's so much low hanging fruit for adversaries to exploit, whether it's vulnerability is whether it's infostealing malware, whether it's just old fashioned social engineering, as we've seen with Scattered Spider and the IT help desk rouse that they've pulled off with incredible success, that AI implementation by illicit actors is still relatively embryonic.

(23:12):

It's still what I would describe as in the early days and in the experimentation phase. But to echo what you said, it's moving with such velocity that when we fast forward and we think about what the landscape looks like 12, 18, 24 months from now, that's where my concern is acutely heightened because they're going to start to get some of this experimentation honed and it's going to become a more foundational component of their playbook. I'm particularly concerned when you look at the volume and scale of breach that's out there, not just what can be parsed out of infostealer logs, which I think is just being, you're just scratching the surface in terms of what you're seeing can be pulled out of that by bad actors. But then if you look at what's been dumped by ransomware actors, when you look at what's been leaked over the last couple years, everyone's PII is out there many times over. And then how do those large unstructured data sets begin to be exploited by threat actors as a result of how AI can enable you to power through large data sets with much greater ease than manual analysis can facilitate?

Ari Redbord (24:17):

That's really well said. We're seeing it remove human bottlenecks, right? I mean, the advantage we always had against bad actors is that they were still humans. And to your point around phishing attacks and other types of, it's much more targeted. I think it's a great point around data sets, right? That's what AI today is best at, and stolen usernames and passwords are some of the largest data sets out there, sadly today, and very accessible. And having that type of capability to understand those data sets is pretty extraordinary. We're obviously thinking about this stuff exactly the same way as on and offchain really. We announced a partnership several months ago. It wasn't, I don't think a surprise to anyone. We've been working closely together for a long time, but it really does enable this type of onchain and offchain marriage of information and threat intelligence data. Talk us through the partnership a little bit.

Josh Lefkowitz (25:07):

Yeah, extraordinarily excited about it. And to hear the proof points from customers who are unlocking that value is energizing. You hit the nail on the head in terms of that fusion of onchain and offchain data sets and intelligence. And ultimately that's the driver here, which is how can users in the TRM platform who are investigating a particular wallet, a particular cryptocurrency indicator, enrich that with additional context from Flashpoint's collection, whether it be a dark web forum post, whether that could be a message on Telegram, whether that could be additional insights about a particular actor that's likely implicated in the investigation. It's all about streamlining. It's all about time to insights. It's all about enrichment. It's all about context, and that's exactly what the partnership empowers users to do. And I'd say generally, the insights that customers are able to unlock is at a fraction of the time if they were operating in our two platforms independently. So that bridge that it creates into that singular pane of glass, which is ultimately what users and investigators and analysts want is about efficiency and it's about impact and time to insight.

Ari Redbord (26:15):

That's perfect. But the reality is that the on and offchain data is what the full picture looks like, and that's what's absolutely important. None of this crypto has never been about ripping and replacing what's happening offchain, but crypto is becoming more and more important in people's life in the way they transact and the way their identity exists on the internet. And being able to take these two and really create a full picture is absolutely more critical than ever. There's this even other crazy element happening in the world right now where so many of our adversaries, and when I say are United States, NATO, Five Eyes are coming together in ways that I'm not sure I ever would have imagined just a few years ago, right? North Korean soldiers fighting on a battlefield in Ukraine, Iran and Russia have talking about a stable coin for cross border payment. These are things that I'm not sure I ever would've seen on the horizon. I think it speaks to your point about we're seeing a threat landscape that's changing in real time.

Josh Lefkowitz (27:09):

Absolutely.

Ari Redbord (27:10):

So let's talk a minute about how we're thinking about combating those, and obviously this partnership is a huge piece of it, giving that holistic intelligence view. TRM announced the Beacon Network very recently. Basically all the leading cryptocurrency businesses, key Fintechs like PayPal and Robinhood and Stripe, but married with investigators, which is something that has never really been done before. The Zac expertise of the world, who everyone on Twitter knows and other types of folks. The idea is like, Hey, we need to leverage anyone who does this work, alerting, tracing, tracking out there. Talk to me a little bit about your perspective on public-private partnerships.

Josh Lefkowitz (27:46):

Yeah, I was so delighted when I saw your announcement around the Beacon Network. Look, the reality is in the brutal reality is the threat landscape is too complex, too dynamic, too multi-variable for any one organization, public sector, private sector, to tackle it on their own. The only way that we win is a one team, one fight mindset. And since the earliest days of Flashpoint, we've been big adherence, big champions of community and collaboration. We've been longstanding supporters and members of the various ISACs. We have stood up our own collaboration community FB Collab, where we bring together our 800 customers for intelligence sharing globally across sector. That's been tremendously powerful. We've seen the benefits of intra-sector and cross-sector collaboration in the scenario of DPRK IT workers where there are hundreds of indicators, selectors, for example, being shared on a weekly basis where GitHub profiles, LinkedIn pages, email addresses are being shared by impacted organizations so that the learnings from one organization are broadly shared across the wider community, that then is amplified by the public-private sector collaboration.

Ari Redbord (29:03):

I think it's really, really well said. I think one thing I've seen for years is when we're talking about technology, when we're talking about threat intelligence, it's sometimes easier to break down those silos because there's really only a cadre of law enforcement and national security specialists who really have that deep expertise in these areas that they're almost forced to come together. We've seen that in crypto. I'm sure you've seen that in the threat intelligence landscape, but I always try to explain that to people like, Hey, the turf wars that maybe happen in the traditional world don't always happen as much in this world, although you and I have a fundamental problem, it's probably a mental health problem at this point. And that is, it's like we see dead people, right? It's like everything is about where the threats are. You must do something to chill a little bit, to maybe not see the threats everywhere. What is that thing that Josh does to relax a little bit?

Josh Lefkowitz (29:50):

Love the question. So my outlet is tennis.

Ari Redbord (29:52):

Oh, fantastic. I would love to hear a little bit more about your tennis background. Where'd you play in college?

Josh Lefkowitz (29:57):

So put a small liberal arts college up in Massachusetts called Williams College. 2000 kids, more cows than students, one stoplight, no Greek life. There was not a whole lot to do other than study and play tennis, but it was a phenomenal four year experience. Still some of my closest friends or college teammates and the coach, there was a second father to me who is still incredibly special in my life.

Ari Redbord (30:23):

What an extraordinary thing. And tell me about the experience there, about playing tennis, about competing.

Josh Lefkowitz (30:28):

Yeah, we had a great run. It was certainly a different athletic playing field than the A CC and your Duke Blue Devils, but I

Ari Redbord (30:36):

Didn't play. I just watched

Josh Lefkowitz (30:39):

In our small pond. We had an amazing run. We were fortunate enough to win three NCAA titles during the four years I was there, to the point of adversity, to the point of resiliency. Two of those three years that we won the NCAA title, we actually were down matched point, but managed to claw and scrap our way out and hold up the trophy when the dust settled and then had a really fairytale end to my college career. Not only did I have the opportunity to be the last match on and then NCAA team final and won that match to clinch the title for our team in 2002, but then three days later wrapped up my career winning the NCAA singles title, then rode off into the sunset to put my rackets down and get to the real world.

Ari Redbord (31:27):

It's really an awesome story. And tennis is so great because you talk about that individual title, which is something you'll have forever, just absolutely extraordinary. But also the fact that you won as a team, and obviously so much of what you've done at Flashpoint from the very beginning is build a great team that plays together, but also has to compete from time to time as an individual out there to leave it all on the court, if you will. Just really extraordinary what a career and what an unbelievable foundation for doing what you've done the rest of your life.

Josh Lefkowitz (31:54):

And that was what was so special about college tennis is for the first 12 years of your life, you play tennis as an individual sport. And while it still remained an individual sport, to have it come together in a team atmosphere was so meaningful, so special, and taught me a ton about leadership and team dynamics, and certainly was being captain of that team my senior year was a really powerful lab and learning opportunity that helped inform how I eventually would show up as a leader at Flashpoint.

Ari Redbord (32:23):

Yeah, really, really, really well said, Josh. I just can't thank you enough for doing this. Thank you so much for having me. Really awesome conversation, and yeah, really looking forward to continued partnership. 

Josh Lefkowitz (32:35):

Likewise, appreciate the time.

Ari Redbord (32:40):

This was a really special conversation, I think, for a number of reasons. There are probably two parts of this conversation that resonated the most. Obviously, it's so extraordinary to see what Josh has built at Flashpoint, but really the origin story there that he was moved by the events of 9/11 to give up a career in finance, literally drop everything and align himself with the national security mission. And there are so many people that did that. I spent two years at the US Treasury Department at the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which was stood up in the wake of 9/11 and TFI is staffed with people that did just what Josh did, but to imagine him in that moment saying, Hey, what can I do for my country? What can I do to stop bad actors? Was really, really moving. And the other piece is just so different, but it's the tennis.

(33:29):

We learned that Josh is an elite athlete who played tennis really at the highest levels in college and won a national championship, won a national championship with his team, and just, I love this whole notion of being a great individual athlete, winning an individual championship, but also doing it as part of a team and all the lessons he learned around that. I talk about sports as a metaphor for life all the time, but it's really the leadership lessons that we learn playing for the front of the jersey and lifting up your teammates and understanding what it means to play as part of a team and to move fast as part of the team. And I love that Josh took those lessons from being an elite tennis player to what he's building at Flashpoint today. On the next TRM Talks, I sit down with Circle APAC lead Yam Ki Chan. If you love the show, leave a review wherever you're listening to it and follow us on LinkedIn to get the latest news on crypto regulation, compliance, and investigations.

TRM Labs (34:31):

TRM Talks is brought to you by TRM Labs, the leading provider of blockchain intelligence and anti-money laundering software. This episode was produced in partnership with Voltage Productions. The music for this show was provided by iKOLIKS.

Ari Redbord (34:47):

Now let's get back to building.