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Igor Data - Trust, Trace, Takedown: Building Integrity in a Decentralized World
With Igor Data, CEO and co-founder of Blin Analytics, we dig into the real mechanics of crypto crime and why the difference between loss and recovery often comes down to minutes, not months. Igor pulls back the curtain on demixing methods, behavior pattern analysis, and how AI and automation sift millions of transactions before a human makes the call. The theft may be digital, but the tells are human: tempo, timing, liquidity choices, and the inevitable mistake that cracks a years-long laundering chain.
We unpack how mixers actually work, why law enforcement pressure has reshaped their use, and what it takes to trace funds from wallet to exchange in a way that stands up to scrutiny. Ethics are non-negotiable here: no release of sensitive leads without a confirmed case and a verified victim, and evidence goes to police to request KYC and freezes. That principle reflects a deeper theme—trust the math, not the marketing. Blockchain’s transparency is architectural, while personal privacy must be preserved until due process kicks in.
The conversation turns practical and strategic. You’ll hear why phishing still dominates loss events, how to design a 24/7 incident playbook that actually gets funds frozen, and what role game theory plays in predicting laundering routes. We explore the case for ultra-low-cost microtransactions to reduce the web’s dependence on surveillance ads, and we look ahead to the near future: AI-powered anomaly detection, black-market evasion tools, and why decentralized trust still pairs best with centralized enforcement. If you hold digital assets, lead a security team, or want a clear-eyed view of blockchain investigations, this is your blueprint for acting fast, staying ethical, and seeing patterns where others see noise.
If this conversation helped you think differently about crypto security and digital trust, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or question—we read every one.
Check out "Protection for the Inventive Mind" – available now on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.
Yeah, so the reddest red flag of all red flags is the user. Oh. The the weakest um link in the technology currently is the user and technical literacy level of the user, unfortunately. Most of the cases we face are phishing, something like this without any uh sophisticated uh hacking. Okay. We have like few big hacking cases which are very loud per year, but uh in reality, most of the cases we face is just someone was working in the company and stole the key. Oh and now this person has access to the wallet, so they stole the money and ran away.
Leticia Caminero:Today um we are joined by someone who doesn't just the co-system, he builds chills for the digital world. Igor Data. Igor, data or data?
Igor Data:Oh, whatever you want, honestly.
Leticia Caminero:Hi, hi everyone. Okay. Igor Data is the CEO, a co-founder of BLIN Analytics, a Geneva-based firm using cutting-edge technology to track stolen cryptocurrency and fight money laundering. He's also a veteran builder of tech platforms from gamer networks to medical system, with a unique flair for blending technical architecture and investigating thinking. In this episode, we ask: can algorithms catch criminals faster than they innovate? Is transparency enough when tech itself can deceive? And how do we build ethical code in a world where crime is decentralized? Welcome.
Igor Data:Hello everyone. Uh, my name is Igor Data. I am uh CEO of BLIN Analytics. We focus on tracing, stolen crypto assets, so we fight uh money laundering on the blockchain.
Leticia Caminero:Ah, that's great. And how did you end up in Geneva?
Igor Data:So, in fact, it was completely random. I found a new opportunity after moving from US. I moved to Switzerland, and I'm quite happy here. This is an amazing country, I love it.
Leticia Caminero:So we're both uh transplants.
Igor Data:Yeah, yeah.
Leticia Caminero:And you have navigated diverse industries: gaming, medicine, petroleum, and now crime fighting. What unifying passion fuels your tech leadership in all of these different industries?
Igor Data:Yeah, this is simple. I can tell you I like to make people happy. And when I see my uh friends or colleagues or some other people struggle with in some area with their problems, I like to think about these problems, gather as much information as I can. So then I start to kind of uh rotate this problem, this information space in my mind. And at some point in time I can see like that's it, I can connect the dots and find a solution for this. Then I start working with these people to better understand how they see the world and how to build the product in a way they would like to have it, and then I bring it to them and they're happy.
Leticia Caminero:So that's a beautiful statement. So it's it's to to bring joy into people's lives. Yeah, that's very nice. In BLIN Analytics, um, is on the front lines of anti-money laundering, a very um cross-edg, very heavy kind of um work that you do and crypto crypto investigations. What's the hardest part of following the money in a decentralized environment?
Igor Data:So a few years ago, I would say it was mixers, and mixers are the services designed especially to obfuscate the uh path and make it impossible to trace stolen assets, not exactly stolen, it's nothing bad uh in the mixer per se. But the in my area, criminals was always using mixers to obfuscate the path of the assets so we cannot trace them. So we were we were able to solve, let's say, unsolvable task and uh find a way how to demix and start tracing. That was the beginning of uh Bleen Analytics. By the way, BLIN stands for blockchain investigations, so this kind of stuff, so it's so easy. And uh this is why I thought it was this the most difficult part. But uh lately, when uh these mixers was massively suppressed by law enforcement agencies, I can tell that the speed, how quick police can react, is the new let's say, weak spot because the perpetrators, the criminals, they never stop, they keep running away with money and you have to run as quick as they do to catch them, right?
Leticia Caminero:Of course, yeah. So you will say that uh is the reaction time that takes uh this is crucial.
Igor Data:Reaction time is crucial. I would even say if you have some digital assets and one day you realize that they were stolen, you should run to police and open criminal case the same day. Oh, okay. Even the same hour if you can do that.
Leticia Caminero:The moment you realize that something is off.
Igor Data:It it might be um it might have really serious impact on the success of um uh freezing the assets.
Leticia Caminero:Because the faster you you follow them right after the act, the easier it is to catch them.
Igor Data:In fact, first few steps are the most important. And if criminals manage to reach uh some exchanges that might drastically reduce the probability of success of the investigation. I mean of freezing the assets. The investigation itself can take months, sometimes years in some specific cases.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, because they need to take it to court, it's to be robust, it takes a lot of steps. Yeah.
Igor Data:But if you want your assets being recovered, you have to act very quickly.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, okay. So report the moment you see something, say something.
Igor Data:Yeah, like yell something.
Leticia Caminero:Um if all transactions on blockchain are visible, then why criminals expect to get away with the stolen assets and how?
Igor Data:Yeah, so as I said, there are these kind of mixer services, and they work in a way um that you can you can follow the money, right? But you don't know who owns the money. It's like several people will approach the table and will put all their money on the table, mix it, and then you take the same amount that you put, but you didn't take your money, you take someone else's money, and they're mixed, they're split into small pieces and then mixed, and then you receive them back. So from outside, you can follow the money, but it's not the criminal who um who stole the assets. So you have to uh understand who is on the other side owning what part of this money, and rebuilding this takes a lot of time, statistical analysis, math, clustering, AI, that's like a lot of effort.
Leticia Caminero:But and and in this mixer, it could be people who are innocent who just uh happen to be there.
Igor Data:There are a lot of people who like to keep their privacy high, so they use mixers. But unfortunately, a few years ago, about 80% of incoming money into the mixer was some illicit asset. Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, okay. So it's it's more likely to be illicit than to be illegal.
Igor Data:Yeah, that's why they were um highly uh suppressed by sanctions. You cannot disable the service that runs on blockchain because it's decentralized, but you may scare all good people to have a risk that their real good assets would be frozen, so they stop.
Leticia Caminero:They won't be able to use them, yeah.
Igor Data:Yeah, so they used it to some degree for some like specific cases, but you don't put a lot of money there anymore.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, because you you have the risk of us being frozen just because it looks suspicious. Yeah. Okay, it makes sense, makes sense. And if you're generally doing something, the last thing that you want is to lose your money. Yeah, but when you're a criminal, you have more. By the style of the hacker, do you have an idea where they come from?
Igor Data:Yeah, by the style of the hacker, we have an idea where they come from and even where they are located on uh on the planet, most probably. And is it one person, like few people, or it's a big uh group, or we can see that. Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Well, that's interesting. So it's like an artist.
Igor Data:Yeah, so they all have distinct patterns, and what we do when we start investigation, we build behavioral pattern and then we use automation tool to filter millions of transactions to use find the same behavioral pattern, and then we analyze it manually. So we do not rely fully on the atom on automation, but uh we use a lot of automation in our work.
Leticia Caminero:So it sounds very close to the criminal profiling way that what they do when they try to assess uh the kind of person that they're dealing with or trying to find the criminal. Yeah. Well, it's very interesting. It's very interesting. Yeah, it's very interesting. There's a lot of uh a lot of things that you wouldn't think is because for me it sounded it sounded at the beginning, it sounded like it's just one and zeros and this very boring kind of transaction, but no, it takes uh you have to know apart from technology, psychology, you have to know a lot of different things.
Igor Data:When to dive into that, you start seeing people.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, exactly, because people are uh hiding behind all these technologies. Yeah. Okay, that's that's very interesting. I love that. I love that it's it's it's also more than it's more an art than a science.
Speaker 9:It is an art, yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Um you're dealing with real crime, real money, real victims, and often invisible code. How do you balance efficiency and ethics when building your tools?
Igor Data:Yeah, so the basis is that ethics is a very important thing for us, so we never release any data until there is a criminal case with confirmed the victim. So the victim should go to police and confirm that there is their assets are stolen. They open the criminal case. We can start the investigation before until this like this takes time sometimes. But uh for this information to be released, we need to have a confirmed open criminal case.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, you you need you need to have the backup of the official authorities to be able to work to make sense.
Igor Data:And moreover, we have no right to get information about the criminals. So we trace them to the endpoints, like for example, this is the exchange. So we give this information to police and say your money are there.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Igor Data:We ask them to freeze the asset temporarily. Now you need to dive in our report and go to confirm them if you believe so. And then police requests the information about uh like KYC information, IP addresses, all that. Um we cannot do that.
Leticia Caminero:Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We never do that. Yeah, because you have the you're you're not police enforcement, so you have to you have to be able to work together.
Speaker 3:And you cannot go knocking on the door, like, hey, I know you have yeah, I know you have something that's not yours.
Igor Data:Yeah, so we see a lot of movement on the blockchain, we understand what is happening, moreover. We follow other cases on open data. We like to follow everything we can because it helps us to understand where are our clients' money and where definitely not our clients' money. Let's say North Koreans I say they have this distinct pattern, and it's very easy to remove them from uh the scene so we don't spend time tracing them. Yeah, but yeah.
Leticia Caminero:So it you you go by um we call that like by um descart. So you you take something and you go, this is it doesn't fit this pattern, so you take that person out, or you take that group out, and then you say, Okay, it doesn't, and then you go very much, it's like it's also like a scientific kind of uh uh work because you you know exactly what you're looking for, correct? So you don't waste your time. Makes sense, yeah.
Igor Data:Not only that, but uh also we dive into these blockchain transactions manually, we look at them, think, uh discuss, and it takes time.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, but it's so you enter a bit of the criminal mind as well. You you you try start thinking how they will think or how how they react.
Igor Data:Yeah, math and game theory helps here like a lot. If you store some assets, you can spend some portion of these assets to launder this money, but you cannot spend a lot, right? You cannot spend more than you store.
Speaker 8:Of course.
Igor Data:Yeah, and you cannot spend like the same amount, most probably, because it you have no profit. So that creates kind of balance between how much they are willing, the perpetrators are willing to spend on the money laundering, and that limits their possibilities.
Leticia Caminero:Oh, and do they have any preference of what they they like to spend on?
Igor Data:Yeah, you know, it's seasonal. Like this year it's that, next year it's something different, and it's kind of funny to look how they change their strategies, most of them. As you said in the beginning, the criminal innovation is very scary, but in fact, most of the criminals they are quite boring and they follow the usual patterns. Most probably they discuss it with other criminals, or they don't know what we know, for example, that uh we are already seeing these patterns. So, in fact, they don't really like to innovate. They more like they hope that everything will be fine for them.
Leticia Caminero:They go for the short things. So do they buy virtual items or do they buy physical items with the money?
Igor Data:If they buy physical items too early, they're they're caught very fast.
Leticia Caminero:Because then the m it's very easy to trace the money.
Igor Data:Okay. There was a case like several billions, four billion, and uh after several years of laundering, the guy was caught after a payment for, I don't remember, PlayStation game or something.
Speaker 3:Okay, so uh by by something very um not even that expensive.
Igor Data:Yeah, it was a mistake. It's definitely it was a mistake. We uh we shared the data with uh FBI and we had this call and uh showed them the structure we see. It was a huge structure, and uh after uh some investigation on the FBI side, they saw that there was a payment, and this payment has a lot of personal information, and it was the end uh of the investigation in this in this case, and the guy uh the guy went in jail and it was a huge case. Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Oh wow, by a so so minimal mistake, but there you go, there's no perfect crime, right?
Igor Data:So there's don't do mistakes. All of them think they will never do mistakes, but this was like several years. You cannot you cannot launder the same assets on the blockchain where everyone sees what you do for several years and never do a single mistake. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Leticia Caminero:We're humans, even criminals.
Igor Data:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Especially them. Okay, interesting. But I always have this um this idea, you know, that the money heist kind of films, all of this, uh, they're very good criminals are smart and handsome. They're smart and sophisticated. So everyone, everyone is rooting for the criminal, but the reality is very different. But I always wonder what why they don't have an escape uh in the real life, why they don't have a sole escape route. Because I think it's that if I'm I'm not a criminal, I don't have that mind. I'm actually on the opposite side, I'm a lawyer, right? Uh, but I always wonder if if I ever do something extremely crazy, I will try to have a way out. Because sometimes they do it, and then they're in the middle with holding the holding the pot of gold and they don't know what to do with it.
Igor Data:In fact, I can't say that the cases that we follow there we crack them. Uh, but a lot of cases are just closed and not even investigated because police don't have enough uh resources and time. So a lot of criminals just got lucky.
Leticia Caminero:Oh, because it's it's not uh it's not as big to for to be to be followed.
Igor Data:Because they maybe they stole too little.
Leticia Caminero:Okay.
Igor Data:So no no one wants to invest time to to trace them, unfortunately.
Leticia Caminero:This is no recommendation for anyone to do anything criminal.
Igor Data:It's it's again the game theory comes into play because if you stall just a little bit, but in the same time, you have the same risk as the guy who stole several billions. But like, would would you would you like to do that? Uh it's kind of stupid.
Leticia Caminero:And and and it's always in your head. Once you once you do something like that, you always I I well, I will I will feel forever someone is looking at me. I wouldn't I wouldn't have peace. I will ever feel like someone uh is after me.
Igor Data:So it's true. And and they are law enforcement, usually is slow but uh imminent.
Speaker 3:It will catch you.
Igor Data:They yeah, they they're they follow all that.
Leticia Caminero:Um what role do you think blockchain can really play in increasing digital trust beyond the hype?
Igor Data:So digital trust is an interesting thing when you talk about blockchain, it's a little bit counterintuitive. Um as blockchain doesn't rely on trust and it does rely on math.
Leticia Caminero:Okay.
Igor Data:It kind of increases trust into other uh agents on the blockchain because if you know that if uh it was accepted by blockchain, it means that it's there, it's true. If you receive the transfer of money, uh it's it's yours now. No one can like do nothing except stealing your keys or some other things, but if it's on the blockchain, it's yours, and you don't need to trust anyone, and it removes the trust from the um from the equation, from the equation, and it by that in fact it sensitivizes more to trust to other agents because you don't need to build this trust beforehand. Yeah, you can start working, you can do payments. You if you see the smart contracts that is activated automatically in some cases, then it means it's activated automatically and the event happened. So you don't need to have trust. And in this case, it kind of removes uh headache about uh should I trust and until what point. And if I trust this this person, yes, like if I trusted yesterday, should I trust it tomorrow? Okay, um, and um that removes all that, and I truly believe blockchain is an amazing thing that incentivizes trust by removing trust from equation.
Leticia Caminero:So the system is is is through in in itself, yeah. So you don't need to have uh the the the mental load of thinking, oh, should I trust it or not? Because if you understand how it works, then by itself you say, okay, I know the system is built in a way that it cannot be fooled.
Igor Data:You trust the system. Okay, you trust the system. You trust the math.
Leticia Caminero:What's one technological red flag you think people ignore too often?
Igor Data:Yeah, so the reddest red flag of all red flags is uh the user. Oh. The the weakest um link in the technology currently is the user and technical literacy level of the user, unfortunately. Most of the cases we face are phishing, something like this, without any uh sophisticated uh hacking. Okay, we have like few big hacking cases which are very loud per year, but uh in reality, most of the cases we face is just someone was working in the company and stole the key. Oh and now this person has access to the wallet, so they stole the money and ran away. Or it was uh a phishing website or something else, something like an email scene. An email, and most of the people they they can tell when they see the phishing emails, but they don't think that you're stupid, they just look for the moments when you're sick, drunk, tired, whatever distracted, yeah, distracted. So they just it's a numbers game, they send thousands and thousands of emails hoping that some of one person will just click the wrong button on the wrong day.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, my my parents are are a bit elderly now, and my father, he always gets he thankfully now he asks uh us uh what we think when he received these kind of emails, but he always I think he's in a in a list of potential easy to get kind of uh um uh victims because he often gets this all these emails from from his bank, from uh from people asking for uh for business venture for all those things.
Leticia Caminero:And my father, he always trusts, he always thinks it's it's it's something that is trustworthy, but now at least he asks. But he has had some uh some incident, nothing major, but uh still um he's he's often targeted in that way. And I've seen that a lot that they often also target people who are vulnerable, but maybe not in the in the in the sophisticated world of the blockchain, which is uh a different kind of um uh of user, but um overall is has you as you were saying that they play with the vulnerabilities. So they play with uh people who are not in the right mind in the right moment, or people who are um just doing something else, and they they see something quick and they don't really uh reflect on it. So they they really play with the um with whatever the person might be maybe coming through or or happening in that moment.
Igor Data:So true. And in case of a bank, you can call them and say, hey, uh stop this payment or whatever, start the investigation right now, call the other bank and freeze whatever you can. In blockchain, it's poof and it's it's gone.
Leticia Caminero:It's gone. It's gone. Yeah, that's scary. Yeah, so be careful what's uh so it's it's mostly like uh um the behavior that they they're looking for weaknesses, yeah.
Igor Data:And they do it in a in a large scale to have uh a few, just random, yeah, just random, hoping that someone will click something by mistake. And uh, if that happens, I highly recommend to act as quickly as possible and put emotions aside for a few hours, run to police, start the criminal case, call us, and uh we can if it's first hours, we can try to freeze as much as we can.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, you can cry at the police station. Yeah, if you need to.
Igor Data:I would even say that if uh if we're talking not about uh people but about the companies that deal with digital assets on the blockchain, I would highly recommend to have the protocol of actions, what you do in case it happens. I understand that we don't want to think about it, but in case that happens, there should be already a lot of questions answered. Who is going to present the company and go to police, start open the case in what country, what legal entity, because some companies have several legal entities. So you should decide in what country, in what exactly police department you will go, who you will talk to, when, and you have to have these people on the on the call on the phone 24-7 for this case. So it's kind of like if fire happens in the office, you need to have a designated person who's gonna lead the group who will do any anything because all everyone else will run in circles and like cry and yell.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, yeah. So it that's that's uh uh a great advice. So before anything happens, there should be a uh everyone should know their roles. Yeah, so uh the one who has to go to the police, the one who has to gather the evidence, the one who who needs to also inform the rest, so it stops all that. So it's interesting to do it beforehand. So the person is kind of prepared and know how they they they go into action mode instead of panic mode.
Igor Data:Yeah, definitely. That really helps. So you need to have some procedures to prevent these kinds of situations, but you also should have some procedures to act quickly when it happens. Just reach out, I can help definitely to set up this kind of stuff.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, makes sense, makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3:Don't panic.
Igor Data:You panic after.
Speaker 3:Panic after, yeah. The aftershock.
Igor Data:Do this, do that, and then you can panic when someone else and professionals are on the case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you hand over and then you can you can go to your corner and panic.
Igor Data:You can panic for a couple of months after.
Leticia Caminero:Um, if we have um if we gave you the power to redesign one digital infrastructure from scratch, finance, ID, or regulatory compliance, which will you choose and why?
Igor Data:Oh, honestly, this one not about blockchain. Can I say, but maybe about blockchain? I don't know. It's not uh it's not I am really annoyed with this the price of the transactions of um like bank card transactions, Visa and MasterCard. Um when you go to the convenience store and they say like at least five bucks, and or we don't we cannot do the transaction, it's because the price of the transaction is about 15-10 cents per each transaction. And uh that is in fact the reason why we have so much advertising on the internet because we don't have small transactions, we don't have microtransactions, so they kind of have to survive. And uh, I honestly, if we could rebuild this part, that would really help everyone. Convenience stores that would reduce the amount of advertising on the internet, and um that would really help us to see the world differently. You like the post, you can like send a couple of cents, and uh it really helps to incentivize creators, I believe so.
Leticia Caminero:So to remove the uh the barrier of entry for this transaction, yeah. Because you have to have a minimum in order to be able to pay for a transaction currently. So the idea would be to make it open.
Igor Data:Yeah, yeah. It would be great. I hope we're gonna get there in uh in a couple of decades because this Visa and MasterCard uh transaction networks, let's say they were born when uh compute resources were very expensive. Let's say it was a good thing.
Leticia Caminero:It was a different world.
Igor Data:Currently, it's um I would say it became several times maybe orders magnitude cheaper. So I hope I hope it the time is coming for us to move from 10 cents to one cent transactions.
Leticia Caminero:And then no cents.
Igor Data:At some point in time, we might end up something like this, yeah. Okay. Might end up.
Leticia Caminero:So to make sure that the it is there's there's no block in the process. Yeah. So if you wanna uh how how much money do you want to send, you will be. Able to send it without the the minimum.
Igor Data:Yeah, it's like public transport. It might be not profitable, but it incentivize the economy in the country.
Leticia Caminero:So yeah, it's a public service.
Igor Data:Yeah, it might we might end up having these kind of transaction networks being extremely cheap and not very efficient, but at least extremely cheap and on a government level, maybe. I'm not sure. But I truly believe we might end up with some kind of blockchain structure.
Speaker 9:Okay.
Igor Data:At the end. Because it's it becomes more and more efficient. On the other hand, some blockchains they grow very fast. But yeah, this honestly, from a government point of view, blockchain is so transparent if they control it. So I believe government will force us to use blockchain in like 30 years or so.
Speaker 8:Okay.
Igor Data:Because they will be able to control everything, see everything. But on the other hand, you don't know who's owning the money because you cannot connect the address on the blockchain with the person. But on the government side, they might force you to provide the thing, and they will see everything, but uh the citizens will not be able to see what they do each other of them. Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay. Okay. Because they will have uh the privilege information as the government.
Igor Data:It's kind of scary, but we can see about that. Well, they already know everything about us, so not not like not like everything, but yeah, a lot.
Leticia Caminero:I um um I have a very clear idea of what I think the future is gonna be about um in 20, 30 years. And I do believe that this um privacy itself is not gonna be a concept that we're gonna um that we're gonna enjoy the same way that we enjoy now. Because the more technology gets into everyday life, the more connected we are, the more uh uh footprints we leave behind. So there's gonna be a point that it's it's gonna be virtually everything that we do during the day that is gonna be recorded somehow.
Igor Data:Yeah, true. But it depends also on the system because the meanings to control all these amounts of information, if government has this kind of technological uh things to do that, it means that we as um as people, we can also have a lot of technological means to control the government. So I hope it will kind of grow to another system. But uh yeah, in fact, on the period when government has access to the technology that we don't, it kind of gives advantage on the um surveillance. But uh after some point in time, we become more and more tech uh literate, so we start to control government more and more. I mean, you can see that some government officials they are not aware of how technology works like at all. And um it it creates like it gives more balance, yeah, it creates a gap, yeah. Unfortunately, but yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, okay. So let's see, in in 50 years, we'd see we see it again and we see who's right.
unknown:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, so now we're gonna go to the flash section.
Speaker 9:Let's do that.
Leticia Caminero:Um, you have to pick one. Um, you can also pick two or pick none. Uh you're free to choose. Um, and if you want to justify your choice, you can also justify it, but you don't have to. Okay, are you ready? Okay, let's go. Okay. Tracking the wallet or cracking the code.
Igor Data:So tracking tracking the wallet, I pick this one. It's uh it's more interesting for me. Cracking the code is kind of interesting, but uh usually um it's not how my brain works, unfortunately.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, you like to follow the money? Yeah. Anti-money laundering rules that evolve slowly, or tools that adapt fast.
Igor Data:I pick both. Okay. Um tools should adapt fast because the world changes very fast. But if we have rules that changes very fast, it it's not good. So I prefer money laundering rules to evolve slowly, little by little, and reflect what is happening uh for some amount of time, not just like yesterday. And uh the tools should be day one ready on the in the perfect world that should be like that, yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay. Full transparency by design or privacy first until suspicion arises.
Igor Data:I honestly believe privacy of the data is important, extremely important, but transparency of the architecture and of the code is also the same level important. So transparency of architecture and privacy uh of the data.
Leticia Caminero:So the the both again. Preventive algorithms or reactive intelligence?
Igor Data:Currently, we like years and years we were um trying to create best preventive preventative algorithms, and reactive intelligence was not fully automated, but currently with the help of AI, we start to be more reactive, more fast. It's kind of evolution, and we become faster creatures on the net.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, and also you cannot really pursue a crime that hasn't happened yet.
Igor Data:Yeah. So to some degree, yeah. Uh huh. Sometimes there are like a few seconds or minutes when you can see that already something is happening.
Speaker 3:Something is building. So you you you start looking like okay, just you see the behavior and you know something is coming. It's like the wave when it when the when the sea comes, comes back, and you you know something is coming.
Igor Data:Like a pimple more like that.
Speaker 3:Okay. Oh god.
Leticia Caminero:Centralized enforcement or decentralized trust.
Igor Data:So, yeah, as I said, decentralized trust. Um, decentralized trust is like when you trust math and it helps, but enforcement should be centralized. Um, I truly believe we have to delegate the enforcement to some controlled to some degree uh agencies, but uh decentralized enforcement is kind of weird, but still possible at some point in time. But I don't believe that we have technological means so far. The the decentralized enforcement, I don't see how it may work currently in modern life.
Leticia Caminero:Okay.
Igor Data:Protecting data sovereignty or pursuing digital accountability, protecting data and making big companies accountable for their data leaks, let's say, definitely. We have to we have to protect our privacy. We have to own our data. Currently, our data is uh owned by everyone else, theodal companies, let's say, like Facebook is kind of a country and they own your that data and they sell it, and uh you live inside, and like other companies, they're similar in their behavior. So I believe we need to end the era of uh these kind of feudal structures that own human data, and humans that don't own their own data. It's kind of weird, it's incorrect.
Leticia Caminero:So it's uh I I I like the the mental picture of there's a tiny you in all these companies just waving and saying, Hey, take me back.
Igor Data:Yeah, I have no power, no rights, and they can ban you anytime, and they still sell your data, and then they hold all the control for now.
Leticia Caminero:Disgusting. Real time reporting or long-term forensics?
Igor Data:Real-time reporting is crucial currently for like cases as usual criminal cases, let's say, but long time forensics works really well when you fight um organized crime on international level.
Leticia Caminero:Okay. Public private collaboration or independent investigative power.
Igor Data:Independent investigative power is kind of a big thing. But I really hope that some aspects of the investigation should always stay uh in control of uh public agencies, law enforcement agencies. Yeah. So yeah, but unfortunately I have to admit that if uh people come to us to hire us to do the investigation, it means that the public law enforcement agencies or the police, they have no possibility to perform their duty and this is the problem currently. And in fact, I am starting a new project to create some tools to give them to police that to allow them to act quicker.
Leticia Caminero:Oh wow, that's great. Can you tell us more?
Igor Data:Yeah, it's um we we build a lot of tools internally for our investigations, but they have almost no interface and they have like very sophisticated parameters, and it's uh not uh convenient to use them. So we we want to make them more usable by normal people, not just like data scientists or like that, and try to allow police to use them during their investigations to automate some cases. Let's say if it will not work in 50% of cases, it's it's okay if it will work automatically in other 50%, and it will just unload this all this uh routine from police. And if it if I say automatic, it means very fast. Yeah, yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Oh, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. I love that. Yeah, me too.
Igor Data:Thank you.
Leticia Caminero:It's exciting also. And uh final flash uh question: AI for flagging anomalies or human-led intuition.
Igor Data:I would say uh both, because no, this is for the next uh uh section. Oh, it's we okay, okay.
Leticia Caminero:AI AI for flagging anomalies or human-led intuition.
Igor Data:Both anyway.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, same answer.
Igor Data:To to train AI, you need to you need data labeled uh usually or somehow processed by humans by their intuition or experience. But AI itself is a tool that allows allows you to see more, and that makes you to get more experience, to see, to have better understanding, and to train better AI. So it goes like in levels, one after another, and humans and AI they work together to improve all the results of each other. So it's kind of symbiosis.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, we still need humans, some of them. Some okay, okay. So now we're going to the game. True or futurist. So ready. You have to choose either one. Yeah. Um, true meaning that is um it is happening right now, or it is about to happen, uh uh, or is very likely to happen. And uh futurist meaning that it's way in the future, sci-fi is never gonna happen, maybe in 50 years, 100 years, something like that. Okay. Ready?
Igor Data:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Governments will use AI to flag suspicious crypto transactions before they are finalized.
Igor Data:Yeah, true. It's already there. So it's already there, and uh, sometimes you can see that something is happening even like a few seconds or minutes ago. In some cases, you can detect it a few days before. I mean, yeah, before I would say before, seconds before, minutes before, or sometimes hours or days in rare cases. But all of that is already there. Luckily, in Europe we have regulations that AI cannot be the only decision maker. You cannot you cannot show the AI report in the court and say this is this AI decided, so we put this guy in jail. So we don't we don't do that here. So it it it's it it's flagging, yes, it flags suspicious transactions and it attracts human attention to verify.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, perfect. So it's there, it's there. Know your customer will evolve into know your algorithm.
Igor Data:I would say they will coexist. Okay, in between uh the the question, the answer is very simple. You cannot put uh AI in jail so far. Yeah, so you need someone like your KYC stays, you need you need someone who will be held responsible in some cases. So you definitely need to understand the algorithms and AI that stand behind uh the decision making, but uh KYC doesn't go anywhere.
Leticia Caminero:Okay. A hacker will eventually be prosecuted by an AI generated forensic report.
Igor Data:It's true. The hacker is currently already prosecuted by AI generated forensic report, but you have to verify everything and collect all the proofs and witness to this particular case as a human. You must do this manually anyway, and you have to explain it to the judge anyway. And uh you may use AI as a tool, but you have to be the decision maker as a human.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, so it helps to build the case, but there's a lot of still that the human has to do.
Igor Data:Yeah, so AI itself cannot put the hacker into the jail, but uh AI, in fact, does a lot of work.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, it's it's a good tool. The centralized justice systems will emerge to resolve Web3 disputes.
Igor Data:I say it's kind of futuristic, but it doesn't mean it will never happen because as I see the centralized justice systems as a kind of new thing, new field, and they evolve. And I would say every time we staying in our system currently and seeing its flaws, we want to change it and make it better. So there the search for the perfect system never stops. So we we always try to um develop the better system, but as it takes time and uh try and error approach. So we need we will see a lot of them fail and we will see a lot of them change and evolve. And at some point in time, it might lead that to the point when we have a lot of information to create even better systems.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, so the work is never done.
Igor Data:The work is never done, and I I want to see the progress in this area, it's kind of very interesting thing.
Leticia Caminero:Okay.
Igor Data:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Anti-money laundering software will learn to detect criminal intent before text and tone.
Igor Data:Yeah, text and tone analysis is there already, so it's true. And I can tell we detect, we we don't have text and tone on the blockchain, but we can see transactions, how they follow, let's say we follow several sequences of transactions, and we can speak something at we can say something about this sequence. They can be a lot of quick small transactions, or they can be like scattered in time. So this kind of analysis helps us to understand more about what is happening. Sometimes you can see that the um the entity changed, so the money got transferred to some other party that will focus on money laundering. So the hacker, let's say, steals the assets, and someone else is laundering the assets, so they kind of exchange um to a little bit less dirty money, so they have very dirty and they will focus on laundering. And we can see that on the blockchain and from the pattern itself, we can already detect that.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, so um between the criminals they have the different roles then.
Igor Data:It depends, yeah. Sometimes if it's uh if it's uh if it's organized crime, yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, okay. So one will be in charge of taking, on the one uh laundering, the other one of uh of of uh putting in a different places.
Igor Data:Yeah, it if that happens, you can definitely tell that there is organized crime behind.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, okay. That's scary and interesting at the same time. Okay. Privacy coins will be banned in major economies.
Igor Data:I will say I don't believe so. Okay. Privacy coins, they they create a lot of problems when people steal assets and they go to privacy coins and it's impossible to trace. It's true. But in fact, for some reason, hackers don't like them a lot. Okay, because it's hard to sell them, it's very easy to buy them because you can buy them on the exchange, and uh like some people buy small amounts of these kind of coins to their personal recreational use, let's say. But when we're talking about yeah, but when we're talking about like several, like like 20 million stolen assets, if they get there, it's very hard to launder them.
Leticia Caminero:Oh, okay.
Igor Data:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:So the the bigger the money, the the less likely for them to use this uh privacy coins.
Igor Data:It depends. Sometimes they're just crazy, but it's very random. But most of the cases they don't like to put a lot of this, they can take some portion of stolen assets and move to privacy coins, but in most of the cases, they try to rush to the exchanges and exchange there to something liquid, not this kind of stuff. Okay, more liquid the better. Yeah, so as I honestly believe privacy coin will not be banned in major economies because the the harm is not that big, and they are kind of funny, uh, they are technologically very advanced. Okay, they're interesting, and uh there gives this a little bit uh uh fresh air to some people, and they're kind of happy. So it's you remember like in matrix, you can have uh some fun thinking that you escaped the matrix, and so yeah.
Speaker 3:When when you didn't, yeah, it's kind of stuck. Interesting. Well, I still believe that we are inside the matrix at in a different kind of reality. Try not to think about that.
Leticia Caminero:And uh and there's so many but there I have a lot of theories uh about the Palin universe, about all the Mandela effects, all of these things.
Speaker 3:I think the old connection. Yeah, sometimes it's very and it's scary, obviously. Yeah, matrix uh stop.
Speaker 7:That's what you're doing.
Leticia Caminero:And I personally have uh I have many deja boos, so for me it's kind of like also a bit freaky.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it happens.
Leticia Caminero:So yeah, uh we're in the matrix on some kind of matrix, maybe not the one that we are batteries, but in in some other kind. Okay, scary things.
Igor Data:You'll be um you will be able to freeze a wallet globally with one jurisdictional order until we end up having like two, three, only two, three countries on earth, and all of them are tyrannies or empires, we won't be able to do that, luckily. Okay, so it's a good thing. Um unfortunately it's a bad thing for a victim, but in fact, it's like it's really good thing that we cannot just freeze something that we want on on the blockchain. This is the idea, right? But um in a kind of government-baked blockchains later, we might have these kind of situations. And for example, USDT uh they they allow to freeze the assets. Uh it's kind of centralized coin decentralized in some way, but it's one-to-one to USD. And they like to keep it clean, so they they will freeze the assets if you ask. Okay, so they would they will they will try to be uh on the safe side, but it's very rarely when hackers like spend a lot of time there.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, because they know that there's a higher risk there.
Igor Data:Uh they just don't like um stable coins, let's say.
Leticia Caminero:Okay. Anyway. So futuristic.
Igor Data:It's kind of I hope not.
Speaker 3:Let's say it's still possible.
Igor Data:We're we're very close to that currently, but uh yeah, I hope not.
Leticia Caminero:Oh well, it's uh we're either gonna end up like uh big brother or we're gonna end up in some other kind of uh uh kind of sci-fi novel.
Igor Data:We'll see about that. AEI may change a lot of things in ways that we don't even understand how it may happen. Like first internet, no one would say we will have we wouldn't have Facebook or TikTok.
Leticia Caminero:It's true. It evolved in a way that no one would have predicted. Yeah. Open source code will include built-in ethical flags.
Igor Data:It it's kind of futuristic, I think.
Leticia Caminero:Okay. Okay.
Igor Data:But it's still possible. But the thing is there are a lot of people that don't have any ethical like flags to include. And on the other hand, many people might share different ethical views and they might include different things. But usually on the blockchain, on on in my area on the blockchain, they kind of very open on what you want to do with your own money. So not so much flags here.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, okay. Different styles.
Igor Data:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Smart contracts will include a morality clause in the near future.
Igor Data:It's kind of futuristic. It's kind of the same. So the the smart contracts, they don't pop up out of blue, the people create them, and people It's not magic. It's not magic, yeah. People decide what is good, what is bad, and in they might include something there or not, but it's hard to verify if this morality clause is followed. So if you can put something into the code, then yeah, probably.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, okay. And finally, black market platforms will advertise AI detention avoidance tools.
Igor Data:Yeah, detection, AI detection avoidance avoidance tools, there they're already there. Okay. And not only the yeah, not only AI, like uh any kind of tools you can buy there. And uh there are some AI models that has no limits on what they could discuss, what they can they do, hacking models or other stuff. It's there. The question is, they're kind of too young to be really uh dangerous now. But there was a period of um time in cybersecurity when the term script kiddy was coined. It was time when hacking was kind of automated on the script level, and there was a lot of uh young people who were trying these scripts to hack different stuff, and they were not very uh experienced, but it was era when uh prevention and protection was not very um how to say sophisticated. So this script uh Kiddies was very successful hacking everything around, and uh it was a transition period between um complicated smart systems that can prevent hacking. And I believe so that AI will give us the possibility to hack a lot of things in ways that we didn't expect until we develop better tools, probably also based on AI, to fight these kinds of attacks. Oh that will be a wave of this kind of stuff maybe in the next 10 years that we will face that like a lot.
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, because well it the technology that evolves in both ways. Evolves for for the good, for chasing criminals, but also evolves for making criminal activities.
Igor Data:Yeah, and to to fight criminal activities, the technology kind of evolves a little bit um later. Okay, and usually people who use the systems they upgrade their systems after something happens. Uh-huh. So we're gonna have this uh situation uh when it is normal to read about a new hack every day for a couple of years.
Leticia Caminero:Well, we we have a saying in my home country, Dominican Republic, that it's it's translated to uh people put um a lock after they've been robbed. Yeah. So it's it's uh we say it a lot like that because it's it's it's human nature as well, because you'll you never think it's gonna happen to you until it does.
Speaker 9:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Okay, so now the long view question.
Speaker 9:Okay.
Leticia Caminero:If you had a backdoor key to every digital system, what's one rule you'd locked in permanently?
Igor Data:Um if I had uh a backdoor key to every digital system, you would have a new dark uh ruler indefinitely.
Speaker 3:So dear Frodo, keep the your teenager is emerging. Keep the too much power.
Igor Data:In fact, as I honestly see, uh humans are the most uh weak link in the digital system, and usually are the main vector of attack is the human itself. So tricking the human into doing something because we cannot limit humans to act as they will. Yeah, this is the purpose. That would really help in some cases. If you put the limit on yourself, let's say you cannot transfer money uh faster than in three days, you have to start the transaction, then you need to confirm the next day. That might help, but it limits you um your ability. Yeah, limits a lot. So we don't like that. So we keep ourselves the power to act quickly and have a huge impact on what we own. It also makes possible that when the hackers get their hands on your keys, they may act quickly and like stall your assets. So if I could fix the part of the system I would fix users, because I see that hackers and perpetrators in cybersecurity world, their advantage is usually level of technical literacy and the gap between normal people and their level of technical literacy is the main way how they like it's the space where they operate.
Leticia Caminero:So that they take advantage because they know better and they know more, yeah, and and the human is limited.
Igor Data:So reducing this gap and putting more effort into learning. More about uh important, let's say, most scary parts of this technical stuff. This is this is important for all of us. We should raise the level of technical literacy as much as we can.
Leticia Caminero:So it will be a backdoor key to the to the mindset of the users.
Igor Data:Yeah, but the guy who has access to backdoor access to the minds of billions of people, uh, it's kind of uh different story.
Leticia Caminero:Well, if they if they map our uh conscience into a machine, we'll be able to do that.
Igor Data:At some point in time we will, definitely. I truly, I honestly believe that the mind is fully described by neural connections. Yeah. So if we map them, there was uh this uh fruit fly brain already scanned and uh mapped and started in virtual reality, and they made it to sniff something, and it was turning to this point to do this to the same side. So it in fact it lived without understanding what is happening, it lived for uh for a second in space. But yeah, it's very small brain, but yeah, but it's a spark advances uh exponentially, so yeah. Okay. 100 years I thought, uh, did you see this TV series upload?
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love for that kind of thing. I love Black Mirror, I love this kind of like uh interesting um alternative futures. But I do believe it can happen. It it can it can because it is true that uh um the essence of the human is not this physical uh uh body that we have. It's it's it's it's something that it can be captured in other vessels and why knowing technology.
Igor Data:As I see it, we are less humans alive. Like you know, like ancient Romans, they didn't know there were ancient Romans. Exactly, that's true. That's true. They were uh enjoying the progress and the power and everything. And I want to say that the moment we already have genetical therapy allowed in Europe, and it means we will change our genes at some point in time so fast that you when you reach the reproductive age, your genes are kind of obsolete. And 30 years of your life, there might be so huge progress in genes development that you might want to assemble your child just by cut catalog, like like in in the store. You buy the best genes and they will be cheap because they will be must-produced, everything must be produced is folks to be to be affordable.
Speaker 3:So no disease, no aging.
Igor Data:We will merge with the machine, I believe.
Speaker 3:Okay, we're gonna to some degree.
Igor Data:It will be slowly like 200-300 years, but uh not not not fast. But we will get there.
Leticia Caminero:But steady, but steady. Maybe maybe our kids, which is gonna be we're gonna we will be this the we'll see the the first part of it, our kids, maybe. Okay, interesting. Um, I I really um I'm really positive about the future always, uh, but with uh kind of uh uh a bit of a sinister kind of thought also, because humans we are capable of amazing things, we are capable of beautiful things, but also awful and atrocious things.
Speaker 3:So the future, I think, and it's just in a tie rope and at any moment it's gonna flip.
Speaker 9:So true.
Leticia Caminero:Thank you, Igor, um, for demonstrating that in constant in a constantly changing battle between criminals and coders, it is not just about keeping up, it's about coding smarter, it's about recognizing patterns where others see chaos and creating systems that remain robust under pressure because it is this new frontier, the crime scene, isn't a back alley, is a blockchain. The getaway car is a disappearing wallet, and the investigator, often a well-trained algorithm armed with intent, not instinct. Uh at the heart of it all, though, it is a simple truth, trust isn't built with buzzwords, it is built with architecture, clean, auditable, ethical architecture. So here's to the digital detective like you, the architect of accountability, and the kind um of code that catches more than just box.
Speaker 9:Yeah.
Leticia Caminero:Thank you so much. It was a lovely conversation. Uh scary as well.
Speaker 3:A little bit. Just as the future, beautiful and scary.
Igor Data:Thank you, Letitia. Thank you for having me in uh in Tai Hiblia podcast. And um I'm really amazed that uh it's a number one uh podcast uh in uh intellectual rights uh in the podcast. Amazing.
Leticia Caminero:Oh thank you, thank you. Through a lot of work now, but it's it's um it's a beautiful project that I started out of. I I I love IP, so it's it's something that I I fell in love with when I was studying in law school um a few years ago. And after that, I just became in love with IP because it's the it's a part of the law that really talks about creation, innovation, talks about the amazing things that humans can do, because I was never attracted to the other kind of more serious part of the law, like land law, tax law, all of these kind of things.
Speaker 3:I I admire people who do that. You need that, but it's not me. And I come from a family of accountants, so all my family is there, CPA.
Leticia Caminero:So for me, it's like no, I I run away from numbers, from from too much formality. So I found in IP like this a creative outlet. Uh, but also I found the law because I'm very passionate about the law, the norms, all that. Um I'm always very curious. So yeah, that's uh and it has taken me to this podcast. This is my passion project, my my third baby.
Igor Data:Yeah, for all your passion, it gives amazing results, right?
Leticia Caminero:Yeah, it's true. It's true. I think for you it's the same.
unknown:Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah, it was so nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Thank you for listening to Intangibilia, the podcast of Intangible Law. Plain talk about intellectual property. Did you like what we talked today? Please share with your network. Do you want to learn more about intellectual property? Subscribe now on your favorite podcast player. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Visit our website www.intangibilia.com. Copyright Leticia Caminero 2020. All rights reserved. This podcast is provided for information purposes only.