Venture Everywhere Podcast: Aidan Larkin with Scott Hartley
Scott Hartley, co-founder of Everywhere Ventures, catches up with Aidan Larkin, founder and CEO of Asset Reality, on Episode 6: Asset Reality Check
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Aidan Larkin is the co-founder and CEO of Asset Reality, the first end-to-end solution for complex asset recovery. Aidan was a former criminal tax inspector for HM Revenue & Customs in the UK and the world's first seized crypto auctioneer. He was featured in The Economists film ‘Tracking the Traffickers’ and BBC One’s ‘Ill Gotten Gains’ series.
This episode is hosted by Scott Hartley, co-founder and general partner of Everywhere Ventures (previously The Fund). In this interview, Scott and Aidan discuss the art and science of recovering digital assets. Discover how the IRS has recovered more in digital assets than the entire US law enforcement effort, and how a single Bitcoin seizure by the Metropolitan Police in London was worth more than the entire country’s known digital assets! Listen for the factors making it conducive for a country to adopt new forms of payment and also be more susceptible to asset scams. Plus a few tidbits about Aidan’s background that makes him well-suited to his endeavor.
If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe to Venture Everywhere and give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jenny Fielding
Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that: founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode!
Scott Hartley
Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm here today with Aidan Larkin. And Aidan is the co founder and CEO of a company called Asset Reality. One of the - the most interesting companies in our portfolio, one of the most fascinating people that have the privilege of talking to you. Aidan, thanks so much for joining us today.
Aidan Larkin
A pleasure, absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Scott Hartley
So, you know, before we jump in on the company that you've spent the last couple years building and scaling across the world, you have such a unique background in sort of where you've come from where you grew up, I know, growing up in Belfast and Northern Ireland, sort of the the backstory of where you came from, and some of the things that you saw growing up that's, you know, over the course of your life brought you to build Asset Reality.
Aidan Larkin
Yeah, for me, it was it was always about wanting to try and affect change. I grew up in Belfast, I grew up sort of in the middle of the troubles which which many people will know, a terrible time of sort of a lot of conflict. And now the cliched sort of bombs and guns and and people dying and but when you're in it, give new perspective of that's the normal. I mean that's seeing tanks and seeing people and sort of army regalia and guns at the bottom of your street was just a normal thing. It was only when you sort of stepped out of it. That's not what everyone else sort of has. And growing up. But I couldn't say that I had bad experiences growing up as my perspective, but I know really nice community around me and sort of wonderful family. So it was only as I started to get older, and I wanted to sort of get involved in the world and I was working in criminal investigation and then Revenue and Customs. At there I got my first glimpse really early on, I was like that horrific inefficiencies, in government, across public sector, and particularly in this world of asset recovery, which most people don't know what Asset Recovery means. It's so ill defined around the world.
Aidan Larkin
And basically, it's, it's getting the money back that belongs to us, whether that is society, whether that's a victim of crime, whether that's someone having their Metamask wallet scammed, or it's a government that's lost all of their assets because of a corrupt dictator. And when you start to work in that environment and you realize that there is literally billions and billions of dollars not being recovered, because of disparate analog broken systems, lack of direction, tons of different reasons. It just doesn't work. And when you're then - I think my background was unique enough for me to realize that literally like a small community project, getting a couple of thousand pounds in funding can literally save someone's life. I've had young friends growing up in tragedy sort of succumbed to their circumstances and committed suicide. I was lucky enough that I was able to get picked on this charity project when I was 11, to go to America for nine weeks and like get out of the conflict zone and sort of see the white picket fences of Long Island. It just made me realize I was at NIMH, out of a hat. I was like this dystopian Hunger Games like winning this prize, and I get the sort of run off and go to America for sort of 10 weeks. And but then I as I got older, I started thinking, Well, why couldn't we fund everybody to go and solve different people's lives of pain.
Aidan Larkin
And as I've got older, went through my career of working in criminal investigation, working in asset recovery, and insolvency, working in seized assets. And then, most recently, actually been an manager of seized asset that I've sort of seen the lifecycle of sort of asset recovery, and fascinated by it. And you then see it at an international level and this sort of work I was doing with the United Nations, you got to see then that this is broken all around the world. And nobody's trying to fix it because it's ill defined and people don't know. And then crypto came along. And all of a sudden, there's this blueprint, that you could actually recover these assets faster. You could manage them easier. And it was like, Well, if we can capture that enthusiasm, and we can start to sort of show the art of the possible. And there's all of these people that knew how to fix it, but they've never been herded together. I just got me thinking that if I could sort of create a company and bring together people like - what would it be to actually - we want to put a billion dollars back in these communities over the next sort of couple of years. Like it seems like a sort of a lofty goal, but when you realize that 1% of criminal seized assets is recovered doably. Like 1%. There is 99% out there for us to go after. I think if we could move the needle and I really mean in building an impact very, very quickly. So that was always the thing that drives me - knowing that we can have a very, very tangible impact and put money back into the various pots around the world.
Scott Hartley
So in short, it's basically through Asset Reality, you guys are looking at this long standing problem that's a perennial and always around sort of the misappropriation of funds. The corruption that exists in the world, where assets, whether they're physical, hard, tangible assets, that disappear, like a ship going missing on the dark seas, but more in the more recent future, sort of the rise of digital assets. So these will be things like, obviously, Bitcoin, but the proliferation of a number of these different digital assets that have a store of value. So when there is a seizure of sorts, whether it's a drug bust, or a government seizure of a set of assets, oftentimes you're seeing these assets include not just hard assets, not just a drug bust, but sometimes they might include a Ledger Nano with 10 forms of cryptocurrency on it, and what does that group do with it, whether it's Scotland Yard, or the UN or a law enforcement group from a particular country? Is that kind of-
Aidan Larkin
-Precisely it's if you imagine the industry is just missing infrastructure. So there's no, there's no Salesforce, there's no HubSpot. It's like for our wardens, everyone still use the spreadsheets. So let's imagine the NYPD investigate a criminal and they seize their assets and they seize the SBF, let's just say to someone who's very clearly going to have a lot of his assets seized, assets seized. And the whole point is there's detectives, whether that's investors, whether that's the government, that that money is getting taken off, the person who does something wrong. And the processes when you actually lay them all out are just very, very analog. And the court process is no, we're not going to change legislation overnight, we're not going to change any of those things. So when we look at this asset recovery topic, it's like, well, what bits can we fix? And when you realize you've got this contrast between with digital assets coming along and remember, and asset forfeiture and asset recovery, it doesn't matter if it's a Lamborghini or a Bitcoin, it's an asset that can be recovered. It's a store of value. So when we talk about crypto, we're, we are fortunate that we get this simplified, it's just an asset category. In the same way a gold bar can be in a safe, a Bitcoin could be with the custodian, or it could be on a ledger. It's just an asset that can be recovered. But I noticed over the last couple of years, you had this like rise of these incredible blockchain analytic tools like this highly forensic, digital sort of intuitive tool, and then they find the asset, and then the officer gets it an Excel spreadsheet, are they no buy on Amazon, literally go on to Amazon and buy a Ledger Wallet? Have you imagined doing that at scale around the world, the hours that are wasted? So we just thought if we can help speed up the process, that when someone uses an analytic tool, and we can make the recovery, managing those assets, tracking them, audit them, manage that process, and just bring in and basically, instead of having bundles of paper and Excel spreadsheets, everywhere, use all of the inherent qualities of the blockchain, like on chain monitoring, there's a ton of digital efficiencies that can be gathered. I think, if we were to simplify it, we're taking processes that take days and weeks and turning them into hours and minutes effectively, and alleviating a lot of risk, and creating a lot more transparency. But ultimately, we're trying to kill the spreadsheets that they live on.
Scott Hartley
So you know, one of the - probably the more famous seizures that people might remember from recent recent memory was the failure of the Silk Road. And then this sort of collection of Bitcoin that was missing from that platform that was then seized by the US Marshal Service and auctioned to I believe - Tim Draper bought sort of a few 100 million dollars with a Bitcoin at that time, probably did quite well, for himself. But I imagine one of the other principles or things that might be an issue is sort of the visibility of these assets on the back end, right. So you mentioned a Lamborghini. Obviously, if there's one sort of aggrieved party that returns to one person, but if in the in the form of Bitcoin or in the form of something else, the divisibility and sort of the auctioning process, or this process of returning those those assets to somebody else, is it seems like also an area that's ripe for innovation, I would imagine.
Aidan Larkin
It absolutely is. And I think it's about taking all of those inherent sort of technological traits that exists with digital assets, that there's so many things that if we use that example of the Lamborghini. The thing that leads us in Asset Recovery is criminals buying back their assets, or criminals using third parties, like lots of it's in the it's in the US risk assessment. And the country's national risk assessment was sanctions evasion involving art. So we've seen it we've talked and we we see on LinkedIn all the time, all the good work analytic companies do. Your own sanction screening free tools off the back of the sort of Ukraine invasion, and we see all of these sanctions screening, and I'm always zoning out from an Asset Recovery Point of View going What about the art market? What about luxury goods? What about - now I'm not going to solve that, that's not what Asset Reality is built to do. That's biting a bit off more than we can chew. But when we think about blockchain, well, if I auction where I convert a bitcoin, I now have the possibility that I can use the analytic tools to do - know your customer and know your transaction. I can then actively monitor the address that I send those assets to in perpetuity. Like being able to flag if you buy this from a government auction, we can watch it forever. It flushes out bad actors. So there's a lot of opportunities that didn't exist in regular assets. And as as a side note that an interesting note to the person that actually sold those assets and sell groves is one of my colleagues. So when we were being very fortunate that a couple of the folks from the US Marshals have joined us at Asset Reality and a shout out to Joanna Summers she actually sold those assets to messenger of hers. So I was also the world's first seized Bitcoin auctioneer. So I see this done in the US, and I was in the UK, and I sold Bitcoin at $3,000 a Bitcoin. So auctioneers are delighted by it. So there's my great regret!
Scott Hartley
I love that we could we could go down the rabbit hole of talking about your life as an auctioneer, or the sort of criminal tax and special investigation with the UN.
Aidan Larkin
It's just all the asset recovery lifecycle. I've done the legislation, but I've done the seized asset that had been on the warrant, seizing the asset. I've interviewed the criminals in prison, and I've done I've done that life cycle. But they've all - it's been like the most fun paid R&D project I could do. And that's why I'm talking to you here from Jamaica. I've just been with the Minister of Finance yesterday at a national presentation. And I can I can talk with enthusiasm, but also realism about - I've lived and breathed all of these BB's problems, I don't consider myself an old guy, even though I turned 40 two weeks ago. But all I've done in my entire adult life is as asset recovery, and every version of it - from when I was 20, I'd been working in this sector. And it's the stuff I nerd out on. And if I'm not working on it, I'm listening to podcasts about it. I'm reading books about it. Because it just fascinates me.
Aidan Larkin
The reason you pay more tax is directly inherently linked to the performance of the public purse, as we call it, the money coming back in. The reason schools and hospitals are built in other countries is directly linked to the amount of money that goes back in. And then you've got this criminal disruption pieces. Well, if you're a Metamask user, or you're a phantom user, and you lose your assets, well, everyone has this assumption that because it's digital assets, it's agreed that I can get my assets back. And this is literally where the name Asset Reality comes from. We were always that company saying you've lost your assets. You've clicked on a link you shouldn't have or you've been, you've been phished, you've been hacked, whatever the circumstances may be. But if you turn up to the NYPD and say my Rolex was stolen in Time Square, and it's a $30,000, watch, do you really think they're going to jump the desk and hit the blues and go out to the criminal? And there's a real - there's a sad sort of messaging that we're almost responsible for with the victims of sort of digital asset theft. Having to say you're joining the CMQ with a person that was burgled last night, with the person that got their watch stolen or their humbug stolen. And just because it's on the blockchain doesn't mean the broken asset recovery, infrastructure and legislation, you're still the pot. So this is why we, if we can go upstream, and we can enable government agencies, law enforcement practitioners, law firms, asset recovery practitioners, if we can build the plumbing and the infrastructure for better asset recovery, victims shouldn't have to pay a forensic accountant on a report to get their assets back, they should just be able to report it to the local police, and the police get their assets back. Like that's our Nirvana we're searching for. There's some green shoots of this happening already. After I've mentioned, Aaron, Western Santa Clara prosecutor is just an incredible worker for victims of crypto asset recovery. And we still have enough errands, we don't have enough. We don't have enough of those. And it's a postcode lottery for people. So that's sort of what that's what really drives us. It's the art of possible and digital assets like this can be fixed very, very quickly, wider asset recovery is a much longer thing. But digital asset recovery can't be fixed.
Scott Hartley
Yeah, you know, as we think about the arc of, of cryptocurrencies and digital assets over the last, you know, decade, decade and a half, almost, you know, as somebody who's been in the thick of it for so long, what have you seen sort of the evolution? You know, I was talking earlier today about, you know, not sort of getting the early memo of speaking with one of the founders of Kraken back in 2012 - 2013, not being able to fully wrap my head around what the business was, and passing on the investments, you know, looking at Coinbase in 2014 2015, seeing the rise and fall of ICO market in 2017 sort of consensus in the, you know, the advent of etherium and sort of secondary and tertiary chains that started to compete with with Bitcoin. But as you've sort of like been in this market and watch the evolution, through, you know, that one of the most recent sagas of SBF and the FTX downfall, where are we in that cycle? And what do you See, kind of moving forward? And what are the ways in which Asset Reality can kind of play a role not just in recovery, but maybe in prediction or stopping some of these things from happening in the future?
Aidan Larkin
Yeah, I think that's a that's a great question. Because I think we have to really give a huge mentioned to US law enforcement and international partners. When you're from an asset recovery background. And you know, how long these things take like that. Normally, if that had have taken 18 months, I mean, that would have been reasonable timetable, like the Madoff sort of famous Ponzi scheme, that they literally circulated that case for two or three years before they could get activity. So what has happened in our case is nothing short of extraordinary that is lightspeed by asset recovery terms. From the initial sort of the balloons going up and people knowing something was wrong, to people actually been arrested and people appointed and receivers to make a formal process started. So that's for me is the really exciting bit about digital assets. We're seeing it that again, I literally had a slide yesterday have a picture of me and a picture of SBF and we actually look alarmingly alike. And I like, if you imagine, something happens in the regular world, analytics is bank statement analysis, international request to a foreign bank account, three to six months later, bank statements back in, see another thread, another bank statement, another bank account. It takes years to build the case that I've worked in that sector.
Aidan Larkin
So with digital asset cases involving the blockchain, just having that ability to analyze a transparent, decentralized ledger, even if you can't track and trace the assets, you've got the evidence. And I think a lot of people don't realize why blockchain analytics is so important and that sort of excites me. Because if they're the if they're the metal detectors, we're the picks and shovels. So that's that sort of asset realities role. No point in finding all this crypto, if you don't know how to manage it, and realize it in a responsible way that isn't gonna get you in trouble. And I think that when you look at the pace at which they can do the analytics, every time we see on Twitter, there are there's been a Twitter hack. And all of a sudden, like, all these tweets are ongoing. Here's what's happened. Here's the analytics we track and traced it. It got stolen minutes and hours. So even if you don't find the assets, you've got the evidence, to arrest someone, to charge someone, to freeze their assets, to trigger a formal activity. So I think what's really positive for sort of like the rule of law, as well, as all of these cases, set precedents so the next time something like this happens, there's learnings from it. I'm sure there's things that every organization would always do differently with hindsight in any in any case. So that for me is where we are getting to this position where very quickly, mainstream adoption will accelerate. If we start wiping out bad actors. I personally think it's a really necessary thing.
Aidan Larkin
I like the Wild West moniker. A lot of people don't like Wild West crypto, I like it because it's pioneering and a bit of brutal. No, you break your leg in the Wild West, you're not getting sort of keyhole surgery and no holistic therapy. But likewise, there's opportunities to innovate, there's opportunities to fix things, and every time someone does something, well, people immediately build off the back of it. So I think we're going to see this increased art, where we're going to see more asset recovery activity, we're gonna see more bad actors flushed out. And most importantly, as we're already seeing, like across the - IRS criminal investigation, to give you an example, they've recovered billions of dollars and new seized digital assets. 93% of their seizures last year were digital assets. They have recovered more in digital assets than the entire United States law enforcement effort, collectively, and known digital assets. And this is happening around the world - Metropolitan Police in London, single Bitcoin seizure was worth more than the entire country's efforts known digital assets. So we give this example but it's like we're finding oil for the first time, or we're finding Gold in the Hills, whatever the knowledge you want to use. So there's a really interesting opportunity that we can then get that money back into law enforcement, back into investigation capabilities, get more people trained, get more people using the analytic tools, and then get more people seizing assets. So we see ourselves as a key component of that sort of virtuous cycle of asset recovery. Remember, SBF isn't a crypto case, it's a fraud case with a range of assets. But the crypto has created an immutable record of wrongdoing, that will be a key part of the evidence in that case. And then you've got real estate, you've got cars, you got boats, you got people think it's an irregular asset recovery and asset forfeiture case. It just has a large digital assets element.
Scott Hartley
It's it's such a fascinating world that they you live in, you know, and it's also such a global world. And I think that's something that's, you know, we we both have spent a lot of time whether it's working at the UN, or working across the world, in different public and private sector areas. But as you kind of zoom out and look at the world writ large, you know, places like Latin America that have high levels of crypto adoption. Maybe historically, more volatile, economic climate some time times that have led to hyperinflation, leading people to find safe harbors of assets that maybe don't have that hyperinflation. So a lot of the early Bitcoin adoption was out of places like Venezuela, some of the earliest founders of Ribbit capital, for example, one of the founders of Venezuelan immigrants, who was early in the crypto market. So, interestingly, you have these kind of leading indicators, or sometimes it is emerging markets that are the early adopters of, of digital assets. So as you kind of look at the world writ large, whether it's sanctions around Russia, whether it's looking at different markets in LATAM, are there parts of the world that look more interesting to you, or you have deeper engagements with, or you kind of see as flashpoints in the future?
Aidan Larkin
Yeah, it is, like you said, it's this sort of a global marketplace, there truly is no border to the work that we did. And one of our biggest challenges is, where do you go, where do you go next? What markets do you target? And, again, it's a tragedy that we even exist. Like in a perfect world. It's a hospital syndrome. And sort of, an medical treatment. We're just a necessary, sort of a necessary function that has to exist, ultimately. But when we look at, like you say, you're spot on, where you have places that have hyperinflation, where people have restricted access to their bank accounts. You could be in and Lebanon, for example, go to the ATM, counter cash it. You see this. So there's, there's a more sort of willing society that will accept a different way. I think, when you speak to someone in the US and the UK, they're kind of like no, in some cases, there are still people that still think crypto is a scam. And crypto is not gonna be a thing. And they'll never, they'll never adopt, will never be using it. These are the same people that said, I've never used contactless payments five years ago. And these are the people that said, I'll never use a mobile phone 10 years ago. And I think that when you have the ability to sort of to work sort of globally, and you realize that like mobile payments in Africa and Latin America, and when it's just common, like Venmo, what we think is like a Venmo in the United States, they've been doing this for like mobile phones, like unlike Nokia 10 years ago.
Aidan Larkin
When you go to Egypt and you want to transfer someone money, you want to pay for something that's mobile pay through Vodafone. So we're seeing in those countries, but it will be wrong of us to take that that's where the activity is going to take place. Because that's where, for example, and where we see the exploitation at an asset recovery and money laundering level, like be absolutely clear. The invention of the perception of offshore money laundering, as a white washing from like the UK and US historically, two biggest money launderers in the world are the UK and the US be absolutely chaired by Delaware, London. Like no, we did better than anybody. And I think that we sort of poke at these smaller jurisdictions and we sort of, we pick on the Caymans, the BVIs, the Seychelles, and all these people with all these companies set up and - it's your companies that are set up there. it was enabled by a formation agent in London, probably. They the tax advice, and then lawyer who defends them is in those jurisdictions. So when we actually get involved in a case like an FBI, that they're a good example, there, when you look at it on a heat map, there's just all these touch points around the world that a fraud is committed to a customer, you can have - I keep going back like a digital asset theft, you can have someone sitting in Manhattan, who has their digital wallet emptied, is infected with some sort of scam. And the actual perpetrator of that could be an individual that's sitting somewhere, anywhere in the world. Or it could be a new scam, there's a peg between scam in Cambodia, and the corporate entity that they're actually operating under as registered and Delaware or the BVI. And all of a sudden, the whole asset recovery trail just becomes incredibly convoluted, incredibly complex, because there's different courts of play.
Aidan Larkin
But I think for us, where we're seeing those countries that have that greater mainstream adoption, push the toward towards CBDCs. It'll all just get very invisible very, very quickly, in a good way. I think with cryptos sort of suffered this, like public autopsy, when everyone uses WhatsApp and Signal and email and 90% of people wouldn't have a clue on how the encryption methodology works in the background, when you send a whatsapp or a signal message. It all of a sudden everyone wants to know about how does blockchain work? And like we purposely - when we give our presentations, the government says stop obsessing about how it works. You don't need to know that when when you're putting in the court application to seize crypto, you don't need to tell the judge about Satoshi Nakamoto. You don't need to tell him. If you're seizing a car, you wouldn't talk about the internal combustion engine and Henry Ford and the Model T. Just seize the bloody car. But I think trying to simplify a complex topic is an art form. And I think that literally is where the name Asset Reality comes from - strive to keep things sort of realistic and manage expectations and be clear in our language. But mainstream adoption for me is fundamentally inherently linked to feeling safer. If we can build the infrastructure. that means victims can get their assets back because law enforcement are enabled. That will be the biggest trigger. If people use the internet and shop online and use credit cards because if it goes wrong - visa chargeback, identity theft protection, antivirus software. I use the analogy of it's like cars first being invented, but new seatbelts, new airbags, new anti lock brakes, no notes, no speed on this new anything, sort of scary, dangerous world. Once those safety measures started to come in, more and more people started to do it by those early pioneers. So I think we're still so early in the arc that once the CFD becomes invisible, and people just start using it not even realizing that this is underpinned by some digital asset, it'll just become more effortless. But right now we're in those early pioneering days where everyone sees. We're all seeing sort of behind the curtain so to speak.
Scott Hartley
And do you see a world where, you know - I've unfortunately been the victim of certain threats myself, where, you know, you have a centralized group to go back to where whether it's the FDIC insuring against fraudulent charge, or something like that. In a world of decentralized cryptocurrency, where maybe there isn't a FTX, that there isn't an intermediary? Are there ways in which you think there could be greater protective measures or insurance to protect consumers?
Aidan Larkin
Yeah, I think that, for me, my personal bet is always going to be around sort of defi I think, sort of. I think cefi is just tradfi version 2.0. And I love the technology and love the underlying technology, but you put it back in the hands of individuals. I'm an anti-corruption lecturer. I am sometimes the pessimists on human behavior, and people can do things wrong with other people's billions. And that'll always happen. So I think with defi, I think that the difficult message has to be around accountability as well. Like, it's really tragic the amount of cases that we see firsthand that there were so many red flags, no. Aiden.reality@gmail.com is not going to email you and ask you for your seed word. And if you'd give it to him.
Aidan Larkin
And so I think there's that element of public safety if you want to, if you want to operate in defi. It's just like buying modern art, you need to know what you're doing. So I think that a lot of people could avoid a lot of the pitfalls. But there's also some people that are curated and they're phished, and they have really big, unavoidable, inevitable losses. So what I think that the technology will enable that we're seeing lots of great initiatives, this aggregating of data of bad actors. So at least then you should be able to have, there's a number of sort of startups I shall not call because I don't want to prefer one over the other. But there's some incredible initiatives of new proactive screening of your own addresses. So like the, like the take five for fraud campaign we have in the UK. So if I try and set up a bank transfer, and I try and send Scott money, it'll say this isn't Scott, this is a corporation. Are you sure the account number and sort code? This is actually an overseas entity, double check. So if I'm data transfer from my, you know, my software wallet, we have we seen so much work around like smart contract auditing and all of these flags, for this is a known scam? Why not just have like an aggregate of - before you send it, this was recorded three months ago, don't send it. That's where we think we can potentially evolve to with the types of data set that we're going to gather. And now will that be done in collaboration? I fully suspect that that'll be a sort of whole learning approach, I think that says a coming together of exchanges, the blockchain or ledger companies, all the big data companies coming together on the existing data companies, not just the blockchain ones.
Aidan Larkin
So I think there's a really positive future that you could really tighten their net, and drive a lot of the fraud back to the traditional fraud, like it is. It seems nuts that, in this particular sector, the most traceable asset on Earth, fraudsters shouldn't be using Bitcoin. It's though it's insane that they do. But they do it because everybody isn't looking. Like drug dealers smuggled through the airports that don't have good controls. So it's because there's still lots of gaps around the world, that they don't have analytic tools, they don't have. It's just like a just like a customs fort, not having sniffer dogs or X ray machines. So until we tighten the net, there will still be criminals operating in this space. I think the level of illicit activity is relatively low compared to traditional finance, that we keep hearing these stats about crypto fraud. It's still massively eclipsed by traditional fiat. Enormous eclipsed. We don't even know what the figure is, we can't even hazard a guess. The UN put it at 3% of GDP. Whatever that is, it's it's something between 800 billion and 2 trillion. So So I think that I think it's not as bad as we I don't think the outlook is as bad as we think - I'm very optimistic and positive on all of the work that can be done with it. The infrastructure can make the whole sort of system much safer, much more safer than than Fiat.
Scott Hartley
And as you mentioned, I mean, just probably a piece of art onto a private jet into a new market, as you know, far far harder to trace in many ways.
Aidan Larkin
My quick sort of takeaway that I always mentioned to people I mean, everyone forgets that the Paul Newman Rolex Daytona set a record at auction for I think all together with buyers premium, was $21 million. So I can walk through an airport with a stainless steel, Rolex $21 million, no, almost like money laundering in assets is always going to be a major issue that governments are going to find impossible to tackle at scale. But with digital assets, that footprint that inherent footprint use of mixers, like all of those things, all of those bread crumbs are there that you can pick up and prosecute and and go after. So yeah, I think the next positive in terms of from a digital asset perspective
Scott Hartley
So other than your forthcoming TED Talk, which is coming to a screen near you, where can where can listeners find you and get in touch?
Aidan Larkin
I do. I do love LinkedIn. For me. LinkedIn is a wonderful network. And it's a great resource before you do anything, because someone out there will probably have done it before and share about. So again, I'm more than happy, more than happy to share our experiences and share our story. Asset Reality has actually developed some free training as well for individuals and people. Little sort of short courses and bite sized courses, to share our learnings for sort of victims of scams. So again, making sure they can come to the website, and then what the view will be sort of building that I do - the coming months to give people that ability to try and stay a little bit safer. Because, again, my point I made earlier, one of the greatest tragedies in all of this is the amount of avoidable cases. We want to be dealing with the complex cases and problems that other people can't solve. We don't want to see people have entirely avoidable circumstances, sort of common guess and desperation. So that would be our hope in the future, that we can sort of try and then sort of share our learnings and sort of stop people being victims in the first place.
Scott Hartley
This has been an incredible conversation, one of my favorite companies and people to chat with.
Aidan Larkin
You say that to everybody!
Scott Hartley
Aidan from Asset Reality calling from Jamaica, where you're helping work more, more digital crimes and help people recover their assets. So thanks so much for being with us today.
Aidan Larkin
An absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Scott Hartley
Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn about everywhere, where first check precede fund that does exactly that. We invest everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc on LinkedIn and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe and we'll catch you on the next episode.
Read more from Aidan Larkin in Founders Everywhere.