The Bank Secrecy Act was signed into law in 1970. Richard Nixon was president, the internet didn’t exist, and the fastest way to launder money was a suitcase full of cash on a plane.
Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs, testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on May 21, laying out a blunt case: the BSA’s reporting frameworks were built for a world where suspicious transactions took weeks to trace, not one where illicit funds hop across blockchain networks in 24 to 48 hours.
The numbers behind the warning
Redbord brought data from TRM Labs’ 2026 Crypto Crime Report. North Korean hackers stole over $2 billion in digital assets during 2025, with an additional $600 million taken in just the early months of 2026.
So-called “pig butchering” schemes, a category of long-con investment fraud where victims are groomed over weeks before being drained of their savings, cost American victims more than $35 billion last year. AI-enabled scam activity surged by 500% over the same period.
