Advancing Standards and Interoperability:
BIPA at 9th Global Conference on Criminal Finances & Cryptoassets
On 28–29 October 2025, Vienna hosted the 9th Global Conference on Criminal Finances & Cryptoassets, jointly organised by Europol, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Basel Institute on Governance. This flagship event convened law-enforcement, regulators, academics and industry practitioners to address the growing threat of crypto-enabled crime and explore how to strengthen the global response.
Diana Patrut, the Project Manager of the Blockchain Intelligence Professionals Association (BIPA), joined a high‐profile panel on the theme of standardisation and interoperability in blockchain intelligence. Diana’s participation marks a strong commitment of the professional association to shaping robust, harmonised frameworks for tracing, attribution and operational cooperation across jurisdictions.
Why the panel matters
As the Europol press release underscores, the criminal use of cryptoassets is “becoming increasingly professionalised, complex and organised”. In response, participants at the conference emphasised three overarching priorities: developing common standards, deepening cooperation and investing in capacity.
Diana articulated the core challenge facing the industry:
“We need a robust standardisation initiative: Different analytics firms produce different results tracing the same transactions — a barrier to meaningful cooperation. There’s no harmonised standard for wallet attribution, methodology, training or formatting across jurisdictions. Right now we’re in the early stages of this process — to make headway we must bring public-sector agencies and private-sector specialists together to co-create and adopt standards wholeheartedly.”
She further noted her appreciation for the diverse private-sector voices at the same table — including representatives from TRM Labs, Crystal, Elliptic, Chainalysis, ChainArgos, Iknaio, Global Ledger, Allium, Ivix, Binance. She also underscored that creating shared frameworks will strengthen trust, comparability and effectiveness of blockchain-intelligence work.
Highlights from the conference and panel
- The conference agenda covered emerging criminal typologies: sanctions evasion, professional money-laundering, scam-centres, illicit marketplaces.
- A breakout session dedicated to standards for blockchain investigations and intelligence stressed the need for harmonised, evidence-based methods.
- This breakout session specifically focused on interoperability across analytics tools and jurisdictions, training of practitioners, and the formatting and exchange of forensic and intelligence metadata.
- The moderator, Bernhard Haslhofer, a recognised expert in cryptoasset analytics and standardisation, reinforced the importance of collaborative, cross-sector efforts to connect the dots in investigations that span traditional and decentralised finance.
- Diana expressed gratitude to fellow panelists and emphasised that the standardisation journey must now shift from concept to implementation.
Why this matters for the wider ecosystem
In an era where illicit flows via crypto-assets can traverse jurisdictions in seconds, the lack of standardised methodologies and interoperable tooling remains a significant barrier to effective disruption. As one attendee summed it up: “Criminal proceeds can move across the world in seconds, while formal cooperation between authorities can still take days or weeks.”
By bringing together industry practitioners, public-sector agencies and standard-setting actors under one roof, the conference and panels like the one Diana participated in help to create the collective architecture needed for effective action. For BIPA and its members, this means helping to shape how wallet attribution, data formatting, training curricula and tool interoperability evolve in the coming years.
What’s next
Diana’s remarks signal that BIPA is positioned to contribute actively to the development of common frameworks for blockchain intelligence. As standardisation initiatives advance, BIPA members can expect to engage in working groups, share best practices, and potentially adopt industry‐wide standards that enhance comparability and mutual confidence in investigation outputs.
For those in the blockchain intelligence space, the call to action is clear: engage with standardisation efforts, align methodologies, and invest in proof of interoperability. Only then can cross-border investigations scale effectively and keep pace with increasingly sophisticated crypto-enabled crime.
Looking forward
Our Project Manager’s participation reinforces the vital role of private – public collaboration in defining the future of blockchain intelligence. We look forward to BIPA’s further engagement in standardisation, and to seeing these frameworks translate into operational benefit.
More about:
https://www.europol.europa.eu