IDV Article
Trust by design: Shaping the future of crypto ecosystems
Thank you to everyone who joined us in São Paulo. Over three days of conversations with crypto, fintech, and digital ecosystem leaders, we shared how Veriff helps businesses build trust at scale with identity verification that reduces fraud, supports compliance, and keeps user experiences seamless.
The cryptocurrency market is undergoing a massive transformation. What started as a decentralized experiment has matured into a complex financial landscape requiring robust guardrails. At Merge São Paulo 2026, an all-women panel of industry experts took the stage to tackle one of the most pressing topics in this space: how to build the next generation of digital ecosystems safely and sustainably.
Moderated by Tatiana Guazzelli from Pinheiro Neto Advogados, the “Trust by Design” panel featured Ana Paula Tremaroli of Nomos, Renata Mancini of Ripio, and Julia Monteiro of Veriff. Together, they discussed the evolving role of compliance in virtual assets, exploring how new regulations add clarity, why businesses should see compliance as an enabler, and how education builds consumer trust.
If you want to understand where the digital asset market is heading, you need to understand the foundations of trust. Here are the key takeaways from their compelling discussion.
The shift from friction to foundation
For years, many leaders in the technology and crypto spaces viewed compliance as a necessary evil. They saw identity checks, document requests, and continuous monitoring as roadblocks that slowed down user acquisition. During the panel, Julia Monteiro completely dismantled this outdated perspective.
The compliance seatbelt analogy
Monteiro offered a powerful analogy that changes how we should look at user verification. She explained that many people still view compliance as an annoying obligation designed purely to avoid regulatory fines. However, reality is much more vital to survival.
“I usually say that compliance is a seatbelt,” Monteiro noted. It is the safety mechanism that prevents you from being thrown out of the car when an accident happens. Fraud will inevitably occur, and platforms will face massive money laundering attempts. A strong compliance framework acts as the safety measure that keeps the business intact during these turbulent events.
Battling sophisticated fraud
The digital identity landscape is under constant siege. Malicious actors are highly organized, frequently exchanging best practices and leveraging advanced technology to bypass security measures. Deepfakes and synthetic identities pose a massive threat to exchanges and financial platforms.
When identity validation stops being a one-time entry check and becomes a continuous journey, platforms can fight back effectively. Robust compliance solutions use proof-of-life validation and behavioral analytics to stop bad actors in their tracks. By tracking user behavior across the ecosystem, security providers can accelerate approvals for legitimate users while swiftly rejecting fraudulent attempts.
Regulation as a catalyst for innovation
Another major theme of the panel was the positive impact of central bank regulations on the virtual asset market. Rather than stifling innovation, clear rules provide a framework for sustainable growth.
Bringing light to a new scenario
Ana Paula Tremaroli highlighted how central banking authorities bring much-needed light to the crypto ecosystem. Working with cross-border payments and foreign exchange for over two decades, Tremaroli understands the friction of traditional systems. Stablecoins and blockchain technology offer incredible solutions for efficiency and agility, particularly in Latin America.
However, to offer these solutions safely, businesses need regulators who understand the technology. Regulators must remain open to new ideas while creating rules that encourage advancement. When central banks provide clear guidelines, companies can build products with confidence, knowing they operate within a legally sound environment.
Transitioning from traditional finance
Renata Mancini brought her extensive background in traditional market compliance to the crypto space. She drew important parallels between the two worlds, noting that while the crypto market moves incredibly fast, the core principles of governance and risk management remain the same.
Mancini emphasized that the industry only stands to gain from regulatory oversight. Authorities are actively listening to the ecosystem’s pain points and using that feedback to shape flexible, effective rules. Regulation does not exist to control blockchain technology itself. Instead, it exists to mature the market, protect users, and create a safer environment for digital asset exchanges to operate.
Education: The building block of digital trust
Trust is not something a company can simply promise. It is something a company must actively build every single day. According to Tremaroli, education serves as the fundamental building block for this trust.
Internal and external alignment
Because the crypto landscape is so new, education must happen on multiple fronts. Externally, platforms must help investors understand what they are buying and how the underlying technology works. Users need to understand why platforms ask for their documents and how those requests protect their assets.
Internally, the educational lift is just as heavy. Governance boards, product managers, and front-line sales teams must fully grasp how stablecoin operations function under current regulations. When the people selling the product understand the compliance mechanisms behind it, they can communicate that value to the end consumer with complete transparency.
Democratizing financial services
The ultimate goal of building trust is democratization. Cryptocurrencies and stablecoins still operate largely within niche markets. By educating users and proving the safety of these ecosystems through robust compliance, platforms can bring these tools to the mainstream.
The more people who safely use digital assets, the stronger the overall financial ecosystem becomes. Compliance minimizes risks and brings absolute trust to the business, ensuring that the services offered are sustainable for the long haul.
Intelligent friction: Compliance as a business enabler
Perhaps the most transformative insight from the panel was the concept of moving compliance out of its traditional silo. When compliance operates in isolation, fraudsters win. Fraudsters thrive on fragmented processes and communication gaps between departments.
Breaking down silos
Monteiro stressed that compliance is everyone’s responsibility. It must function as a single organism alongside product, support, engineering, and sales. If a customer support agent spots suspicious activity, they play a vital role in mitigating that risk.
When platforms design products with risk assessment embedded from the very beginning, they create a massive competitive advantage. Compliance shifts from being a cost center to a strategic driver of sustainable growth. After all, it makes no sense to spend marketing dollars acquiring users who will eventually defraud the platform.
The power of intelligent friction
To make compliance a true partner, businesses must utilize “intelligent friction.” This means knowing exactly when to introduce a security hurdle and when to remove it to streamline the user experience.
Post-mortem investigations are incredibly expensive. Recovering stolen funds in the crypto space is notoriously difficult, if not impossible. By applying intelligent friction at the onboarding stage and throughout the user lifecycle, companies prevent the loss before it happens. Monteiro shared a striking example: Uber avoided 35 million dollars in operational costs in a single year simply by implementing effective anti-fraud solutions.
When companies qualify their users better, they lower their overall lifecycle costs and protect their legitimate user base.
The future of regulated digital ecosystems
The panelists wrapped up their discussion with a highly optimistic outlook for the future of digital assets. We are entering an era where structure and discipline will replace the wild west mentality of early crypto days.
Embracing the travel rule
New requirements, such as the travel rule, often spark fear among platform operators due to their complexity. However, these requirements bring necessary discipline to the market. Because identity now travels end-to-end alongside transactions, the entire ecosystem becomes more resilient against money laundering. Teams that align their compliance practices will find these new rules much easier to navigate.
A path to sustainable growth
Mancini noted that changing the perception of compliance from a pure cost to a strategic investment remains a challenge, but the industry is clearly on the right path. The tools required to secure platforms are highly affordable when compared to the massive costs of fraud recovery and reputational damage.
As we move through 2026 and head into 2027, the market will gain incredible momentum. Regulation will naturally expose the platforms that took shortcuts and grew recklessly. Companies lacking proper compliance frameworks and relying on weak onboarding processes will struggle to survive.
Conversely, the platforms that embrace compliance as a partner will thrive. They will grow sustainably, protect their users, and lead the charge in building the next generation of safe, reliable, and entirely trusted digital ecosystems.
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