18: Compliance, Doxing, Regulation, & Rug Pulls // Ryan Mueller

This is Episode 18 of our CityDAO Podcast series. Today’s guest is Ryan Mueller, who is a Compliance Specialist from Phantom Compliance. Together with our CityDAO Pod Host @memebrain, we will explore various topics within the realm of doxing, compliance, regulation, and rug pulls in the crypto, NFT, and DAO space. Here’s some background on Ryan and his company, Phantom Compliance.

Ryan is the founder and CEO of Phantom Compliance. He has been active in online payments for 18 years, predominantly in an investigative/risk management role. He is highly knowledgeable and his specialties include fraud investigation and prevention, underwriting of new application risk, policy generation, compliance, managing third-party requests for information, and cryptocurrencies. Specializing in compliance, Ryan lends his expertise to the online-commerce field and high-risk environments.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 3:01 Ryan and Eric talk about crypto in Calgary.
• 4:15 In 2013, Ryan got into the crypto scene through Bitcoin.
• 6:05 Ryan shares the story of his Bitcoin ATM machine.
• 8:59 Today, Ryan is running a team of 13 staff members, and their client base has grown and scaled up rapidly in the past few months.
• 12:17 Ryan explains what exactly he is doing now and how it applies to DAOs and other crypto projects.
• 14:55 When it comes to compliance, Ryan enumerates the five pillars of compliance.
• 18:45 Compliance officers may have some years of experience but it doesn’t mean that they are competent, according to Ryan.
• 22:06 In terms of security, Ryan is confident that Phantom Compliance is very much secure.
• 24:42 Ryan provides his opinion on doxing in crypto, DAO, and NFT space.
• 30:13 For people considering starting or joining crypto, NFT, or DAO project, Ryan offers some words of advice.
• 35:26 Ryan gives his own thoughts about the immediate future of crypto in Alberta, Canada within the next 12 months.
• 38:23 For Ryan, the most important factor for speeding up innovation and adoption in a particular area is access to banking and traditional financial services.
• 40:07 When it comes to financial institutions accepting cryptocurrencies in Canada or other parts of the world, Ryan thinks it can happen.
• 43:46 Phantom Compliance and one other company are offering doxing as a service. Ryan also shares his insight on doxing services being more tangible and accessible in the coming months.
• 46:08 Even though they have been around for many years, they are just releasing their new website.

Key Points from the Interview:

1. “The short answer to what we do is, we find innovative ways to support the clients in front of us.”
2. “When you’re mentioning Wyoming and the Wyoming bill being mercifully broad but fusingly broad, take advantage of the fact that it’s broad now, set up bank accounts in Wyoming and enshrine as an early adopter so that you don’t get lumped in with the mess that comes next.”

Resources Mentioned: