Crypto Valley Conference 2026: Insights for AML Teams

On May 28, 2026, Crypto Valley Conference 2026 took place in Rotkreuz, Switzerland, bringing together professionals from digital assets, compliance, regulation, and financial infrastructure.

The discussions showed that AML teams are entering a more complex phase of digital asset compliance. Crypto-related SARs are increasing, AI is becoming more important for suspicious activity detection, and stolen asset recovery remains difficult.

Representing Global Ledger at the conference, Yulia Murat, Head of Regulatory Affairs, shared her insights from discussions on crypto-related financial crime, AI governance, stolen asset recovery, stablecoins, DeFi, and institutional adoption.

Below are the key insights from the event and the trends AML teams should watch in 2026.

Yulia Murat, Head of Regulatory Affairs at Global Ledger. Crypto Valley Conference 2026

Yulia Murat, Head of Regulatory Affairs at Global Ledger. Crypto Valley Conference 2026

Crypto Valley Conference 2026: Key Takeaways

The event highlighted several issues that are becoming increasingly important for AML teams across financial institutions, as well as investigators and regulators: crypto-related suspicious activity reporting, AI governance, stolen asset recovery, and crypto investigation readiness.

These takeaways are based on insights shared during Crypto Valley Conference 2026, including discussions from the panel on stolen crypto and asset recovery.

AML, SARs, and Regulatory Expectations

Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are becoming an important signal of how crypto-related risks are evolving. The data shared at the event shows that crypto-assets already represent a significant part of suspicious activity reporting, while cross-border transactions and serious crime indicators remain important areas of attention.

Key points included:

• In Switzerland, approximately 58% of SARs are related to crypto-assets, and this proportion is increasing.

• Around 270 SARs have been received by MROS from VASPs.

• Child sexual abuse-related cases are increasing.

• Most SARs are related to cross-border transactions.

AI, Compliance, and Governance

AI is becoming more relevant for compliance work, especially where teams need to analyse large volumes of banking and transaction data. At the same time, the discussions made clear that AI should support human decision-making, not replace it.

Key points included:

• AI tools can be used within compliance frameworks, but a human must always remain in the loop.

• AI is particularly useful for analysing banking and transaction data.

• Financial institutions should pay close attention to emerging guidance on AI governance.

• Explainability and speed are critical considerations when deploying AI solutions.

• Proper documentation of AI use cases and governance processes is essential.

The same applies to suspicious activity detection. AI capabilities are expected to improve significantly in identifying suspicious activity. However, current AI tools are not yet capable of replacing human judgement. Human risk owners will continue to be required for oversight, accountability and decision-making.

Crypto Investigations

During the panel on stolen crypto and asset recovery, one of the key points was how difficult crypto investigations can become once funds start moving. Crypto-assets can be transferred globally within milliseconds and across borders, creating significant investigative complexity.

Unlike traditional banking, there is often no intermediary that can be contacted to stop a transaction or obtain information. That’s why effective response requires:

• Rapid action.

• Appropriate investigative tools.

• Well-defined procedures.

Recovery rates remain low

The panel also highlighted how challenging asset recovery remains. Less than 1% of stolen crypto-assets are recovered. This is largely due to the fact that blockchain technology remains relatively new and investigative capabilities are still evolving.

Global Ledger’s own findings show a similar challenge from another angle. According to the Global Ledger report, which analysed 255 hack cases for 2025, just 6.52% ($263.23 million) of stolen funds were returned.

Crypto Valley Conference 2026: Key Trends

The conference showed that digital assets are moving from experimentation toward practical integration with financial institutions and market infrastructure. For AML teams, this means that compliance work will need to cover a wider set of risks: institutional adoption, AI-enabled crime, regulatory complexity, DeFi, stablecoins, privacy, and new infrastructure requirements.

Here’re the key trends for 2026 to watch.

1) Institutional adoption continues to accelerate

• Despite broader market weakness and periods of bearish sentiment, institutional adoption remains extremely strong.

• Institutional interest in digital assets is effectively experiencing a bull market.

• Tokenisation initiatives are increasingly focused on utility and liquidity rather than experimentation.

2) AI and Agentic AI emerging as a significant trend

• Financial institutions need to continue investing in AI capabilities, particularly because criminals are increasingly using AI themselves.

• Recovery and investigative firms are building tool-agnostic databases and infrastructure that can support multiple investigative tools.

3) Increasing regulatory complexity

• Financial institutions increasingly need to comply simultaneously with multiple regulatory regimes across different jurisdictions.

• Managing overlapping and sometimes conflicting regulatory requirements is becoming a major challenge.

4) DeFi and regulatory integration

• One of the key challenges facing the industry is ensuring that DeFi can operate in a compliant manner and be safely integrated into regulated financial ecosystems.

• Regulated institutions will require strong compliance frameworks before engaging extensively with DeFi.

5) Stablecoins and financial market infrastructure

• Many financial institutions are now focused on enablement rather than whether stablecoins should exist.

• Traditional finance increasingly expects stablecoin infrastructure to support practical business use cases.

• Stablecoins may contribute to preserving the "singleness of money" across different payment systems.

• Existing financial infrastructure must adapt to support global instant settlement.

• Messaging standards are being updated to support stablecoin ecosystems.

• Stablecoin issuers are increasingly seeking support on compliance and interoperability issues.

• Financial market infrastructures must remain relevant to changing market needs while continuing to serve their communities.

6) Privacy and confidentiality

• Privacy and confidentiality remain fundamental requirements for institutional adoption.

• Traditional financial institutions expect transaction details to remain confidential between counterparties.

• At the same time, blockchain-based records provide valuable auditability and transparency.

• The industry will need to find a balance between transparency and privacy. Public blockchains may increasingly require privacy-preserving controls.

• Transactions between participants may need to remain private while still benefiting from public blockchain infrastructure.

7) Capital efficiency

• Capital efficiency remains a key driver of innovation.

• Developments in money markets continue to shape the evolution of digital asset markets and infrastructure.

8) Innovation expectations

• Simply replicating existing financial services on blockchain infrastructure is unlikely to be sufficient.

• New solutions must provide outcomes that are demonstrably better than existing alternatives.

• In innovation, reaching parity with existing systems is not enough; new solutions need to create additional value.

Final Thoughts

Crypto Valley Conference 2026 showed that AML and compliance teams are facing a broader and more complex digital asset environment.

Crypto-related SARs are increasing, AI is becoming more important for suspicious activity detection, and stolen crypto recovery remains difficult.

For compliance teams across different industries and jurisdictions, this means digital asset compliance needs to become more scalable, explainable, and connected to broader financial crime controls.

At Global Ledger, we help compliance teams monitor blockchain activity, detect exposure to sanctions and fraud risks, assess high-risk counterparties, and investigate suspicious crypto flows with explainable risk intelligence — all from one platform.

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