The Federal Bureau of Investigation has convened an invite-only forum on crypto crime for nine consecutive years, according to a repeat attendee. The gathering, now known as the Virtual Asset Technical Exchange, brings together law enforcement, overseas investigators, and crypto-security companies in a single venue. A run of that length signals that virtual-asset crime is handled inside the bureau as a persistent priority rather than a passing concern.

The forum was previously known as the Virtual Currency Symposium, three former attendees said. This year's edition took place in September in San Antonio, Texas.

Roughly 50 private-sector vendors get a seat

Invitations cap the number of private-sector vendors and partners at about 50, with total attendance in the hundreds, two of the people said. One attendee described the event as a law enforcement gathering built for police and their partners.

Networking runs alongside keynotes, panels, and fireside chats, and companies exhibit their platforms in dedicated rooms.

Roman Bieda, an executive at Token Recovery, said in a LinkedIn post that the 2024 edition met in Austin, his third time attending. He said NFTs had faded from the agenda, while discussions covered Tornado Cash — the crypto mixer placed under US Treasury sanctions in 2022 — and a comeback of pig butchering scams, the long-con frauds that blend romance with fake investment platforms to drain victims' funds.

TRM Labs confirms attendance as Chainalysis declines comment

Blockchain forensics firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs were reportedly in attendance this year. TRM Labs confirmed its participation and noted that Predicate co-founder and CEO Nikhil Raghuveera addressed stablecoin compliance and the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin statute signed into law in July 2025. The FBI and Chainalysis declined to comment.

Representatives from the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — the bureau that serves as the US government's financial intelligence unit — and the Security Alliance, or SEAL, an industry-led group for coordinating responses to crypto threats, were also present, the people said.

Topics included how cartels are using crypto and its role in terrorist financing, cyber-enabled fraud and scams, child sexual abuse material, human trafficking, and violent crime, including wrench attacks — physical assaults in which criminals coerce victims into surrendering device access and funds — a source familiar with the event said. Other topics included emerging hacks, North Korean activity, and intelligence sharing between industry and police.

The FBI created its Virtual Assets Unit in February 2022 to centralize its crypto work, the bureau said at the time. The bureau has had a team working on virtual-asset cases for about a decade, a person said.

The long-running forum comes amid continued federal crypto enforcement activity. Earlier this month, Cryptopolitan reported that the FBI seized more than $560,000 in crypto destined for Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades. The FBI also joined Japan's National Police Agency and agencies in Australia and Germany in naming the North Korean group Plum, which they said stole about $10.71 million in crypto. Both actions relied on the same cross-border coordination and industry-police information exchange that attendees cited among the forum's core topics.