TRM Labs appoints former MAS official Ziqing Ang as APAC policy head
TRM Labs has appointed former Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) official Ziqing Ang as Head of Policy for Asia-Pacific, expanding its regional role as regulators and industry build frameworks for digital assets and AI.
Ang will work with policymakers and law-enforcement across APAC, focusing on illicit financial networks and policy responses. Her background spans more than eight years at MAS, followed by institutional digital-asset roles at Sygnum and BPI Financial Group. TRM Labs also recently hired Claudia Hui (former MAS regulator) as Head of Compliance Advisory for APAC.
The appointment comes as TRM Labs reports a sharp rise in crypto crime. Its adjusted crypto crime volume climbed from about $123 million in 2020 to more than $103 billion in 2025. Investment scams remain the largest category: pig-butchering schemes accounted for 62% of fraud inflows last year. TRM Labs also found generative AI is increasingly used in scams, with AI-enabled scam activity up 40%—from deepfake recruitment videos to fabricated dashboards.
For traders, this signals an enforcement-and-compliance-driven backdrop in Asia. Stricter policy coordination and more scam-related disruption can support longer-term market quality, but may also drive short-term volatility around compliance headlines and risk-off sentiment.
Neutral
This is a corporate/people and compliance signal rather than a direct change to token supply, rates, or exchange listings. TRM Labs’ appointment of a former MAS official (Ziqing Ang) suggests tighter coordination with regulators and law enforcement on illicit finance and scam remediation across APAC—an overhang for bad actors, but not an immediate catalyst for broad market repricing.
In the short term, traders may see mild risk-off sentiment around “AI scam” and enforcement narratives, similar to past periods when regulators in Asia escalated licensing/oversight and compliance language (e.g., enforcement-driven headlines). In the long run, improved policy capacity can reduce fraud and potentially strengthen market integrity, supporting fundamentals.
Because the article’s key figures (crime volume >$103B in 2025; pig-butchering 62% of inflows; AI-enabled scams +40%) describe trends rather than an abrupt policy shock, the net market impact is more likely neutral than bullish or bearish.