Hello, and welcome to Money Talks from Slate Money, our interview series where we talk to the most

interesting and fabulous people that we can find out there in the world. I'm Felix Salmon

of Bloomberg and this week I am talking to Joe Salama. Joe, welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure

to be here, Felix. Joe, introduce yourself. Who are you? I am the chief compliance officer of

Coinbase. That sounds really boring. Is that boring?

It is not boring. It's actually really, really fun and exciting. It really is. Like, that's not a joke.

It really is fun. Because, like, you know, whenever anyone talks about finance and money and stuff,

people talk about, like, back office operations operations in Tampa or they talk about compliance.

And that's where all the boring people go.

But the fact is that you are not a boring person.

You're kind of like burying the lead here.

You are one of the great Wall Street experts on money laundering.

Well, on prevention of money laundering, I'd say.

But yeah, yeah. It is pretty

exciting because there's not a ton of roles that you would find in the finance industry where I

think you can have as direct an impact as you can in the compliance space. And it's constantly evolving.

It's always a, you know always a question of making sure you understand

the most recent typologies, how to detect them,

how to prevent them.

So it's a never-ending quest.

This is a good old fashioned white hats versus black hats,

good guys versus bad guys, race where each of you

...