Fireblocks’ Pavle Krivokuća on why Travel Rule compliance is still hard

Moving crypto across a public blockchain takes seconds. Proving to regulators who sent it and who received it is a different story.

Pavle Krivokuća, Product Manager for Compliance & Security Infrastructure at Fireblocks, says Travel Rule compliance on public blockchains remains difficult for two stubborn reasons. Travel Rule providers don’t share information with each other, and jurisdictions don’t agree on the rules.

Two problems, one rule

Krivokuća laid out the challenge during a late October 2026 episode of the Stable School podcast. The Travel Rule requires virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, to exchange originator and beneficiary data when value moves between them.

The first problem Krivokuća flagged is interoperability. Various Travel Rule providers run their own networks, and those networks don’t necessarily talk to each other.

The second problem is regulatory fragmentation. Different jurisdictions impose different compliance requirements, so what satisfies one regulator may not satisfy another.

How Fireblocks is trying to bridge the gaps

Fireblocks’ answer has been to plug multiple providers into one platform rather than betting on a single network. The company has integrated Notabene, Sumsub, GTR and TRUST as Travel Rule service providers.

Through that setup, institutions can manage compliance policies, screen transactions and exchange the required originator and beneficiary data.

The platform also includes policies for transaction screening that cover situations where Travel Rule data fails to arrive. Those include missing-message timeouts of up to 1.5 hours.

In February 2026, Fireblocks announced a partnership with Sumsub built around a real-time, encrypted data exchange system. The arrangement covers over 1,800 VASPs and is aimed at improving compliance for digital asset transfers, with a particular focus on stablecoins.

A recurring theme for Krivokuća

The October podcast wasn’t the first time Krivokuća has raised structural gaps in the system. In a March 2026 discussion, he addressed counterparty discovery and the need for accurate VASP attribution.

Counterparty discovery is the step of figuring out who is on the other end of a transfer. Before a firm can send Travel Rule data, it has to know whether the receiving address belongs to a regulated VASP, and which one.

What this means for institutions and the market

For institutions, Krivokuća’s comments are a reminder that Travel Rule compliance is not a box checked once. It is an ongoing operational job shaped by which providers a counterparty uses and which regulators each side answers to.

Fireblocks is positioning itself as the connective layer that absorbs some of that complexity. By integrating four providers and partnering with Sumsub on a network spanning over 1,800 VASPs, the company is betting that aggregation beats waiting for an industry-wide standard.

The stablecoin focus of the Sumsub partnership is notable. Stablecoins are increasingly used for settlement and cross-border payments, which is exactly where Travel Rule friction shows up most often.

But aggregation has limits. A platform can connect to many providers, yet it cannot make those providers interoperate natively or make regulators harmonize their requirements.