Bridge: A Secure Communication Solution for Crypto Compliance

The Maturing Crypto Industry: A Need for Compliance

The crypto industry is undergoing a significant shift towards maturity, with pragmatism and common sense slowly replacing the idealism and messiness that once characterized blockchain technology. As crypto pioneers continue to push the boundaries of financial innovation, many products and services remain inaccessible to regulated institutions.

Banks, OTC desks, and institutional investors entering the space are finding that the fundamental infrastructure for serious finance is either missing or lacks the compliance tools necessary for full participation. While Telegram and X might be the preferred communication channels for crypto natives, institutions require more than ephemeral messages, constant phishing attempts, and managing countless channels with vulnerable addresses. JPMorgan, for example, was fined $200 million by regulators in 2021 for using these platforms and personal accounts, while scammers have become adept at exploiting them for theft.

Crypto Communication Platforms Unfit for Compliance

The Tie, a provider of institutional-grade digital asset data, has set out to address the challenge of secure crypto communication, integrating with systems like Global Relay that are already used for back-office compliance among financial players.

"We've been so focused on addressing the major pain points in the system that we sometimes overlook the basics," says Josh Frank, CEO of The Tie. "Institutions don't have the option to opt into compliance; they can't just hope that the person they're chatting with on Telegram is who they say they are. They have rules, a duty to preserve records, and existing crypto communication channels were simply not designed with these requirements in mind."

Bridge: A Compliant Communication Platform

According to Frank, the new messaging solution, Bridge, addresses all the needs of institutions looking to participate in the digital asset economy. "There's nothing inherently wrong with WhatsApp or Telegram for most users as long as they exercise caution. However, for institutions, we needed to create a communication platform that doesn't compromise compliance."

Melvin Deng, CEO of QCP in Singapore, told Cointelegraph, "Every regulated institution operates under clear obligations: to know who they're dealing with, to preserve records, and to ensure that communications are both compliant and auditable. In crypto, these basics have been missing for far too long. A platform like Bridge restores that integrity. It brings the standards of institutional finance into a digitally native environment, where identity verification and compliant record-keeping aren't afterthoughts but rather defaults."

Key Features of Bridge

Starting with email domain verification, strict Know Your Business (KYB) rules, and verified identities to eliminate malicious actors, Bridge is designed to facilitate B2B messaging for industry participants worldwide.

Frank notes that managing teams across multiple communication channels has proven to be a significant headache for compliant organizations. "You have 50 channels per counterparty," he says, "And each one has to be depopulated and repopulated every time someone leaves your company. Each one represents a potential liability. Therefore, we've built a solution that allows for centralized team management, including the bulk reassignment of old team members' channels, including their history, directly to new members."

Audit Log for All Blockchain Transactions

This includes automatic auditing of transactions between counterparties. "The platform maintains a complete log of transactions, and includes verified and timestamped notifications of completion, confirmations of arrival – the entire process is designed for compliance," says Frank. "And that persists immutably at the organization level, so that individual users' events feed directly into a master dataset tracking all transactions."

He also notes that Bridge allows for privacy-focused access to The Tie's data platform directly within the app, enabling users to search for contextual information using AI. "Imagine you're traveling to Singapore for Token2049. You can ask Bridge to load custodians, OTC desks, and prime brokers based in Singapore that have raised money in the last two years and have at least $10M in total funding. Then you can message those parties directly within the app."

"You can also use AI to access real-time market sentiment or discover developer statistics – essentially, all of our institutional-grade data is available."

Availability and Pricing

Bridge is scheduled to launch in early 2026 as both a web and desktop application, as well as native iOS and Android apps. Frank claims that The Tie will offer the service for just $5 per month, per user.

"It's designed to be a no-brainer," he says. "If you operate in crypto, you need this. The goal isn't to create more hurdles but simply to make the space safer, welcome new participants, and continue building the tools that will make this the backbone of tomorrow's global financial system."