New Insights by Crypto Investor Asia
With the rapid growth of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, it makes sense that traditional auditing and consulting firms are rising to the occasion by hiring crypto and blockchain specialist.
The Financial Times recently published an article detailing how some of the biggest auditing firms have taken to hiring hundreds of blockchain and crypto experts to offer auditing services to companies within this nascent industries. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the big four in accountancy, has notably hired as many as 400 blockchain and crypto specialists to keep up with the demands of the industry. Leader of PwC’s global network assurance methodology group, Ralph Weinberger, spoke about it to FT:
“WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A RATHER SIGNIFICANT EFFORT. WE ARE DEVOTING SIGNIFICANT RESOURCES TO HOW WE MIGHT PROVIDE AUDIT SERVICES IN NOT JUST CRYPTOCURRENCY, BUT BLOCKCHAIN.”
While the potential for blockchain is transformational, the landscape is nascent and developing. Globally, there is a still a lack of consensus on how these digital assets should be classified while mainstream finance’s view on cryptocurrencies is still fraught in ideas of money laundering and fraud (although there has been a consistent push to fix that image). Companies such as EY, PwC, and KPMG now have a range of clients from across the blockchain scene that wishes their business practices to be in compliance with tax regulations. This is easier said than done in an industry that is still in its infancy however, as stated by The Financial Reporting Council in the UK:
“IN THE ABSENCE OF SPECIFIC GUIDANCE, THERE IS A RISK THAT DIVERSE ACCOUNTING PRACTICES WILL DEVELOP AND BECOME ENTRENCHED.”
One thing is for sure, having the big four on board with cryptocurrencies and blockchain is just another step to guiding it out of the fringes of finance.
