- PwC, KPMG, Others to Play Critical Role in Crypto Audit
The surge in global adoption of cryptocurrencies saw the Big Four auditing companies getting ready to tap into the possibility of what could be with rising global acceptance of cryptocurrencies.
The big four companies are PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernest & Young and Deloitte.
This is coming after Goldman Sachs rubbished Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, saying they are not assets of value and should not be regarded as investment vehicles.
However, with cryptocurrency market capitalisation presently at over $260 billion, top global auditing firms are looking to tap into a new unproven market with huge potentials.
According to recent reports, the companies and other Fortune 500 companies have been working with a number of cryptocurrency-focused companies to devise means to combat regulatory bottleneck, interoperability challenges, consensus models and development of the technology.
In a recent interview, Henri Arslanian, a global crypto leader at PwC, said the Big Four firms have a very important role to play in the advancement of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
“Although Bitcoin was designed with a trustless ideology, the reality is that the industry still requires trusted entities to catalyze the development of the ecosystem,” he said.
Two years ago, PwC company (Hong Kong branch) started accepting Bitcoin payments from clients and eventually set up a crypto team after an increase in revenue generation and inflow of a new type of young clients. So far, PwC has set up crypto teams in 20 countries of operation since the first adoption.
In the last 18 months, the team has conducted over 350 engagements within the cryptocurrency sector.
According to Arslanian, PwC’s crypto teams are not only focused on tax and accounting challenges, but audit and assurance services are also in demand.
“Over the last couple of months, we’ve expanded our work. We recently closed the first ever crypto fundraising deal at PwC, in which we led a $14 million series A round for a Swiss-based crypto firm with Asian family offices. We are also the auditor for BC Group, a publicly listed crypto company in Hong Kong.”
Similarly, an experts with KPMG, Erich Braun, said that an organization’s blockchain system should be developed with the intent to meet both operational and accounting needs to comply with accounting standards and other regulatory requirements.
“SEC issuers will want to design blockchain technologies to support the entity’s internal control over financial reporting. Being able to demonstrate how these technologies achieve their objectives in a well-controlled environment is critical to a successful blockchain strategy. If the technology is not auditable, the immense benefits it brings, such as increasing efficiencies and cutting costs, may not be realized,” Braun Stated.
Also, driving change in the industry is Ernst & Young. Paul Brody, one of blockchain leaders at Ernest & Young told Cointelegraph in an interview that the firm has been working with Microsoft and ConsenSys to develop an open-source blockchain project called Baseline Protocol, which runs on the public Ethereum mainnet.
Deloitte and the World Economic Forum also released a report on blockchain interoperability. While Accenture and the Digital Dollar Foundation released a Digital Dollar white paper on May 27, which provides key findings on a U.S. central bank digital currency.
