Grant Thornton LLP, just released a report that shows that they are at the center of the crypto ecosystem. They claim that in the first three months of 2019, they audited over $10 Billion in crypto assets. These audits covered 40 different cryptos and over 100 million unique addresses.
Founded in Chicago in 1924, Grant Thornton LLP is one of the world’s leading organizations of independent audit, tax, and advisory firms. They have revenues in excess of $1.8 billion and operates 58 offices. The company is the sixth-largest US accounting and advisory business.
Johnny Lee, a forensic investigator, management consultant and attorney who helps companies with their cybersecurity, blockchain, data governance, and privacy challenges, says:
“We’re going to be seeing businesses adopt cryptocurrency because it is a reduced friction way of doing everyday things from transfer pricing to settling intracompany books to perhaps even an efficient way of managing foreign exchange arbitrage.”
Their hybrid-cloud platform uses complete archival copies of blockchains for 40 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ripple, EOS, Tezos, Zcash, Monero, Dogecoin, NEM, and more. They have developed proprietary organizations for inquiring the purchase and actuality of each of these assets.
Markus Veith, a partner in the Audit practice at Grant Thornton says:
“We’ve spent four years developing technology platforms and auditing methodologies that allow us to create point-in-time balances for cryptocurrencies – and we’ve done it with a level of accuracy that satisfies strict auditing standards. The result is that we can independently verify what a company holds in various cryptocurrencies.”
From verifying assets to establishing appropriate internal controls to ensuring security, blockchain presents a wealth of concerns that auditors need to address. Going forward, it may also present opportunities. There’s some interesting discussion going on about enterprise financial systems and their ability to write financial transactions directly onto the blockchain and the implications that have for the audit of the future.
