Smart contracts allow the transfer of digital assets automatically without the need for manual periodic transactions, in the form of a payment stream. Payment stream you ask? Allow me to break it down for you through a simple example. As an employee/freelancer, you are familiar with receiving your salary/fees in the form of a lump sum transfer. What if I told you could now receive crypto payment every second, in the form of a payment stream? On Episode 31, I had the opportunity to speak to Miche...
May 13, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 31
We’re currently at a tipping point. The traditional CFO with a traditional finance background may soon become obsolete , and be replaced by the progressive CFO embracing the possibilities of DeFi. But there are no universities and there is no universal playbook offering a curriculum on how to be a Web3 CFO. To get there, it involves one being crypto curious and not being afraid to experiment by dabbling into DeFi. To help us understand why CFOs should care about DeFi, I had the pleasure to speak...
Apr 29, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 30
The legal nature of DAOs is a gray zone and there is no playbook for creating a legally compliant DAO yet, but accounting can nevertheless be done right. The accounting equation is universal and accounting principles are timeless. The only difference now is the addition of blockchain technology, and that now transactions for the DAO reside onchain. With the number of DAOs expected to soar in the years to come, accountants are set to play a key role in the adoption of DAOs. To discuss DAO account...
Apr 15, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 29
The growth of financial instruments powered by DeFi is inevitable. But if the time for DeFi has come, the accounting bodies are still in their starting block (no pun intended). One firm that has gained traction and made a name for itself as the leading crypto accounting firm in the UK, is Myna Accountants . & Its founder Joe David , has been devoting his working hours to provide much needed answers to crypto accounting. Topics covered ; Joe shares his nonlinear career path, and how he founde...
Apr 01, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Blockchain has democratized access to financial services by removing the middleman, and fuelled a new movement with Decentralized Finance, better known as DeFi. DeFi enables anyone in the world to have access to financial services on the internet, and uses smart contracts that replaces the intermediary such as a bank. But no intermediary means 2 things; The onus is now on you to manage your assets diligently and; Recognize that you are now on a new learning journey, and will have to get accustom...
Mar 18, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 27
If accounting standards are still playing catch up with digital assets, bookkeeping can nonetheless be done right. But tracking and extracting onchain data for accounting is a tedious task - it’s time consuming and bridging that data to an accounting software can be daunting for accountants. One company that wants to automate digital assets bookkeeping is Cryptio . Cryptio allows you to convert the blockchain transactions from wallets, exchanges, and custodians into your accounting software to f...
Feb 19, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 26
The onset of web3 being decentralized is fueling a paradigm shift in how work is organized on the internet, and DAOs, short for decentralized autonomous organizations, is the vehicle driving the change. With DAOs being internet-native entities with no central management, where people are incentivized to work on common shared goals, we need new tools that allow these organizations to hold people accountable. One of the emerging tools to address the accountability challenge is Sobol . Sobol provid...
Feb 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Ever since I started this podcast, I’ve always been looking for people with accounting backgrounds who have successfully steered their career into crypto. For episode 24, I could not be more excited to have Will White , a Chartered Accountant, who completed his ICAEW course and has had a unique career trajectory. Will started working at PWC where he was part of the administrators team of the famous Lehmann Brothers case, and continued to be an advisor at numerous Fintech companies, Neo Banks and...
Feb 05, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 24
The very nature of cryptocurrencies is that it’s peer to peer, and there is no need for an intermediary to make payments. But to streamline and facilitate the adoption of crypto payments in a compliant way, there is the need for a whole range of financial applications to be built around. One company which has been building in this space and garnering substantial industry growth for a while now is Request . Request is a payment protocol that enables you to request a payment and be paid with crypt...
Jan 29, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Crypto Assets are challenging the accounting bodies and standard setters around the world, since they vary greatly to the traditional assets like equities, bonds, commodities and estimating their fair value is no straightforward task. They are mostly unregulated, their markets never close and many can’t be turned into fiat currency. One company who wants to solve the complex post trade blockchain data is Lukka , and as a crypto focused tech company, has developed a proprietary valuation methodol...
Jan 22, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Right now is that time of the year when the taxman comes knocking on the door. If you’re residing in a country where crypto tax laws are not, let’s say, generous, having a tax strategy is just as important as an investment strategy. If you’re like most people, you will agree that crypto tax filing is a painful exercise. You have to compile your trading transactions from multiple exchanges, wallets and be cognizant with the relevant tax laws. My guest, Dennis Wohlfarth , also faced the same agony...
Jan 15, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 21
For the last episode of 2021, instead of focusing on a single overarching theme, I wanted to unwind a very eventful year and look into what awaits us in 2022 from a broad perspective. To help me in this endeavour, I had the pleasure to speak to Jay Schulman , the charismatic and versatile National Leader for Blockchain and Digital Assets at RSM US . With 20 years’ experience in information security and technology innovation, Jay leads RSM in addressing both enterprise blockchain technology and t...
Dec 31, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Charles Hoffman , a Certified Public Accountant, is credited as being the Father of XBRL. (‘eXtensible Business Reporting Language’ or XBRL for short is an open international standard for digital business reporting, and is used in more than 60 jurisdictions.) Charles was co-editor of the first ever XBRL taxonomy and played a major role in creating both the IFRS and US GAAP XBRL taxonomies. He is the author of the books XBRL for Dummies , XBRL Essentials (a non-technical guide to XBRL), Mastering...
Dec 25, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 19
The topic of regulation in the crypto space causes division. While some feel uneasy, the rest would welcome it as it's a necessary evil for crypto adoption. Until now, crypto has undoubtedly largely benefited from the lack of clear regulations. Regulators around the world have struggled and been playing catch up with the pace of innovation in crypto, while trying to find a balanced approach between protecting investors and not over regulating and squashing innovation. One country which stands ou...
Dec 18, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Freelancing , remote working and crypto have already disrupted the way we work, and I believe in the future, these 3 combinations will become the rule rather than the exception. One startup that caught my eye and that I’ve been following for a while now is Basenode , as in their words, Basenode’s mission is to empower freelancers to embrace crypto payments. Based in Berlin and backed by the venture capital firm Blockchain Founders Group , Basenode has recently launched its beta version. My guest...
Dec 10, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Cryptocurrencies offer the possibility to exchange value instantly without the need for intermediaries like banks allowing you to save all banking transaction fees in the process. Your funds are moved in and out of your crypto wallet in a matter of seconds to anyone in the world. However to drive adoption of crypto-commerce, you need tools that enable you to connect and facilitate crypto to your accounting. Enter Gilded - a platform that allows you to invoice in crypto, make payments and connect...
Dec 04, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 16
We introduced AuditChain on Episode 5 a few weeks ago. As a refresher, AuditChain is building the world’s first continuous audit & real time financial reporting protocol. As part of its long awaited commercial launch expected to happen at the end of the year, AuditChain recently launched its pilot project. I have the pleasure to have Jason Meyers , its founder, back with us today where we will discuss: The results of the pilot project so far; The upcoming listing of the AUDT token; What role...
Nov 27, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 15
This episode aims at providing the listeners with a macro perspective of fiat currencies , the growing concern on inflation levels and how cryptocurrencies represent a better way for people to protect their wealth. One of the reasons behind this episode was a few weeks ago, a friend told me investing in cryptocurrencies is a scam, and while of course I did my best to convince him otherwise that the government printing money is the actual scam, I want this episode to serve as a wake up call for p...
Nov 20, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 14
Earlier this year, I had read a collection of 7 articles on ‘a new way of auditing’ written by Ian in 2009 whereby he had proposed to ‘perform the check ourselves by relying on a community of volunteers without the need to appoint an external auditor’. The inability of the auditors to spot the failures that led to the financial crisis had been challenged, and Ian questioned whether ‘audits are part of the problem rather than the solution’. Ian Grigg is considered as one of the pioneers of financ...
Nov 13, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 13
With more and more institutional money pouring into the crypto market, I wanted to dive into how these cryptocurrencies are being recorded into the financial statements. As of now, cryptocurrencies do not have a stand alone accounting standard, and therefore are being accounted under ‘Intangible Assets’ - the standard that governs assets like software licences, trademarks, and so on. While innovation in the crypto space is moving at a rapid pace, we cannot say standard setters in the accounting ...
Nov 06, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 12
The topic of blockchain education is dear to my heart, which is the very reason why I started this podcast. Once you start your blockchain education journey and start digging, it truly is never ending. But you have to start because use cases with blockchain will be omnipresent in every industry in the years to come and we have only barely scratched the tip of the iceberg so far. Like most people working in this industry, I have self taught my way into blockchain, but more and more universities a...
Oct 28, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
This is the 2nd episode focused on Blockchain for Enterprises, and after Hyperledger, we dive into the other market leader Corda , designed by R3 . From the get go, the team behind Corda wanted to solve the pain points of the financial services industry, tainted by duplicated and inconsistent data. And of course the team resorted to using a distributed ledger and blockchain technology. Even if Corda first started with banks, it’s a myth that Corda is just for finance. Corda is for all industries...
Oct 21, 2021•2 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Imagine owning a piece of the ‘Mona Lisa Painting’ or the ‘Colosseum’ in Rome? No I’m not saying you would have to invest your life savings into them, but any amount you desire. $10 , $1000, it’s up to you. With blockchain, you will have the ability to convert a physical asset into its digital form, and be able to fractionalize the asset for trading. Imagine a world where you can tokenize anything - not only the traditional assets like stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate. But also more ex...
Oct 15, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 9
The topic Triple Entry Accounting was introduced on this podcast in Episode 4 with Juan Ignacio Ibanez. For the listeners not familiar with the idea, Triple Entry Accounting is an evolution of the double entry accounting system, and it uses blockchain technology to overcome the trust concern in bookkeeping. I was curious to unravel how companies are using the theoretical concept of triple entry accounting to gather empirical evidence and commercialize it as a service. The challenge for use cases...
Oct 09, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Amidst the noise and attention-grabbing cryptocurrency price headlines some of you are having sleepless nights on, there are many companies which perhaps you are hearing less of but who are working on how this fascinating technology of blockchain can be used to transform business. Modern business is made up of siloed repositories of data, each enterprise keeps a separate copy of their data since there is no collective trust. Now we do know that blockchain can solve this data stewardship problem ...
Oct 02, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this episode, I want to invite accountants and auditors to reflect on how the profession is today and what needs to change in the wake of emerging technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and the rest. These technologies are bringing more and more automation to the profession, and therefore should accountants be sitting on the sidelines witnessing for this change to happen or rather participate and evolve? I do not have all the answers on what needs to be done, but this is an inq...
Sep 26, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 6
The emergence of blockchain will not spare any industry, and would you believe it , not even the auditing industry. An audit does not provide absolute assurance on the truth and fairness of the financial accounts since it does not verify 100% of the transactions, but adopts a sampling approach. As a recovering external auditor, I wanted to know whether blockchain technology can solve this pain point? Yes it can. Enter AuditChain , the world’s first decentralized continuous audit & real time ...
Sep 18, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 5
All of you will be familiar with a double entry accounting framework, the bookkeeping system where all debits must be equal to the amounts entered as credits. But even if your accounts are balanced, that does not necessarily mean the reporting figures are free from misstatements, whether due to fraud or error. Which is the reason why audits are required. Triple Entry Accounting allows for a shared ledger and with the advent of blockchain, this shared ledger can now be trusted due to the inherent...
Aug 28, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 4
With the launch of Ethereum in 2014, for the first time ever, we could program decentralized applications that run on a blockchain. But in order to become mainstream, their inherent security is of paramount importance. If poorly coded, these smart contracts are vulnerable to hacking. With a significant amount of funds locked into these smart contracts, the losses can be irreversible for the investors. One way to mitigate the risk of having smart contracts exploited by hackers is by having smart ...
Aug 15, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 3
With more and more companies looking to invest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an alternative to traditional investments like bonds, stocks and so forth, an important consideration for these companies involves the risks and controls in place for owning such assets. One of these significant risks lies in custody . Will the company keep custody of the assets itself, or will it rely on third-party providers? Custody of cryptocurrencies requires a new kind of infrastructure, and connectivit...
Aug 05, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 2
