ThinkTWENTY20

ThinkTWENTY20

  • HOME
  • ERIC'S BLOG
  • FORUM
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT US
  • Home | 
  • ERIC'S BLOG | 
  • Will Cryptoassets Come Between You and Your Auditor (or Audit Committee)?

Will Cryptoassets Come Between You and Your Auditor (or Audit Committee)?

on 08 June 2020

The Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB) back in November 2019 published inspection insights on Auditing in the Crypto-Asset Sector. It highlighted 48 Canadian reporting issuers with activities in the crypto-asset sector, and noted auditors didn’t understand what the risks were, relied on information without understanding its reliability, and didn’t get sufficient audit evidence to support their conclusions. (1)

More recently, the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) issued a “Spotlight” with “timely and relevant observations for auditors and audit committees” on the topic of “Audits Involving Cryptoassets”. PCAOB staff has noticed an increasing number of financial statements with cryptoassets recorded and disclosed, as well as having performed inspections where transactions involving cryptoassets were material to the financial statements. It highlighted the need for auditors to understand, as part of the acceptance and continuation process, whether the auditor can even complete the engagement with professional competence, given the specialized skill and knowledge necessary, and called audit committees to ask their auditors (“at their discretion”, of course) about the Firm’s understanding and experience of the area. (2)

I am reminded of an inspection where an auditor was asked by the crusty older PCAOB inspector what “RPG” was. When the auditor responded, “Role-playing game?”, the jig was up; inventory, which was material to the inspection, was being tracked on a legacy IBM System/38, and RPG III was the programming/data environment. When PCAOB inspectors start asking auditors, “What is UTXO?” and the auditors respond, “Was that the robot voiced by Alan Tudyk in Rogue One?”, there may be problems.

(1) https://www.cpab-ccrc.ca/docs/default-source/inspections-reports/2019-crypto-inspections-insights-en.pdf?sfvrsn=9aa5c0d2_20

(2) https://pcaobus.org/Documents/Audits-Involving-Cryptoassets-Spotlight.pdf

Leave a comment

    Comments

    • No comments found
    Powered by Komento
    Forum Recent Posts
    Where Will Technology Progress Take The Accounting Profession?
    Monday, 29 March 2021

    By Ricardo Rodil
    Ricardo Rodil leads the capital markets advisory services division at Crowe Macro (Brazil).

    Every time I try to understand or analyze a very complex event,  I usually try to reduce the problem to its essential elements – a sort of inverted zoom lens. I know that the devil is in the details, but I need to have some distance from them. So, I formulate extreme hypotheses, thinking about all the possible/plausible results (from 8 thru 8,000, as we say in Brazil). And, of capital importance, I know I need to keep my mind open to all possibilities. Today, I want to share with you where my latest thoughts have led me, about where and how technology is progressing and how that is transforming our lives.

    The Tele-Everything World
    Saturday, 20 March 2021

    In a non-random survey of some 915 innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists were asked by Pew Research to consider what life will be like in 2025 in the wake of the outbreak of the global pandemic. Overall they saw life being made worse for many people because of the spread of mis-information and authoritarianism and the fact people will become a lot more reliant on technology, which will serve to widen the economic divide.

    ThinkTWENTY20 © 2021. Privacy Policy