The Accountant Quits Podcast

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 inquisitive attempt to encourage more discussion on this topic, which from what I see is lacking from the leading professional accountancy qualifications This episode is brought to you by AuditChain - the world's first decentralized continuous audit and real time reporting protocol. Now traditional audit methodology focuses on “materiality”, not accuracy. We are constrained by time and cannot audit 100% of the transactions, and therefore we perform sampling. AuditChain decentralizes audit and uses an independent assurance methodology that automates auditing tasks, and continuously audits 100% of the transactions. With AuditChain Chartered Accountants and professionals will write and own Process Control NFTs that automate internal and disclosure controls, where these NFTs pay royalties in return. With more and more automation, accountants will increasingly find themselves becoming redundant. If you are a forward thinking CPA or Chartered Accountant, and want to participate and be in touch with the latest developments from AuditChain in decentralizing the audit profession using blockchain, you should apply for membership by visiting DCARPE Alliance. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes. It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. Together we can help accountants prepare themselves for a blockchain future. For show notes and past guests, please visit theaccountantquits.com/podcast/ Follow The Accountant Quits: Instagram: instagram.com/theaccountantquits/  LinkedIN: linkedin.com/company/the-accountant-qui

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 financial reporting protocol ecosystem. This time by including 100% of the transactions, a network of independent CPAs and Chartered Accountants provide external assurance on the controls, financial data and disclosure requirements. If Satoshi Nakamoto will go down in history as the inventor of the world’s first peer to peer payment system without central intermediary with Bitcoin, Jason Meyers, the inventor of AuditChain, will be remembered for being the pioneer of decentralized continuous audit. Jason is currently developing the only known use case of blockchain for the auditing industry with AuditChain, and bringing some much needed change with real time assurance and financial reporting. In this episode, you will learn; What decentralized continuous audit really means; Why real time financial reporting is necessary; The challenges ahead to transition from traditional audit to decentralized audit; How NFTs can be used not only as art collectibles but as a monetization opportunity for accountants; And much more… This episode is brought to you by AuditChain - the world's first decentralized continuous audit and real time reporting protocol. Now traditional audit methodology focuses on “materiality”, not accuracy. We are constrained by time and cannot audit 100% of the transactions, and therefore we perform sampling. AuditChain decentralizes audit and uses an independent assurance methodology that automates auditing tasks, and continuously audits 100% of the transactions. With AuditChain Chartered Accountants and professionals will write and own Process Control NFTs that automate internal and disclosure controls, where these NFTs pay royalties in return. With more and more automation, accountants will increasingly find themselves becoming redundant. If you are a forward thinking CPA or Chartered Accountant, and want to participate and be in touch with the latest developments from AuditChain in decentralizing the audit profession using blockchain, you should apply for membership by visiting DCARPE Alliance. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes. It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. Together we can help accountants prepare themselves for a blockchain future. For show notes and past guests, please visit theaccountantquits.com/podcast/ Follow The Accountant Quits: Instagram: instagram.com/theaccountantquits/  LinkedIN: linkedin.com/company/the-accountant-quits

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 features of cryptography. When I first read Triple Entry Accounting,I had the firm conviction that if what this accounting framework promises in theory could be applied in practice, it can be set to revolutionize the future of bookkeeping. In this episode, we discuss; The limitations of the current double entry accounting system; What triple entry accounting really means and how blockchain has made the idea viable; Use cases and examples of companies building business applications using the framework of triple entry accounting; Challenges and solutions to accelerate adoption of triple entry accounting; And many more... My guest for the episode, Juan Ignacio Ibañez is the Centre Administrator and a Research Associate at the Centre for Blockchain Technologies of the University College of London.  Juan has spent the last few years studying various aspects of triple-entry accounting with blockchain, and has co-written several papers on the subject matter. The papers are; The Efficiency of Single Truth: Triple-entry Accounting REA, Triple-Entry Accounting and Blockchain: Converging Paths to Shared Ledger Systems Triple-entry Accounting, Blockchain and Next of Kin: Towards a Standardization of Ledger Terminology You will find all the shownotes, transcripts and links to the episode on the website of The Accountant Quits.

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 contracts audits. Smart contracts can be transformative but the only way to get there is if people know with certainty that money cannot be stolen from their smart contract. Stefan Beyer is a consultant in Distributed Ledger Technology and Cryptography focusing on blockchain architectures and smart contract security and has under his belt more than 100 smart contract audits. Stefan has recently co-founded Oak Security, a company offering security auditing services for a number of blockchains, with a special focus on third-generation blockchains such as the Cosmos, Terra, and Polkadot ecosystems. In this episode, we discuss; Smart contract audits and common mistakes for developers writing smart contracts; Planning a smart contract audit and how should the client prepare; The evolution of smart contracts and new concerns faced by auditors; Vulnerabilities of smart contracts leading to hacks; Where to start to become a smart contract auditor and blockchain programming languages available; And many more... For shownotes/links to the episode, please visit www.theaccountantquits.com 

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 connectivity to the internet is the intersection where solutions for custody diverge. For Episode 2, I have the pleasure to have Lior Lamesh, the co-founder of GK8. GK8 is a Tel-Aviv based blockchain cybersecurity company which provides an enterprise-grade custody platform that enables financial institutions to execute their blockchain transactions risk free from cyber attacks. To achieve this, the company has developed the world’s first true air-gapped vault with no internet connectivity, or in other words an offline system for transacting cryptocurrencies. The company’s slogan speaks for itself - You can’t hack what you can’t reach. Lior earned his expertise in cybersecurity while serving in Israel’s elite cyber team in charge of protecting the country’s strategic assets from state-level hackers, reporting directly to the Prime Minister's Office. An expert in both cyber-attacks and cyber-defense, Lior leads the development of GK8’s and his vision is to make hacking private keys and blockchain assets impossible. Enjoy the episode..

To give you a short yet compelling glimpse of Monica’s faith in blockchain as an emerging technology, after 20 years of being the CEO of Strate, the central securities depository of South Africa and putting the country on the map as a trusted digitised financial market ecosystem, she resigned. Why ? Well, long story short - The executive board of Strate didn’t share her vision into the magic of blockchain. With a background in accounting, Monica started her career in auditing and from an early stage was involved in developing accounting standards for the Chartered Accountancy profession. Today Monica is the South African Lead for Consensys, a market leader in building blockchain based solutions, which was founded by none other than Joseph Lubin, one of the 8 co-founders of Ethereum. Monica is a also professor on blockchain at the University of Johannesburg, a board member of The Accounting Blockchain Coalition and board member of The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). Monica’s career is a testament of someone who doesn't resist but adapts to change, and recognizes that intellectual curiosity is where one starts to reinvent themselves. In this episode, we will cover wide ranging topics around blockchain as a technology, its use cases in accounting and how accountants can start to educate themselves.