Blockchain technology has given rise to a new platform for business relationships that combines ease of use, low cost and high security.
While it creates a new basis of trust for business transactions that could contribute to a considerable simplification and acceleration of the economy, demonstrating trustworthiness remains paramount for busineses leveraging this technology.
Trust is a comprehensive concept which is tied to the weakest link of the chain. We can support you all along your journey to build trust in your business:
Financial audit
Smart contract assurance
Controls attestation
Know-your-transaction support
The specificities and complexities of blockchain and crypto-assets applied to these areas are numerous:
- How to audit the transactions carried out by a company on blockchain?
- How to ensure the effective ownership of the crypto-assets held by a company?
- How to value the crypto-asset on the entity's balance sheet?
- How can we certify that smart contracts have been drawn up correctly and have no flaws?
- What are the characteristics of an effective internal control system for a company using blockchain and/or crypto-assets?
- How can we ensure proper compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing rules during a Security Token Offering (STO)?
Our services
- Supporting the auditing of crypto-assets
- Blockchain & crypto-asset risk assurance
- Smart contract assurance
- Crypto-asset compliance and forensics services
Supporting the auditing of crypto-assets
Obtain independent validation of existence and ownership of crypto-assets balances and transactions reports are key for crypto-asset based businesses. Our proprietary tool, unique on the market, has been designed for that very specific purpose.
Introducing Halo for Crypto Solution and its key features, including:
- Key pair validation: Provides independent, substantive audit evidence of the private key and public address pairing without accessing client private key directly;
- Transaction Integrity Reporting: Securely interrogates the blockchain to independently and reliably gather corroborating information about transactions and balances;
- Non-intrusive testing: Keeps clients' private keys safely under their control so they are not shared in any way during this process.
Blockchain & crypto-asset risk assurance
Blockchain and crypto-asset based companies are faced with an increasing demand to demonstrate their compliance with robust frameworks of internal controls as institutional customers typically require controls reports to satisfy their own vendor management policies as well as their financial auditors. These controls reports help customers gain assurance over operational and financial reporting controls in their environment that impact their business.
We can support you reducing uncertainty and eliminating blind spots with respect to your organisation's relevant risks by providing an "outside in" perspective on your risk environment:
- Initial scoping & readiness assessment;
- Controls remediation;
- Type I/Type II assurance report.
Smart contract assurance
Blockchain and smart-contracts are as secured as the pieces of code underlying them. A flaw in such code creates opportunities for breaches and can have dramatic consequences exacerbated by the autonomous operating specificities of smart contracts. As stakeholders' trust in the functional and security features of smart contracts is key to unleashing their potential in organisations, we support you along the way:
- Smart contract functional and security assurance;
- External confirmation of correctness of your smart contracts to stakeholders;
- Privacy and efficiency assessment of your blockchain powered application.
Crypto-asset compliance and forensics services
Compliance with AML/CFT is not an option to crypto-asset service providers and transaction corroboration is instrumental to build trust in this nascent industry. Our teams are here to support you with:
- Design and implementation of target operating models for crypto-assets services and traditional players in AML/Compliance department;
- Support for KYT vendor selections and RfP preparation services;
- Internal policies and procedure design;
- Crypto-asset origin tracing and journey of wealth corroboration.
Contact us
Thomas Campione, CFA
Advisory Director, Blockchain & crypto-assets Leader, PwC Luxembourg
Tel: +352 62133 50 93
