Cryptocurrency – what is it and how does it work?

Did you know that more than 1 in 3 cryptocurrency investors know, little to nothing about cryptocurrency?

In this informative, fascinating, and helpful podcast, Rebecca Harding from Saltwhistle Communications talks to Vinni Toppi from CohnReznick LLP and John Wilson from HaystackID, both based in the USA, to get an understanding of what cryptocurrency is and how it works.

They cover everything from what is blockchain, to how fraudsters can get away with cryptocurrency.

Do not miss this essential podcast, relevant to everyone in business.

Speakers

John Wilson, Haystack ID - https://haystackid.com/people/john-wilson/
Vinni Toppi, CohnReznick LLP-  https://www.linkedin.com/in/vtoppi/
Rebecca Harding, Saltwhistle Communications - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-harding-mcim-mcipr-fswwj-saltwhistle-22b508b/

Transcript

Introduction

Rebecca Harding 

Thank you for joining us for this turnaround restructuring and insolvency podcast series, we will be exploring global issues that affect the world economy. I'm your host, Rebecca Harding and I'll be joined by a selection of experts from around the world, in firms that are all part of the Nexia International Network, and all of whom are leaders in turnaround, restructuring and insolvency. Nexia International is a leading global network of independent accounting and consulting firms. All of the experts appearing on this show can be contacted by the Nexia International website. Thank you 

Rebecca Harding  

Hello, guys. Hi, Vinny. Hi, John. How are you? 

Vinnie Toppi  

Morning, Rebecca, how are you? 

Rebecca Harding  

Good thanks. Yeah, great to see you both. So cryptocurrencies, now, as you know, this was not my specialist area so talking to you is a real benefit for me as well. So can you explain for everybody, and for me, how do they work? And what's it all about?

Vinnie Toppi  

Sure, Rebecca, I think, you know, whenever I start talking about cryptocurrencies, and digital assets, I just take a step back and make sure everybody understands blockchain right? Because blockchain is the technology that they're built on and you have to think of blockchain as a digital ledger.  So think about walking into Chase Bank, you know, your local bank branch and depositing funds into your account. Well, somebody then, you know, within minutes, could walk into a Chase Bank in Tokyo, and access your account and see that your account just received that deposit, right? So that electronic ledger is being shared between Chase bank branches. Well, the blockchain ledger is being shared amongst everyone in the public. Anyone who has access and has downloaded the software can see what is going on on the blockchain and transact on the blockchain. And, there are different block chains, right? We've all heard about Bitcoin, which is the largest cryptocurrency but there, are other blockchains out there. And there are private blockchains, depending on what you're trading and what asset you're working with. So the underlying software might, you know, let's call it is a electronic ledger that is being used even now today for other capabilities, such as electronic contracts, or they're called smart contracts, where the components of a contract are written into the software.  And as pieces of the contract are satisfied, it moves on to the next piece, and you see that is going to be something that is going to, you know, take over the business world. I mean, it's you see it in logistics, now you see it in food distribution and now you know, they're talking about Bell, expanding it to real estate transactions. So that's what the ledger is all about. 

Rebecca Harding  

So does that mean that people can see what everybody's got? You know, if you go onto that ledger, can you see it? Or can you see what I've got, if I've got cryptocurrency?

John Wilson  

Well, so it's not that people can see. So, it is there, it's visible, and everybody can see what's there but it is synonymous or anonymous, in some instances. So there's like a serialisation so it's not like, hey, John Doe owns this amount of bitcoin and spent it here and sent this much received this much. It's, you know, this crypto hash key and it's this long string of characters, and that's what identifies the individual. And then in some instances, that hash key may change every transaction. And the blockchain itself is tracking how those relate. Or you know, there's other complicated schemes as well that do that so you do have like, what are called privacy coins and privacy currencies that are you know, really obfuscating it so it's very difficult to tell who has what or how much. Then you have like Bitcoin, where it's, it is a public ledger, and if I know your address, I can actually figure out hey, how much coin have you spent? How much have you received, and how much do you still have and over what period of time everything that's occurred because it is an immutable public ledger so that ledger is there It's open to anybody that's participating in the network. They can download it, they can see it, they can look at it. 

Rebecca Harding  

That could be bad going down the pub, you don't want anyone knowing how much you've got before the round gets in do you? So I mean, how does it go? Is it just like digital money so you can move it from one account to another? Or is it because I somebody told me that it's more like cash as well that you can actually put it onto hardware and move it in that way is that right? 

John Wilson  

Yeah. Again, so the blockchain itself the ledger itself, tracks the address, you can put it on to what are called like hardware wallets that don't stay connected to the network and put it in a safe and the only way to access it is to reconnect to that network so that the the wallet can talk to the network and then you authenticate, you provide your private key for the wallet well, you know, in whatever blockchain it has, you know different kinds of structures, but you know, you have to have that public address to your wallet. And you have to have that private key which proves your ownership and is the only thing that proves ownership. So, it's like having it in your hand. If you have the private key, it's like, you've got cash in your hand and I can bury it in the sand, I can put it in the bank or I can do what i want with it, run off with it, have a nice holiday.

Vinnie Toppi  

And Rebecca, think about that private hardware wallet, like a safety deposit box in the bank, right? If I have it in a public ledger, and going back to my Chase example, right? You know that I have cash in a chase account, or you know that I have cash, I have digital currencies in this public wallet, okay. But the minute I move it to that hardware wallet, it's like moving it to a safety deposit box that, you know, you need a special key to get into that box, and no one knows what's in that box until you can open it with that key. 

Rebecca Harding  

Yeah, so it's really secret and nobody, so people can really just walk off with that money, can't they? They can just put it onto a USB stick and they're gone aren't they?

John Wilson  

Yeah, that's exactly correct. Yep. They can transfer all of it into their, you know, again, a little brick that's, you know, looks no bigger than a flash drive. Can be holding, you know, $10 just as easily as it could be holding 50 million. 

Rebecca Harding  

Yeah, I think we got the grounds for a book here haven't we?  Or a thriller movie I can feel it coming coming on. So the different types of currencies? Because I think I was confused about this as well, because I didn't really understand that Bitcoin was a type of currency. So with all the different types of currencies, how do you choose one or do you choose several? And how are they valued against each other?

Vinnie Toppi  

Well, there's different currencies but there's different digital assets. So you know, digital currencies, Bitcoin, Aetherium, Bitcoin cash, that's, that's one category, you know, something that's taken the market by storm in the last year are NFT's, which is, let's call it digital art or digital baseball cards and trading cards. Right. But they're still currencies or assets that are traded on the blockchain. Okay. And it really comes down to, you know, what is your intended use? You know, you may be an investor, you may be a fad investor, who's, you know, just looking at the the latest and greatest digital currency, that's popular right now.

Rebecca Harding  

I was looking for advice actually, I've got £10

Vinnie Toppi  

So it comes down to what's your purpose? And I think, you know, that's what, you know, there's also a difference between personal, what an individual maybe want to use it for versus what a, what a business may use it for.

Rebecca Harding  

So, I mean, John, is there anything, you sort of, with the way it's valued, is there any advice that you can give to people on looking at different? 

John Wilson  

Yeah, I mean, so again, you've got kind of a several buckets of, you know, what they may be, you've got, like Bitcoin and Aetherium. There, they're really their only value is derived from the trust the people on the network have of the coin. And so its value, that's why their values are so volatile. You know, if I believe in Bitcoin, I can go out and I can buy it. And if I think it's worth $38,000, today, I can go buy one Bitcoin for $38,000, people in the network are willing to do that transaction, that price can go up, it can also go down. And that's where you see these wild fluctuations. You also have things called like stable coins, like Bitcoin cash, where they're actually pegged to, you know, they're tethered or pegged to a currency. So you have a fiat currency that's actually backing the coin and that's what provides or marks its value. So you know, there are all types of different assets and then you also have to realise there's, you know, the private blockchain coins and stuff so like financial institutions may have their own private coin within the bank so that they can deal with international transactions and move money instantly from the US to other locations. Through that, their own private ledger, their own private crypto currency that only the bank controls and has access to, so the bank says, hey, if you know the Europe branch wants to exchange some money with the US branch, they just go in, they do this little transaction. And that's the tracking, it's the ledger. It's a quicker, easier way for the organisation to move its money from one location to another. 

Rebecca Harding  

Right so when I've got my advice,off Vinny after this, we've done this podcast, and he tells me where to invest my money, do I go to a broker? Do I go to a platform? Where do I go to set up my account? 

Vinnie Toppi  

Well, you don't want to go to the guy in the corner, that's what you don't want to do right?  So Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of, you know, what I'd call now, commercial wallets. You know, Coinbase, I'm not supporting any specific wallet, but that's one of the popular ones. Some banks have platforms now. Securities firms like Robinhood now allows you to trade crypto. So it again, it comes down to what is your intended use? What's the frequency of the the transactions that you're going to be making? and what type of reporting and monitoring do you want to make sure that's in place? But yeah, I mean, it's, it's simple to, for example, I have a Coinbase wallet, I can access Coinbase through my phone, I can access it through any computer connected to the internet, I can go on and transact, I can check what the digital currency market is doing. So it just depends on you know, do you want the ease of something like that? Or do you want a hardware wallet where you're going to move a couple million dollars you know, flee the country and, and live the rest of your life in some under some palm tree so.. 

Rebecca Harding  

Living with two teenage girls it's always a temptation.

John Wilson  

Yeah, and, you know, just to add to that is the understanding of you, there are some very principal differences like Coinbase, you have a wallet, you have direct access, you have your private key, it is like cash. When you have cryptocurrencies at places like Robinhood, or Fidelity or you know, any of the like brokerage firms that are allowing you to trade cryptocurrencies. You don't have direct cryptocurrency asset, you have that as an asset in your portfolio, but it's not like you have the keys that are on the blockchain ledger, like that's actually held by the brokerage firms. So there's differences and you know, how they actually have the access to their currency. Now you do have things like Robinhood just introduced their in beta their own wallet so that you can actually access your coins. So it's a really rapidly ever evolving marketplace.  

Rebecca Harding  

It's still very new, isn't it? 

John Wilson  

It is. It's in its infancy, for sure.

Rebecca Harding  

Absolutely. So taxation, then, I mean, if it's in its infancy, how are the tax authorities coping with all this? That must be quite difficult? Do they tax it? Do they even know it's there? What's going on? 

Vinnie Toppi  

Well, I think you need to just talk about regulatory bodies in general, right? Because taxing is only one piece of it. I mean, you know, depositing funds in a bank here in the United States has certain protections, opening up a brokerage account, the brokerage firms are subject to certain rules and regulations. Nothing really exists for cryptocurrencies, because who are you regulating? Right? I mean, there's no there's not one institution, there's not one body that you're trying to regulate. It's everybody who is transacting on the blockchain, and it's all public. So, you know, in the United States, crypto assets are looked at as property. They're not securities are not currency. And a taxing authority, you know, says that every time you transact on a digital asset, that's a reportable transaction, not necessarily leads to tax, but it is a reportable transaction. So I buy bitcoin and then convert that to Aetherium and then purchase Bitcoin, you know, each one of those is a transaction that needs to be reported.

Rebecca Harding  

So you've basically got no regulation for this sort of, really, because it's so difficult, it's so young, and it's changing and nobody can really track it down. So why would business use it? Doesn't it sound quite dangerous for business to use? What would be the advantages?

John Wilson  

Well, it's you know, there's advantages, there's disadvantages, and there's a lot of mileage in between because you've got the legitimate business uses, you know, hey, I've got customers that it's easier to reach, they want to use their digital currency, they want an instant transaction, they want low transaction fees, and quick control. So a music festival, for instance, might use a cryptocurrency for payments for all of the vended activities at their location, because it's much easier, the fees are much lower than traditional credit cards. The transactions are much easier. A lot of things of that nature occurred now. It's also a lot of dark web activity. There's a lot of, you know, people doing nefarious things with the cryptocurrencies and, you know, there's all these scams about, hey, you know, transfer your cryptocurrencies to me, I'm going to lend it out for you, and I'm going to pay you 1,000% interest, you know, 

Rebecca Harding  

I get two or three of those a day!

John Wilson  

Or they're, you know, today, I'm going to give you 20% interest a day, you know, so. And, you know, your mileage may vary with those, that they, they're pretty much all and anybody that's promising those super high returns generally is just a scam. And a lot of them are, you know, multi tiered scams, where they're getting coins, and then you refer people in and they're giving coins and, you know, so it looks like you're getting some profits for a while and it dries up.  

Vinnie Toppi

But Well, John, in my world, you know, I'm a forensic accountant, that's called a Ponzi scheme.

John Wilson

So there is, you know,  absolutely. But there's a lot of that out there.

Vinnie Toppi  

But Rebecca, you know, to go back to your question, the, you know, let's talk about stable coins for a second, right? If I'm an organisation that transacts around the world, and, you know, I don't want to a deal with foreign currency translation and multiple markets or deal with foreign currency fluctuations in multiple markets. Why don't I use you know, bitcoin cash, right? It's pegged to the US dollar the fluctuation is not that great, but it allows me to transact securely digitally and instantly across the globe. Right. That's one of the reasons why they may use it. And then blockchain, you know, as I started, as I started out by saying, you know, Blockchain really is the technology, so, logistics right to be able to track the movement of your products, your goods, you know, is it where is that container that I'm shipping where, you know, where are the products at the end of the day, blockchain can help you with all that. 

Rebecca Harding  

Right. And savings, I would think for you as a business as well really is, in terms of financially must be a lot cheaper to work like that than having to track everything manually. Is that right?

John Wilson  

Well, it's you that well, go ahead, Vinnie. No, go ahead, John. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, you know, so yeah, it is it, the transactions are much cheaper. They're much faster than traditional banking, and things of that nature. But then you can also look at things like the logistics side of this, like Vinnie was just talking about. And they do really some interesting things like some of the poultry producers are now using it to track from egg, you know, at the hen to all the way to walking out the grocery cart in the grocery store. And they know you know exactly what hen the egg came from, then they know what bin it was put in to get transported to the distribution centre, then what temperature it was stored at, like they have all that information automatically going into these logistics blockchain so that I can know hey, yep, there is no temperature variations for this egg as it went through the entire process got all the way to the grocery store was then delivered to John Doe, as the customer at the grocery and they walked out with it in their basket. And so, you know, when something occurs, like the, you know, a disease outbreak related to something, you know, they can track it, you know, okay, yeah, that came from this particular location and this particular set of hens in this particular hen house, and unwinded to, you know, an incredible detail. And, you know, whereas years ago it was, okay, well, all the chickens from that farm all the eggs that came from that farm, now have to be recalled, because we had one we don't know exactly where it came from. We know that it was from this farm.

Rebecca Harding  

I mean, it's absolutely amazing. Sorry, that's my little watch going off. So exciting. I don't know what's going on. But it's actually amazing that you can do that with the chickens. You can trace it all that way. But I mean, in case of an insolvency obviously, there's a lot of tracing to be done in that and you're looking at, you know, where funds are going or how how do people go into an insolvency situation and start to look for crypto currencies? What are they going to do going in? What are the issues they're going to face?

Vinnie Toppi  

Well, let's, let's start with the easy stuff, right. I mean, if you're, you know, one of those businesses that we discussed a couple minutes ago, that is using digital currencies, to transact, because it's easier and safer in all those different geographic locations, they're going to have a wallet or a series of wallets, depending on what currencies they're using, they're going to have systems and records in place. And so you know, when you walk into that situation, you're going to be able to, you know, look at books and records, see statements, run across statements that have all this information on it. You know, the harder part is, when, you know, an insider, decides to throw a couple million dollars in digital currencies onto that hardware wallet and in and flee the country, right? That's like, you know, the old fashioned way of taking a briefcase and filling it up with stacks, stacks of bills, stacks of bills and running out, right. So, you know,  there's a lot of signs, again, this is electronic transactions, right? So this is where John and I come in with some of our forensic tools and our capabilities to understand, you know, what was used? How was it used? But it is, it's searching for those clues, those little crumbs, I gotta tell you, you know, they did use digital currencies, here's with a science and how do we, how do we trace it? But I think John can can take a little deeper dive into that.

John Wilson  

Well, I mean, you know, it, a lot of it goes to, you know, hey, is this a business that you know, you're aware was transacting in cryptocurrencies? Or was this a business where they were, you know, that was a function of their business? Or is this a business where, like, a Tesla, for instance, you know, has a bunch of Bitcoin because they're going to eventually take payments in Bitcoin? That's, you know, a big difference in you know, the investigative approach when you're talking about the insolvency because, you know, the one business is like, yeah, we use cryptocurrency, that's how we do all our international transactions. It's pretty open, you're pretty aware, it's there. Where it gets more complicated is the businesses, you know, hey, we bought some bitcoin to hedge against cash or to have some digital currency available in the event, we needed it for ransomware or whatever. And then that's where there's a lot more risk is like, it's not necessarily a main function of the business. And so then that's where you've got to do these forensic processes. And you're looking, you know, hey, is there an existence of hardware wallets having been presented on the systems is the existence of software, wallet software? You know, do they have, you know, web wallets that are, you know, brokerage accounts that are holding the cryptocurrencies? Who has the keys to those because that's where, you know, again, it's like cash, that bad actor in the business could be like, sitting at home and going into the wallet and transferring that currency out if they if there's a web wallet, or a software wallet where they have the recovery keys and the access.

Rebecca Harding  

Yes, so it's actually quite hard then to track it down. I mean, it sounds like quite a difficult process. If you find that it's been, money's been moved out. 

John Wilson  

Yeah, there it is. Again, you know, the blockchains are the majority of the blockchains are pseudonymous. So you know, again, you all you have is that serialisation, and there's ways to generate new keys for each transaction. And so it becomes very difficult to follow those currencies. And then there's, you know, when you start moving into the more nefarious activities, then there's actually tools that make it much more difficult like tumblers or spinners, where they put their transaction into these tumblers or spinners. And they're automatically generating hundreds or even 1000s of transactions, spitting it out into little, you know, trivial amounts. And then it goes into another series of spinner transactions and another series of spinner transactions before they actually start to bring it all back together. But then you're talking about trying to unwind and trace you know, 1000s and 1000s of transactions and that can become very difficult to unwind and figure out where did the money go? Who has access to it now?

Rebecca Harding  

If everything's anonymous, or it's quite hard, unless you know who owns that string of numbers on the the wallet, how do you identify the accounts? 

John Wilson  

Yeah, I mean, you know, so again, it's that traditional forensic investigation or you know, investigation investigative type activity, you know, we do use forensic software suites that, you know, do build some attribution. So, as the transactions occur as you as a actor in the business, you know, you go out and your business website says, you know, hey, if you'd like to buy products, here's our wallet, you know, or if you'd like to make a donation to this charitable organisation, here's our wallet, just, you know, transfer to this location. And so then that's published, I now know, you know, that company XYZ or Acme company owns this address. And so these software's, as we do these analysis, Bill starts building this attribution, I know that this wallet belongs to this individual, or, in the case of bad actors, you know, you people posting on the, like, you get the ransomware, and the ransomware, it says, hey, you know, pay me ransomware to this address, or you're not going to get your files back, or I'm going to publish your files or whatever. And that's what gives the opportunity for us to start building that attribution, we now know that, you know, ransomware, player X uses this crypto address. And so now I can build that attribution. So then, when you're starting to dig through things, you can start seeing, Oh, the money's going to this individual, because I've built that attribution, and I have an understanding of who's using that address.

Rebecca Harding  

Yeah, so you need the software to do it, don't you? I got visions of the two of you sitting there trying to work it out on bits of paper and a spreadsheet. 

John Wilson  

Yeah, right. So when I started my first investigations, nine years ago, you know, these software's didn't exist, and you had to build that attribution manually. So it was like, okay, how, what I can find, and, okay, I see this individual use this address. And so I start tracking it that way. But, you know, especially now with like, the tumblers and the spinners, we're talking about, you know, there can be literally, you know, one of the cases I worked, we had 727 transactions over a 30 day period to try to keep the money moving and obfuscate where the money went. And, you know, I had to manually unwind all of that, you know, now it's much easier with the software's but you also have to realise it's much more complicated these, like the tumblers, these automated software's that the bad actors use can do 1000s and 1000s of transactions. And, again, the whole purpose of these cryptocurrency and blockchain systems is, you know, instant or near instant type transactions, they happen very quickly, and they're very easy to do. So. that lends itself to, you know, hey, now I can do hundreds of transactions and 1000s of transactions to keep the money moving and hidden so that people can't understand where the money went.

Rebecca Harding  

Yeah, I'm taking notes here, actually, John. Keeping detailed notes. So Vinnie, I mean, if you have a business that was and you were helping, or you had a client whose business and they wanted to restructure financially, and they were looking at using cryptocurrencies for the reasons that we discussed before, what would you say to them, what the advantages or the problems that they might encounter in sort of putting that process in place to use it within the business? 

Vinnie Toppi  

Sure. And again, I think they need to first figure out what they want to use it for, right? Do they want to use it for, you know, receipts from customers? Do they want to use it to, you know, pay vendors along the supply chain internationally? And what are those, what type of currency are they going to use and accept, because that's gonna tell you what kind of wallet you need to set up, and you know, what kind of back office support you need to have, but then it's, you know, nothing more than transacting and record keeping, like, you know, transacting like cash, right, you need to put a system of controls in place, who's going to have the keys to the corporate wallet, who's going to be able to transact on a corporate

Rebecca Harding  

The guy with the briefcase, clearly

Vinnie Toppi  

And then once those transactions occur, you know, most accounting systems right now don't have a Bitcoin or crypto component built in right? Most systems allow you to cut a check and that's about it. So you need to you need to take that ledger information and then record that within your general ledger and within your books and records. You know, if you're receiving Bitcoin from your customers, you need to apply the payment to each of those customer accounts. So there's a little bit of different policies, procedures on you know, your bookkeeping side that you need to put in place as well. But then after that, again, legitimate business as you know, everybody, if we're talking about legitimate businesses, everybody's just trying to solve for an issue, and it's one of the greatest tools they could probably use.

Rebecca Harding  

So, if we're talking earlier about fluctuations in value as well, how does that work for business? Because obviously, if they're trying to use it with their customers, it's going up and down and could they buy? Could they not buy? You know, how does it work? I'm struggling to get my head around all this Vinnie.

Vinnie Toppi  

So, just think about it as foreign currency right? If you're accepting foreign currency you have to worry about the fluctuation, you have to worry about the FX exchange, right? So if you're, accepting bitcoin, right, and you're selling something for $30,000, right, now someone's gonna going to send you less than one Bitcoin, right? Because because the transactions are in decimals, right?  You're not transacting in full digital coins, right? So you receive, you know, point seven Bitcoin today. The question is, what are you going to do when you receive that point seven Bitcoin? Are you going to automatically take that and convert it to cash, so you minimise volatility? Or do you transact in Bitcoin out to your vendors so you're going to keep some bitcoin in your wallet, so you can then send bitcoin out to your vendors. And that's where the volatility starts to come into play, and the price fluctuations come into play. But if you're using one of the stable coins, like a bitcoin cash, then you reduce that volatility risk, because you're using something that is pegged to a fiat currency, something that the volatility is much less.

Rebecca Harding  

Right. So just fill one more thing in for me, it's a word that I've heard a lot and not really understood, and that's mining, they talk about mining, what's that all about John?

John Wilson  

Yeah, so mining is the how bitcoins or the cryptocurrencies the digital assets are created, the mining is the process of solving the math problem related to validating the last set of transactions. And that's why it's called a blockchain. Transactions are put into a block, and then the blocks continue to build. And in order to validate the entire blockchain, the math formula has to, you know, still work for each previous block, if you go back and alter anything, that's where, you know, the blocks no longer validate. And so the mining is the process of solving for that math problem. And that's what creates the new coins. So like in Bitcoin, every time a block is solved, there's a reward of a certain amount of Bitcoin and that Bitcoin amount gets halved every regular periods until all of the Bitcoin will be mined in you know, several years for a total of 21 million Bitcoin. But it is that math problem. And so they get the the miners for doing the work to solve that math problem. And it's a very complex math problem that requires very intensive computing power, and, you know, resources. And so their reward for doing that effort is the new created coin and the transaction fees from that particular block.

Rebecca Harding  

Those transaction fees Vinnie, did they then affect the business from the mining? 

Vinnie Toppi  

Well, so the transaction fees that John is talking about is those fees when the coins are created, but those are passed on to the user in those fractions, and then they're on top of what you know, the Bitcoin changing hands is, so think of it just like a credit card fee. Right? I mean, if you're gonna accept a credit card, you're paying two to three to 4%, depending on on the card that you're accepting in additional fees. So it's all part of the process, and it's all part of that decision tree of what currencies am I accepting and how because, you know, the currencies themselves have different fee structures, depending on what digital currency you're accepting.
Rebecca Harding  

Now, that is so helpful. Thank you so much, guys. I really enjoyed this. And I find it hugely helpful. I think it's the best explanation that I've ever had of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. So is there any last tips you'd like to give anybody else out there who's facing, say, an insolvency that's involved in cryptocurrencies? What about you, John?

John Wilson  

Yeah, I mean, so well, you know, I think probably my biggest comment is when, you know, it's pretty easy when you have a business that, you know, is intentionally dealing with cryptocurrencies. It's pretty easy to know that they're gonna they have cryptocurrencies and, you know, gain an understanding of you know what wallets they might have. And that sort of stuff is generally, you know, unless you have a bad actor and the organisation is generally pretty clear and concise. Where it gets more interesting and you know, the the concern, like when you're talking about a restructuring or you know, an acquisition type scenario, you know, if a business has crypto assets, and it's not really a main function of the business, maybe they were just keeping a reserve pool of cryptocurrencies in case they had been ransomwared or things of that nature. That's where it gets a lot more complicated because you might not realise that business has the digital assets. And that's where you've got to do that forensic investigation, look at the machines and see if crypto wallets exist in the organisation, you know, do they have any kind of crypto activity or evidence of crypto activity in the organisation because the real risk is again, it's like cash or gold, you could restructure the company or take over the the prior company. And then the bad guy in accounting can be like, Oh, well, you know, I'm getting fired, and I'm just going to transfer these onto my private wallet and, you know, walk out the door, nobody's gonna realise I'm, I just put a, you know, $50 million card in my pocket. Because it's, you know, very small and unnoticeable

Rebecca Harding  

no-ones gonna be looking for it are they? not in cardboard boxes as you leave.

John Wilson  

Yeah, so that's my big thing is, you know, understanding, you know, the, a lot of businesses are playing in the cryptocurrency field, whether it's just for protection in relation to ransomware events or side effects of, you know, transactional dealings of some nature, versus, you know, it's part of their operational business. And those are the, you know, the, where you really have to do that investigative look at things.

Rebecca Harding  

That's really great. What about you, Vinnie? Any advice? 

Vinnie Toppi  

Well, it comes down to planning, right? I mean, you know, over the years, businesses have evolved, you know, we used to go from the 13, column ledger paper to computers, right now, we're going to digital currency. So, you know, when you go into a situation, you know, you need to have your questions on your checklist up front. Right. And, you know, as we talked about, there are legitimate uses for cryptocurrency and if a company is transacting in cryptocurrency, you know, they've at least possibly shown that on a financial statement. Or, you know, in the US, at least you have to disclose if you're transacting in crypto on your tax return. So, quickly scan through those two documents and see what disclosures are out there. But if it's a bad actor, you know, they're hiding, they're trying their trail, they're trying to hide stuff. So, when someone goes in, in those situations, you know, you're always doing some sort of forensic some sort of investigation. I would add, you know, to that process, a couple of quick, you know, crypto type activities, if you're doing an email search, and if you're doing a, you know, records, electronic record search using computer forensics, most of those tools have the ability to at least, you know, identify, are there any traces of dark web activity? Are there any traces of crypto assets? You know, let that let whoever's running that process for you include those in their in their parameters, you know, search for those little grubs.

Rebecca Harding  

Oh, that's brilliant. Well, thank you so much. I've really appreciated your time today. So and if anybody wants to get hold of you to pick your brains where can they find you? Where can they find you, John?

John Wilson  

So my companies haystack ID and, you know, my email address is jwilson@ haystackID.com Feel free to reach out I'm always happy to answer questions
Rebecca Harding  

That's great. And what about you Vinnie, 

Vinnie Toppi  

and I'm with Cohn Reznick again, on their website, Vinny or Vincenzo Toppi, my email is way too long to spell out. So the easiest thing is it's just V Toppi on LinkedIn. So just go to LinkedIn and connect with me there.

Rebecca Harding  

That's brilliant. Well, thanks so much, guys. Have a great day.

Vinnie Toppi  

You too. Thank you.

Rebecca Harding  

Thank you. Bye bye.