Crypto Biz Magazine—July, 2014/Issue.02

WHERE DOES ACCOUNTING/ERP MEET
BITCOIN, DOLLAR, EURO & YEN?
by GARY BODDINGTON
Planning) industry as an isolated example,
for no reason other than this domain stands
in line to be disrupted as much as any other.
Page.36 July.2014
Crypto Biz Magazine
Can you imagine a world where a crypto cur rency
(something like Bitcoin) sits alongside the dollar,
the euro and the yen? In a recent discussion at a
Bitcoin meetup in Vancouver, the topic turned to
user adoption and, more specifically, what needs
to be done to see crypto currency gain mass
adoption on Main Street. This was encouraging,
not least because I believe crypto currency
discussions to date have been unnecessarily
encumbered with technical one-upmanship, or
arguments over monetary policy ideology, or a
confusing cocktail of both.
Full disclosure, I am firmly in the camp that believes
that crypto currency will ultimately reach its
aspirational goals of Main Street adoption, but I am
categorically under no illusion that this will happen
either quickly or soon. It is clear that there’s a
wide gamut of “traditional world” business across
banking, legal, accounting, financial services,
taxation, gaming and gambling that could be
shaken to their core, so in the interest of invoking
a discussion, and attempting to understand the
crypto currency world we endeavor to live in, let’s
use the accounting & ERP (Enterprise Resource
The Accounting & ERP vendors
(vendors) landscape is an incredibly
competitive landscape populated
by mul tiple large and small vendors
distributed globally, all of which
cater to all sizes of organizations.
So, how does crypto currency gain
adoption amongst these vendors
who influence millions of the world’s
businesses through the software they produce and
the associated advice their channel of integration
partners offer? Well, at first glance it seems
straightforward, because crypto currency is just
another currency, just like the dollar, euro and yen,
and almost all of these vendors have multi-currency
functionality as standard. So it’s that simple then,
vendors just communicate to their market that
they already handle multi-currency as existing
functionality, so everyone just go right ahead and
transact in the crypto currency of your choice.
But hang on, not every crypto currency is created
equal—certainly not in the hands of global
regulatory agencies, anyway. Depending on the
region of the world a vendor operates in, crypto
currencies have been treated dramatically—
and with mass adoption aspirations in mind—
damagingly, inconsistently, ranging from a
traditional currency to an informal form of barter.
The reactions of separate jurisdictions have
ranged from enacting very strong pro-crypto
regulations, including strong privacy, to an
attempt at an outright ban by certain states.