By Susie Violet Ward · Forbes · 1 June 2024
In 2024, AICPA & CIMA hosted an event on blockchain, bitcoin and Power BI for the finance and accounting industry, an early step by the accounting bodies towards educating members about bitcoin. James Dewar, a CIMA-qualified accountant whose research master’s dissertation compared bitcoin with gold, argued that bitcoin should be included in accounting education and on risk registers, and that once finance teams are aware of it, ignoring it could be considered negligent.
The article explains bitcoin’s fixed supply, difficulty adjustment and proof-of-work design. It points to MicroStrategy and Tokyo-based Metaplanet, which had adopted bitcoin as a reserve asset by mid-2024, and to Semler Scientific, which had announced plans to do so. It also notes pension fund allocations to bitcoin ETFs, including in Wisconsin, and that BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF reached nearly $10 billion in assets within 49 days of launch.