Big four mammoth PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is gradually foraying into exploring crypto investments. Paul Griggs, the CEO of PwC U.S. confirmed the development recently to Financial Times. He said President Donald Trump’s ongoing regulatory amendments to accommodate the crypto industry has given the accounting giant to pay heed in this direction as well.
Last year, President Trump signed the stablecoin-focussed GENIUS Act into law to clarify guidelines around reserve requirements, transparency, audits, and consumer protection for the permitted issuers of stablecoin tokens. As per Griggs, this kind of clarity in crypto regulation is making crypto exploration a tangible idea for corporates and other institutional-grade investors.
“The GENIUS Act and the regulatory rule making around stablecoin, I expect, will create more conviction around leaning into that product and that asset class,” Financial Times quoted Griggs as saying during a one-on-one interaction.
The buzz around tokenization has also grabbed the attention of PwC. Tokenization can be explained as creating a blockchain-based representation of a real asset that can hide sensitive and private data in the form of a token – safeguarded against being exposed. The UAE is experimenting with real estate tokenization – that could let more than one entity hold an asset in its tokenized form – that would help all holders to churn incomes from renting without having to physically change the property layout.
Gribbs said that as the tokenization of real world assets expanded in practice, PwC “has to be in that ecosystem”.
Along with the U.S., a number of other international regions have also achieved milestones in-terms of drafting and deploying regulatory guardrails around crypto in recent years. The European Union (EU), for instance, now governs crypto under the very comprehensive MiCA guidelines. Similarly, the UAE’s dedicated crypto regulatory body VARA maintains a keen oversight over the $3 trillion industry.
In light of the globally evolving crypto regulatory landscape, the Big Four companies – PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY – are naturally viewing crypto with a refreshed perspective.
Prior to this, the Big Four firms had maintained some ties with the crypto-related firms with a safe distance from engaging directly with the crypto assets.
Deloitte, for instance, has been auditing Coinbase for some years. EY and KPMG, on the other hand, have been working around tax and risk management solutions for blockchain firms.
According to Financial Times, PwC is looking to create an auditing and consultation-focussed strategy around stablecoin, tokenization, and other crypto-related fields.