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Crypto is here to stay. The finance community now has to deal with a new currency that is not a fiat currency.
Chartered Accountants (CA) and CPAs would have to leverage the emerging technology if they want to serve crypto-native clients.
Meet Antoine Scalia, who has built Cryptio, an Enterprise-grade accounting, audit, and tax software for digital assets.
Cryptio empowers accountants and bookkeepers, by easily transforming digital asset data into auditable records for accounting, treasury, and tax filings.
Working at a VC…I found the inspiration to start my own
In France, when you go to a top business school, you need to work if you want to get ready for the real world.
So I started by working as a data analyst in a consulting firm in Paris and then eventually moved to a venture capital (VC) firm called Ventech, as an analyst.
Ventech is a leading French VC, that has invested +€400m since 1998, it mostly invests in B2B SaaS startups.
The VC experience was definitely the most helpful. It drove me to have the will to start my venture.
We were doing a lot of work in compliance, accounting, and reporting. On the other side, I was very passionate about everything that was happening in the crypto space.
I started to wonder, “How could I merge my two interests; B2B software and the emerging technology that is crypto.”
That’s what gave me the idea and motivation to build Cryptio – a tool that helps crypto CFOs & CPAs by easily automating accounting, bookkeeping and tax reporting for their digital assets.
Building a crypto accounting software
Post-2021 the crypto landscape has evolved. Most well-known VCs are now looking at the space and have a higher conviction on where it is going.
That wasn’t the case in 2018. When I started with Cryptio, their understanding of the crypto space was very limited.
Especially in Europe, it was even tougher to raise money from traditional VC investors. But we somehow managed to raise our first round.
With a single mission to take away the headache of regulations, audits, taxes and accounting for crypto firms so that they can focus on what they do best.
A tool that consolidates all cryptocurrency transaction data from multiple wallet & exchange sources, and translates it into data usable for accounting and financial analysis.
We work with companies that deal with digital assets like crypto.
They need to record every transaction in ERP software or an accounting system. But before that, they need to pull the transaction information from the blockchain, the public ledger where the transaction was recorded.
And the process is quite complex, especially if they are doing a lot of transactions, and it involves smart contracts.
That’s what Cryptio helps companies with; track their transactions at the very raw level, then automate financial reporting processes, such as accounting, audit and taxes.
Today our company is based in Europe, catering to only France, the UK, and the US.
We have over 250 clients some of them being Metamask, The Sandbox, DefiSaver, Filecoin. These are leading enterprises in crypto and beyond.
Challenges in the way: VCs refusing to invest in crypto space and others
Initially, I had a cofounder, but we split. It was a difficult time for me and a long process.
Now I have colleagues and a team with whom I am very close.
Another challenge I faced was building a tech team that is able to sell the product and build a relationship with the customers.
Finding the right cadence, and the right processes so that these two things can work at the same velocity is something that took a bit of time. But now we are doing well.
Managing people in the early days of starting up was also difficult because they had different complexities and different natures.
I needed to also manage my ego which could damage the company. It’s about becoming the leader. I need to deal with the fact that my company is growing, and there are people that I don’t know anymore.
Delegating, and trusting people are very important but at the same time, you need to take a lot of time to trust people.
You can’t find genuine people overnight.
Helping CAs and CPAs navigate the digital-asset landscape
We see CAs and CPAs as incredible partners as we are building tools to make their life easier, and make the crypto transactions of their clients bookable, and accountable.
That’s why we consider them our end users, partners, and distributors.
Since the first day, all the products that we have been building are in partnership and in collaboration with the accounting firms, that were originally the accounting firms of our clients.
They need to understand the basic challenges of crypto accounting, what a good crypto accounting process should look like, and what outcome they are trying to achieve while onboarding crypto native clients.
For that reason, we’ll be releasing courses and training programs regarding the same in the near future.
In the training program, we are going to demonstrate what the main accounting guidelines are for cryptocurrency.
We have appointed accounting professionals that have worked in banking, crypto companies or consulting for decades.
Closing…
5 years ago the only businesses which were trying to build in the crypto space were scams; mostly ICO (Initial Coin Offerings) companies. ICO is initial public offering (IPO) in the crypto industry.
Today it is different, we have proper use cases of crypto, and a good impression from the public.
These companies are building the backend of crypto products that will be distributed to people to interact with.
Our future plan is to keep working with these people, keep being mission-critical for their organization, for their ecosystem, and be the trusted partner that we have always been.
From 2017, when Cryptocurrencies rose in popularity to 2022, there have emerged over 20,000 cryptocurrencies according to Coin Market Cap data. Bitcoin is regarded as the most well-known crypto-asset.
Approximately 46 million Americans owned a share of Bitcoin as of May 2022.
The platform for enterprise-grade crypto accounting and financial reporting is called the crypto tax software. The crypto tax software market is expected to reach US$ 492.2 Mn by 2032, exhibiting growth at 12.7% CAGR between 2022 and 2032.
Cryptocurrencies come with countless audit and tax implications. So, if any finance professional fails to learn the basics of digital assets they’ll fall behind.
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