SCRATCHING THE SURFACE WITH SOOSH

On LinkedIn which happens to be my most active social media (if it even counts as one?), i do short write ups for folks that are not crypto native, about crypto stuff. Figured i try it in a thread form here! 

What is Scratching the Surface with Soosh? Its a new mini project of mine to provide some context to the world of crypto, finance etc in bite sized written format. As the name suggests, everything here is at surface level (i.e. no deep dives or extremely details/heavy datasets), just enough to get your curiosity to tingle~ so you can learn!

*this thread is for curiosity only and nothing stated within should be taken as tax and financial advice. DYOR!

Head of Finance at @syndicate | previously head of finance at @zora, finance at @superrare | Photographer | dog dad to Luna 🐶 /iloveyou

TODAY'S TOPIC - web3 FINANCE IS HARD! 

Without getting to extreme detailed, lets tackle this topic, from a view of an operator (i.e., an in-house finance). To start, Finance at a company is very complex but at a web3 company with a native blockchain business product, its more complicated.

FINANCE STACKS GET WEIRD
You typically would have an ERP (QuickBooks, NetSuite, SAP etc), in additional to a billing tool (Airbase, Bill, Stripe etc) and perhaps a corporate credit card (Airbase, Brex, Ramp etc). These are very standard in the world of startups. 

Then you need to worry about the crypto finance stack. You will need a crypto subledger that essentially scrapes the blockchain(s) you operate on for all transactions and calculate the capital gains/loss automatically per FIFO, LIFO, Lot etc. So far, Integral has the competitive edge on this realm - a solid team who is very responsive, listen to feedback and are crazy quick to deploy upgrades and features!! 

Then if you pay people or receive payments in crypto you need wallets - whether those are hot wallets, multisig wallets or custody accounts. Typically a web3 company has all of these, each used for something specific. (eventually Custody providers too!)

TAXES
Everything with crypto other than purchasing with fiat (USD etc) and sending crypto within your own wallets is taxable. FUN right?! So keeping track can be a nightmare especially if you don’t have a tool like Integral already implemented, per above. 

ERRORS & PERMANENT LOSSES
Unlike with bank transfers, you can call the bank to put a hold on the Wires/ACHs, but with crypto, you are SOL if a wrong address is used or sent a crypto asset on a different blockchain. Adds crazy stress and layers of review, self review and more review in place for all transactions that are in crypto.

TREASURY
Crypto markets are 24/7, 365. That means the prices move every hour of the day. Tracking down risk with investments and with crypto on hand, becomes challenging. 

FINANCIAL REPORTING
Keeping track of everything gets overwhelming especially if you don't have tools that can accumulate traditional finance data and crypto finance data. Then different accounting and tax treatment for different types of transactions (txn) makes it even harder to keep it all sorted!

and lastly, LACK OF USER DATA 
Normally, as a company you would have a lot of user data that is being tracked within websites or with emails but in web3 that is not easily available given most blockchain transactions are via a Wallet that are not associated with emails and names or any sort of personal or individual data that gets passed on to the apps on the blockchain. So to build top line based forecasts (think revenue, revenue per customer/user, retention etc) because exponentially harder!

Until next time on the next scratching the surface with soosh!

*this thread is for curiosity only and nothing stated within should be taken as tax and financial advice. DYOR!

TOO MANY MOVING PARTS
Just how you would manage your books for normal (“traditional”) books that covers cash, accounts payable, accounts receivable, investments, treasury and capital gains/losses, you would do all of this but for both Crypto and traditional books. Then, just because it’s crypto, you need to figure out how to merge the two books and still be compliant; FASB + US GAAP, to IFRS + local compliance. 

TOOLS TOOLS TOOLS
Crypto accounting is still a new world even for CPAs. Not many fully understand or grasp the depth required to follow, create and manage crypto books in addition to traditional books. No one tool does it all for crypto (yet) unlike the NetSuites and SAPs of the world where all AP, AR, Billing, Revenue, ERP and sub ledgers are in singular place. Finding the right tool is hard and gets harder as your company starts with more complex onchain transactions.