Big four consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has partnered with mining and blockchain software company Bitfury Group to create a blockchain accelerator for businesses in Russia, according to a PwC press release today, Dec. 13. The release explains that PwC has already used Exonum — Bitfury’s open source framework for building blockchain applications — for educational courses and seminars. According to the release, the main goal of the new accelerator is to meet the “current needs” of the consulting giant’s enterprise clients in Russia. Victor Nelin, an IT consulting manager at PwC’s Russian branch, claimed that Bitfury and PwC will provide …

Singaporean governmental body Enterprise Singapore, along with other partners, has supported a new blockchain accelerator launched by a local venture capital firm, daily local newspaper The Straits Times writes Tuesday, Dec. 4. Trive Ventures has launched the initiative, dubbed Tribe Accelerator, to support later-stage startups. According to the unnamed investor cited by The Straits Times, the accelerator is designed for a six-month period and will focus on the mass adoption of blockchain, decentralized applications (DApps), and back-end digital solutions that deal with blockchain. The managers for Tribe Accelerator will initially pick eight start-ups to participate, and the launch of the …

The South Korean branch of the Tezos Foundation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Yonsei University to collaboratively work on the development of blockchain talents, says a Tezos official press release published Nov. 21. The new agreement between the Tezos Korea Foundation and Digital Society Research Center at Yonsei University in Seoul aims to provide “blockchain education cooperation, training of OCaml [Objective Calm] and smart contract experts.” The MoU is primarily focused on human resources and education in the blockchain technology industry. The press release states: “Through this agreement, both sides will strengthen the expertise of the blockchain …

“Big four” audit giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has partnered with decentralized lending platform Cred to provide tech expertise in the launch of their USD-backed stablecoin, the company announced on Monday, October 8. In the announcement, the professional services firm claimed that the new partnership is designed in order to boost the current market of U.S. dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies by bringing more trust to investors. PwC is touting their service as a solution to major existing problems associated with the stablecoin market, such as transparency and “substantiation,” which keep a number of investors away from the field. With the partnership, the audit firm …

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY) and KPMG, better known as the “Big Four” auditors, all have established solid long-term blockchain roadmaps to remain relevant in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. The four professional services conglomerates, which combined employ over a million individuals, have different roadmaps and perception of the future of the blockchain industry. Deloitte for instance, the biggest auditor out of the four with an annual revenue of around $43.2 billion, has stated that the blockchain sector is close to seeing a breakthrough with the technology. “Ultimately, [blockchain is] more of a business model enabler than a …

U.K.-based multinational professional services network PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will bolster its employees’ blockchain knowledge through a dedicated program next year, Digiday reported Thursday, August 30. Part of a coordinated push to enhance digital awareness, the company will put 1000 staff through its Digital Accelerators program, which will run for two years from January. Participants will forego a portion of their regular workload and instead focus heavily on digital innovation including blockchain. Sarah McEneaney, digital talent leader at PwC and head of Digital Accelerators, told Digiday that client demand and competition formed major motivations behind the scheme. “It just seems table stakes …

Regulatory uncertainty and trust are major barriers to blockchain adoption among businesses, according to a study released August 27 by ‘Big Four’ auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). A new study entitled “Blockchain is here. What’s your next move?” conducted by PwC examined 600 executives in 15 countries on their development of blockchain and opinions about its potential. The countries participating in the survey included Australia, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, the UAE, the U.K., and the U.S. Respondents ranked regulatory uncertainty, lack of trust among users, and ability to bring a network together as …

Cointelegraph recently had the chance to speak with Pierre-Edouard Wahl, the head of blockchain digital services at PwC Switzerland, about the future potential of blockchain in the country. Wahl, who noted that PwC Switzerland worked closely with main Swiss stock exchange SIX on their announcement of a future distributed ledger-based digital asset exchange, elaborated on his beliefs that crypto must be used in order to go mainstream enough to give people back control of their digital footprints. This interview has been edited and condensed. Molly Jane: Could you tell us how you got interested in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space? …

A PwC Switzerland executive said that among the various types of digital assets, only digital currencies are can reasonably be used at present, according to a post on the PwC website July 31. In the post, Roland Stadler, Senior Manager and Data & Analytics Specialist at PwC Switzerland, claims that while digital assets “seem similar at first glance,” on closer inspection they differ. Stadler makes a distinction between “digital assets” and “currencies,” because “only a few” can be considered currencies in the “literal sense of the word.” He then divides digital assets into three types; currencies like Bitcoin (BTC), utility …

The recent initiative of the world's four largest auditing — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC — to join a pilot of 20 Taiwanese banks to test blockchain technology for fiscal audits, confirms how developments are expected in the work of external audit. Despite the auditors have been sometimes criticized for their lack of capacities for catching issues before they blow up, an external audit is a fundamental part of the assurance environment for international groups, both private and public. This can be defined as the process of conducting an objective examination of an organization’s accounts, books, documents and …

The Tezos Foundation has announced that the international professional services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers Switzerland (PwC) will conduct an external audit of its finances and operations. In an official announcement Monday, July 23, the Foundation claimed to be the “first large-scale blockchain organization” to be audited by PwC. PricewaterhouseCoopers, headquartered in London, U.K., is one of the four largest professional services networks in the world, known collectively as the “Big Four.” Self-described as a “self-amending” blockchain, Tezos has managed to raise about $232 million - the largest-ever amount at that time - in an initial coin offering (ICO) in July 2017. Soon …

The world's four largest auditing firms — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC —have joined 20 Taiwanese banks to pilot blockchain technology for fiscal audits, local news outlet CTEE reports July 19. The “big four” will join a consortium of major Taiwanese banks to test a blockchain solution for auditing companies’ interim financial reports, focused on streamlining so-called ‘external confirmation’ processes. These currently require an auditor to manually obtain and verify audit evidence of companies’ transactions with third parties. The pilot — which has been developed by the banking consortium alongside Taiwan's Financial Information Service Co. (FISC) — harnesses …