Blockchain Finance: Rewriting the history of accounting, sad "consensus" off | Zinc

In the third major social division of labor, there was a commodity economy, goods began to exchange, and money was generated, so finance was born.

In the process of financial development, the single-entry bookkeeping method was used at the beginning. This accounting method only registered one account for the economic business that occurred, and could not specifically reflect the ins and outs of economic business. Due to the accounting defects in the single-entry bookkeeping method, people have invented double-entry bookkeeping.

The double-entry bookkeeping originated in Florence from 1211 to 1340. Compared with the single-entry bookkeeping method, the double-entry bookkeeping method can comprehensively reflect the appearance of various economic businesses and more accurately verify the accuracy of the accounts.

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The double-entry bookkeeping method is still in use today, but the birth of blockchain technology has made distributed accounting possible.

From the simple billing method to the distributed accounting method, the problem that is difficult to solve is still the trust problem, and the blockchain, as a distributed ledger technology, has the characteristics of decentralization, anonymity, and non-tamperability. Reducing the cost of trust may satisfy the trust needs of the traditional financial industry.

Fraudulent, waste of data

Before the 1980s, China was still in the era of manual bookkeeping. At that time, the scale of the company was small and the business model was relatively simple. Manual accounting, accounting, and accounting can meet the basic needs of enterprises.

With the development of IT technology, finance has entered the era of computerization, and electronic accounting has replaced labor. Then, the scale of the enterprise continued to expand, IT continued to improve, and small computerized software could not meet the needs of enterprises.

In the late 1990s, as the scale of the enterprise continued to expand, small computerized software could no longer meet the needs of enterprises. Large enterprises began to apply the ERP system to the group management and control, in order to achieve "integration of industry and finance", so that financial data can better guide the business.

Today, although the financial system has brought huge economic benefits to the enterprise itself, there are still some shortcomings and drawbacks.

1) Data value is buried and cannot guide business development

Financial data is the core material of every company and is related to the overall development of the company. Financial data itself is of great value. Due to confidentiality requirements, financial data does not play its due value and cannot provide more guidance for the business.

2. Frequent financial fraud incidents

On May 17 this year, Kangmei Pharmaceutical was exploding financial fraud, causing stocks to plummet. Last year, Kunming Machine Tool inflated revenue and profits in order to avoid being ST.

In 2015, Minjiang Logistics discovered a significant financial fraud, and in 2012 and 2013, it inflated a total of 9.155 billion yuan, a false increase of 490 million yuan. Prior to Chun'an Logistics, although A-share listed companies had a lot of fraud, the amount was generally not high, and the 1 billion-level case was a big case. However, after the emergence of Chun'an Logistics, it immediately set a benchmark for the scale of fraud. Known as the "king of fraud."

Such cases abound.

3, verify the data, time-consuming and laborious

Financial fraud does not only exist at the enterprise level, but personal bill fraud also occurs from time to time. The enterprise's reimbursement review system can only regulate the reimbursement process to a certain extent and cannot prevent fraud. The financial involved personnel and links, the auditors can not participate in all the links, post-mortem verification is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, and may not have results.

4. Insufficient financial staff

According to the zinc link, the current financial practitioners are generally less proactive, and the finance department is more concerned with the assessment, but accounting, financial auditing, etc., without considering the entire business process. Therefore, this leads to inefficient and confusing work.

This series of problems hinders the development of finance. Some financial institutions have begun to test the water blockchain field and try to solve the financial problems with the blockchain's untamed and traceable features.

Blockchain Finance: Bills force, audit fatigue

At present, the blockchain test in the financial industry is still in its infancy. There are relatively many cases in the field of bills, and they are relatively mature. Some areas try blockchain auditing, but only in the stage of technology exploration, no effective progress has been made in other areas.

Ma Hong, the founder of the Hurricane Blockchain and a Chinese certified public accountant, believes that the blockchain has been implemented in the field of financial instruments. On the one hand, it improves the correlation between data and reduces the probability of fraud. On the other hand, it saves time and Economic costs.

1) Electronic bills, pre-powered

On June 12, the country's first blockchain electronic ticket platform was officially launched in Zhejiang Province. After the electronic bill platform is connected with the enterprise financial system, the enterprise can realize real-time reimbursement and check at any time.

Zinc Link reporters consulted public reports and found that blockchain invoices are the most widely used scenes in the financial sector. On the blockchain invoice system, the entire process of the invoice is chained and stamped with a “timestamp”.

In this way, the authenticity of the invoice is guaranteed, and the company and employees are unable to make fraud; the financial personnel can verify the blockchain and simplify the bill review process.

Previously, companies need to apply for invoice reimbursement quotas to the tax bureau according to their size and attributes. The reimbursement amount for the current month must be within the limit.

Sun Zhen, the financial and taxation director of Alipay Blockchain, told Zinc Link that the blockchain electronic invoicing system links multiple invoicing parties, receiving parties, tax bureaus, etc. The tax bureau can conduct all aspects of invoice claiming, circulation, and tax filing. Supervision, making the data flow throughout the scene.

As a result, companies no longer need to go to the tax bureau to apply for a quota, solve the invoice limit problem, and improve the efficiency of invoicing.

In November 2018, Wal-Mart took the lead in accessing the blockchain electronic invoicing system. Wal-Mart's financial director Xia Min told Zinc Link that after using the electronic invoicing system, the invoice collection and verification process became simpler, and the tax-removal clearance was cancelled, and the financial work efficiency improved a lot. Moreover, during the tax filing period, there is no need to worry about the clearance card affecting the billing.

2) Audit weakness

Unlike traditional auditing, the blockchain auditing system uses distributed storage, and each node has the same backup, which saves the high cost and maintenance cost of the server, and more importantly, ensures data integrity.

The four giants of the global audit industry have already begun to lay out blockchain audits.

In 2014, Deloitte launched a blockchain service that provides consulting services, and builds distributed applications for customers in various departments, including the government. It is the first company to develop blockchain technology in the “Big Four”.

In October 2016, Ernst & Young began to cooperate with blockchain companies and in 2017 built blockchain technology applications based on bitcoin settlement auditing and consulting services fees, becoming the fastest growing company in the blockchain finance sector.

Different from foreign countries, the domestic penetration rate of blockchain audit scenarios is not high. At present, most of them are still in the stage of technical envisioning, and development is relatively weak, and only a small number of projects achieve the scene.

Last year, the audit bureau of Xiangtan City, Hunan Province used the blockchain technology for the first time in the audit process of the medical insurance fund. The medical, hospital and medical insurance institutions were used as the audit axis, and at the same time covered the cities, counties and towns, and formed an audit chain. The blockchain is the auditing project library of the underlying technology, which realizes the commonality of data information, improves audit efficiency and credibility, and reduces fraudulent behavior.

According to Xiangtan online data, in the second half of 2018, the total hospitalization expenses of Xiangtan City in Hunan Province decreased by 4.11% year-on-year; the number of hospitalizations decreased by 4.81%; the overall payment decreased by 4.49% year-on-year, and the total amount of compensation was 18,600 yuan.

In May of this year, Kingdee launched the “Fine Cloud” small and micro enterprise cloud service platform, which is intended to integrate financial business efficiently and realize data sharing among multiple departments.

Zinc Link tried to contact Kingdee to learn more about the project, but Kingdee said that the product is still in the testing stage and is not suitable for public release.

Ma Hong introduced to the Zinc Link: "With the continuous development of the capitalist economy, the emergence of joint-stock companies has created a separation of ownership and management rights. Shareholders do not trust the daily financial data of professional operators and require independent third-party audit institutions. Auditing the joint stock company."

The core of blockchain technology is to solve the problem of "trust". The purpose of auditing is to solve the problem of "trust", that is, to solve people's trust in financial data, so theoretically apply it to accounting and apply it to auditing. Fit.

Blockchain auditing is still in a wilder period, and future development is worth looking forward to.

Technology blessing, taking the initiative to change is the way out

In theory, the characteristics of blockchain technology are indeed the best way to solve financial problems, but in the process of implementation, each problem still restricts development. On the one hand, current attempts have only been marginal testing, and have not changed their inherent patterns; on the other hand, current temptations also have various loopholes.

1) Electronic bill system does not completely prevent fraud

In fact, Ma Hong, the founder of the Hurricane Blockchain and a Chinese CPA, told Zinc Link that the blockchain electronic invoicing system could not prevent 100% fraud. The Shenzhen blockchain electronic invoicing system has only four nodes at the beginning. In theory, only when the number of nodes reaches a certain scale, the probability of doing evil will be reduced.

In addition, this blockchain electronic invoicing system can be understood as a cloud storage system based on blockchain technology. Even if the invoice anti-counterfeiting can reach 100%, the problem of financial fraud can not be completely solved, because the bill does not represent the whole. Economic behavior is real.

2) Low industry awareness

Blockchain technology is still in the early stage of development. Due to the fact that a series of illegal financing cases have directly cast a shadow on blockchain technology, people have questioned the blockchain industry.

According to the zinc link, the financial practitioners' perception level of blockchain technology is generally low, and there are doubts about the blockchain, which directly affects the development progress of the blockchain in the financial industry, which in turn leads to a difficult transition of the financial industry.

3) Shake the foundation, can't see it immediately

Blockchain finance involves changes in the way accounting is booked, and bookkeeping is the foundation of finance. Its transformation has brought about subversive changes, involving a large number of stakeholders and requiring national-level recognition.

In the future blockchain finance, Ma Hong believes that blockchain technology alone is not enough. New blockchain solutions are needed, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence must be combined with the financial industry to bring them together. Come to the new financial era.

Although financial robots appeared in Changsha as early as 2017, the role played at this stage is too single, and it is not enough to mechanically repeat the basic work in the financial industry.

This means that the future blockchain finance industry may face intelligent automation reforms, in addition to the blessing of other new technologies, but also the awareness to keep up. To carry out reforms spontaneously, we must fully realize the benefits after the change and take the initiative to change.

Text: Yu Xiqing

Editor: Wang Qiao

Note: The above pictures are all from unsplash

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