← Back to Vol. 07 Issue No. 04 — Issue 04
Abstract
The technology with arguably the greatest potential to impact the Accounting profession is blockchain. A blockchain is an implementation of a shared ledger in a peer-to-peer network of participating members. A ledger records monetary transactions for an account where the transactions are organized into debit and credit (or assets and liabilities) columns, and a beginning and ending balance is calculated for a given period of time. Historically, ledgers were maintained in a centralized manner with some entity responsible for adding entries into the ledger and another (or the same) entity verifying the integrity and correctness of the ledger. The separation of duties of recording and verifying entries in the ledger gave birth to the audit profession. This paper provides a high-level overview of blockchain technology, smart contracts and triple-entry accounting and discusses impacts on the Accounting profession and education.