Hacker Timesnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

On paper, you have and can report a lot of assets. However, many companies go bankrupt with current ratios greater than one with either overinflated or overvalued assets or undervalued or understated debts or some combination. Financial reports a la 10-Ks and 10-Qs are 'boring,' difficult for most people to read, contain specialized jargon, and contain significant lag time where a going concern is, well, a concern. Audits are almost always annual and not quarterly. Disclosures may be required, but they can be broad or nonspecific enough as to delay broader acknowledgement of bankruptcy level problems. I'd take information from financial reports with a bit of salt, even if they are often our best, or only, source of information.


If "cash and cash equivalents" is wrong, that's fraud, not something I should have taken with a grain of salt.


Cash and cash equivalents can be very wrong, even when audited by firms such as Ernst and Young, one of the big four accounting firms. Wirecard is a good example. https://www.ft.com/content/bcadbdcb-5cd7-487e-afdd-1e926831e...

Grant Thornton audits Coinbase last I checked. Hopefully they do a better job than EY. I doubt a "stablecoin" holding would count as cash equivalents, but not all cash equivalents are equal and the definition has changed over the years. Commercial paper, 1-3 month maturing Treasury notes, certificates of deposit, money market accounts, and savings account funds can all be counted as cash equivalents. For example, if you hold a two month commercial paper of another cryptocurrency company as Coinbase, this might qualify as a cash equivalent. Cash equivalents are not all equally liquid or risky. Even if all of the cash and cash equivalents are there and solvent, the definition of a cryptocurrency in a bankruptcy might not be settled in a court of law in such a way that it favors account holders of Coinbase held cryptocurrency over stockholders or bondholders.


All had been set up by Wirecard executives to dupe the auditors and help disguise what Munich prosecutors now call “a fraud in the billions”.

Yeah, that's what I said, fraud.

Do you have an example where it was wrong without fraud?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: