Distributed Ledgers and Secure Multiparty Computation for Financial Reporting and Auditing

The authors thank the editor, an anonymous associate editor, several anonymous referees, Alex Chinco, Pingyang Gao, Jiasun Li (discussant), Bob McDonald (discussant), Venky Nagar (discussant), Fahad Saleh (discussant), Haresh Sapra, Gerry Tsoukalas, and Larry Wall (discussant) for detailed feedback and discussion and Vikas Agarwal, Kwan Chen, Mark Chen, Alisa DiCaprio, Matthew DeAngelis, John Hameling, Dalida Kadyrzhanova, Yongtae Kim, W. Robert Knechel, Anya Kleymenova, Clive Lennox, Pierre Liang, Roni Michaely, James (“Robbie”) Moon, Jr., Curtis Mullis, Mark Peecher, Lin Peng, Shivaram Rajgopal, Ajay Subramanian, Lawrence J. White, Baohua Xin, Mao Ye, Shuhuai Zhang, Hongda Zhong, and participants at National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Blockchains, Distributed Ledgers, and Financial Contracting, Society of Financial Studies Cavalcade Conference at Carnegie Mellon University, PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board)/Journal of Accounting Research Conference on Auditing and Capital Markets, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Conference on New Technologies and Financial Stability, Ant Financial Workshop, Baidu Du Xiaoman Financial, Blackrock, DataYes & ACM KDD China FinTech×AI Workshop, Eastern Finance Association Meeting, Geneva Finance Research Institute, Georgia State University Workshops at the Departments of Accountancy, Computer Science and Finance, JD.com JDD (Financial Arm), and University of Minnesota for constructive comments. An earlier version of the paper was circulated under the title “Financial Reporting and Blockchains: Misreporting, Auditing, and Regulation.” Lin William Cong is also a special-term professor affiliated with the International School of Finance, Fudan University, Shanghai 200437, China.