| In one corner: traditional banks and other public companies who are saddled with the burden of having their accounting scrutinized by independent auditors to ensure investors, customers and regulators that their books are free of mistakes and monkey business.
In another corner, and on the ropes: crypto firms like FTX, whose last-ditch attempt to keep the lights on included passing around what Bloomberg Opinion columnist Matt Levine has called an "excel file full of the howling of ghosts and the shrieking of tortured souls" due to entries like the one for a "Hidden, poorly internally labeled 'fiat@' account" with a balance of negative $8 billion.
For years, companies in the TradFi corner were hesitant to do business with the crypto newcomers, due to understandable skepticism and disdain for howling ghosts and assorted other risks commonly found in the digital-asset industry. But as crypto prices kept going up, the money at stake became too big to ignore. Audited public companies like Silvergate Capital decided to take the plunge into the crypto space.
That decision hasn't worked out so well for Silvergate. The howling ghost of former client FTX chased away depositors, investors and finally even crypto-industry business partners. The bank said its ability to continue as a going concern is in question, and it was unable to file its annual report on time because of a crush of requests for information from its independent auditors and regulators. Silvergate's share price, which reached as high as $222 about 15 months ago, on Thursday fell to its lowest level ever.  Now, anyone who lived through the Enron era or other past financial disasters knows that independent auditors are no guarantee of inoculation against scandal. What they represent is still an improvement on the "hey, just trust us" regime in place among many centralized crypto enterprises.
Binance has struggled to find a firm willing and able to perform an audit of its reserve to boost confidence it's not hiding FTX-like ghouls after Mazars Group halted such work for crypto clients. A post-mortem examination of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network revealed the company lacked the ability to track assets and liabilities. Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital said on Tuesday its financial statements can no longer be relied upon after the Securities and Exchange flagged errors. Of all of the alarming revelations from the FTX bankruptcy, perhaps the most eye-popping in accounting circles was that Sam Bankman-Fried's sprawling empire kept – or attempted to keep – its financial records with QuickBooks, software marketed to small businesses with subscription prices that start at $15 a month.
When the dust finally settles from the past year's destruction in the crypto industry, it's obvious that whatever companies attempt to rise from the ashes will need more than QuickBooks to restore confidence in the space. Whether any of the traditional auditors agree to undertake the exorcisms required is another question entirely. | 
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