Gemini Clears New Deloitte Audit in Bid to Appeal to Wall Street

Gemini’s exchange and custody services have cleared yet another systems design check.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’s crypto business announced Tuesday that it had completed the SOC 1 Type 1 examination in March 2020. The report, conducted by Deloitte, is an attestation that Gemini’s financial reporting obligations work at a given moment. 

Gemini Head of Risk Yusuf Hussain told CoinDesk that the “independent validation” of Gemini’s financial reporting operations gives credence to the system’s design and mitigates “the risk of significant error, omission, or data loss.” 

Gemini, which Hussain claims is the first crypto exchange and custodian to run the gamut of security, privacy, financial reporting and systems control examinations designed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), is now one year away from completing the Type 2 report, which checks that the systems also work over time. 

Checking these audit boxes have become a regular feature of Gemini’s compliance and regulatory strategy. It had previously completed AICPA’s security facing SOC 2 Types 1 and 2 reports, also administered by Deloitte, and plans to repeat the SOC 1 Type 2 report annually.

BitGo has also completed the SOC Type 2 audits for its custody business.

“Providing this level of transparency and building this level of trust is key to broader crypto market adoption,” Hussain said. It has also apparently paid dividends for Gemini, which uses these attestation reports to show potential partners that their systems are transparent, and in so being are also up to snuff. 

Hussain said such transparency “is a significant factor in our establishing relationships with traditional financial institutions.”

He pointed to State Street Bank as one such institution. State Street launched a digital asset pilot examination with Gemini last December. The pair are examining reporting scenarios for custodied digital assets, according to a State Street press release.