When Steven Baum joined Block & Order, he made a counterintuitive observation about digital assets: crypto is not hard to audit because it is opaque. In many cases, it is hard to audit because visibility alone does not answer the most important questions auditors need to resolve.

“That’s the thing about crypto—it makes it so awesome to audit,” Baum said. “It’s the most auditable asset that’s out there.”

But Baum was clear that audit difficulty emerges when visibility on chain doesn’t answer for uncertainty off chain. Assets can be fully traceable on a blockchain while still being subject to unclear ownership, informal agreements, or assumptions about access…