Future Analysts Will Be Tested on Cryptocurrencies in New CFA Curriculum

As the crypto market continues to meld into the realm of traditional finance, the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute is taking notice — so much so that the organization is adding cryptocurrency and blockchain sections to its 2019 certification exams.

The additions will be included in the institute’s Level I and II curricula, and the material will be a subsection in a seminal, wider-reaching subject area entitled Fintech in Investment Management. Within this new subject area, CFA students will be able to explore cryptocurrency finance alongside other burgenoing fintech industries, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. These new offerings will be included in the CFA’s lesson prep beginning in August 2019.

The newly included field will also find its way into the institute’s materials on professional ethics. This inclusion seems fitting for an industry that is under constant monitoring by world governments for money laundering, fraud, market manipulation and other unscrupulous practices.

The CFA decided to introduce the offerings after receiving positive feedback and rising interest from a number of focus groups and questionnaires. These crypto-curious responses reflect the same maturing institutional interest that has led the CBOE to file for a Bitcoin ETF on top of its future’s offerings and encouraged Andreessen Horowitz to launch a multi-hundred million dollar crypto fund.

“We saw the field advancing more quickly than other fields and we also saw it as more durable,” CFA Managing Director for General Education and Curriculum Stephen Horan told Bloomberg in an interview. “This is not a passing fad.”

In vetting the industry, the CFA is shining a ray of legitimacy onto cryptocurrency’s financial ramifications. The institute is one of the most proficient and prolific financial analyst training centers in the world, globally administering just over 270,000 financial analyst accreditation exams in 2017. With over 150,000 international members, it’s one of the largest global associations of financial professionals in the world.