- The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) examination program will include cryptocurrency on the curriculum from August next year.
- Bloomberg reports that the CFA included the new subject matter in response to a surge in interest.
- The three-stage CFA exam is known as the toughest test in finance.
Chalk this up as perhaps another sign that cryptocurrencies have grabbed Wall Street's attention.
The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program has announced that cryptocurrencies and blockchain will now form part of the curriculum.
According to Bloomberg, crypto topics will now be included under a new reading called "Fintech in Investment Management", alongside subjects such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The decision follows feedback obtained by the CFA program from focus groups and surveys, which revealed a surge of interest in the field.
"We saw the field advancing more quickly than other fields and we also saw it as more durable. This is not a passing fad," said Stephen Horan, managing director of the CFA curriculum.
Known as the most brutal test in finance, CFA applicants are required to pass a three-stage examination. The pass rate for the first exam is usually less than 50%.
Questions on crypto will form part of the subject matter for the first two levels of the exam.
They will also be included in the ethics section of each testing level — a topical subject matter given the ongoing regulatory developments around taxation,investment vehicles and crypto exchanges.
Reading material for next year's exam will be released in August 2019, after which candidates are encouraged to log around 300 hours of study time.
This past June, more than 200,000 people registered for the exam, which is seen as one of the key pathways to boost job prospects in the industry.
The majority of applicants were from Asian regions, which is also where most crypto activity takes place. Measured by transaction volume, Japan-based Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world.
You can find more on Bloomberg here.
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