Crypto lands a win among professional accountants
The Financial Accounting Standards Board made a change in October to help public companies that hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.
In his regular column, J.W. Verret, Law Professor, Lawyer, CPA, and Head of the Crypto Freedom Lab covers cryptocurrency law and regulation with a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) and financial privacy.
Institutional adoption is an exciting but frustrating topic in crypto. The true modern crypto heirs of the 90s cypherpunk legacy have a vision of crypto as human empowerment through decentralization. This vision includes the destruction of intermediaries who charge rent and threaten people's freedom and privacy. On the other hand, Crypto Twitter gets abuzz when a major financial institution takes another step into crypto.
Dogecoin (DOGE) hoped Elon Musk would use Twitter to help cryptocurrency adoption. The cognitive dissonance extends to the institutions themselves, as banks launch crypto projects without considering how a crypto payment system built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network or an Ethereum Layer 2 is intended to make that same bank obsolete.
These broader philosophical issues aside, the US-based Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, introduced a change to accounting standards in October that will help public companies hold digital assets on their balance sheets. For now, it's good for institutions and cryptos.
The old way of accounting for crypto on company books was to account for it as software. It appeared on the balance sheet at its historical cost, then was depreciated in depreciation with each fall in price (but was not revalued when prices rose). It was a chilling effect on public company holdings for anyone but the d...
The Financial Accounting Standards Board made a change in October to help public companies that hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.
In his regular column, J.W. Verret, Law Professor, Lawyer, CPA, and Head of the Crypto Freedom Lab covers cryptocurrency law and regulation with a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) and financial privacy.
Institutional adoption is an exciting but frustrating topic in crypto. The true modern crypto heirs of the 90s cypherpunk legacy have a vision of crypto as human empowerment through decentralization. This vision includes the destruction of intermediaries who charge rent and threaten people's freedom and privacy. On the other hand, Crypto Twitter gets abuzz when a major financial institution takes another step into crypto.
Dogecoin (DOGE) hoped Elon Musk would use Twitter to help cryptocurrency adoption. The cognitive dissonance extends to the institutions themselves, as banks launch crypto projects without considering how a crypto payment system built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network or an Ethereum Layer 2 is intended to make that same bank obsolete.
These broader philosophical issues aside, the US-based Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, introduced a change to accounting standards in October that will help public companies hold digital assets on their balance sheets. For now, it's good for institutions and cryptos.
The old way of accounting for crypto on company books was to account for it as software. It appeared on the balance sheet at its historical cost, then was depreciated in depreciation with each fall in price (but was not revalued when prices rose). It was a chilling effect on public company holdings for anyone but the d...
What's Your Reaction?
