Current trends in accounting for digital/crypto-assets: an empirical analysis of accounting practices from UK, US, Canada and Europe
Comptabilité des crypto-actifs : analyse empirique des pratiques comptables du Royaume-Uni, des États-Unis, du Canada et de l'Europe
Résumé
Given the ongoing evolution, growth potential and diversity of crypto-assets as so as their unique and risky nature, there are intensive debates on the accounting treatment by holders and issuers of crypto-assets at the international level. The purpose of this research is to deepen and broaden knowledge about how crypto-assets are classified, measured, recognized and disclosed in UK, US, Canada and Europe. The first stage of the study is exploratory in nature. In the first step, we make a literature review of current regulatory frameworks of cryptocurrency by reviewing current accounting standards and practices. In the second stage, we collect the data from the annual reports of 15-20 publicly listed companies for the 2020, 2021 and 2022 periods. We manually extract the information related to classification, recognition, measurement and disclosure of cryptocurrencies. Our objective is to identify the best practices, but also gaps that exist and to come up with a list of recommendations that can be useful to policy makers, accounting standard setters and other market participants.