Stablecoins and Accounting: What Your Bookkeeper Will Ask
Six questions come up every time, and preparing for them turns a messy year end into an ordinary one.
Felix Oduya · ·2 min read
A bookkeeper seeing stablecoins for the first time asks the same six questions. Having the answers ready saves a week.
What is it, on the balance sheet
Not cash, in most frameworks. Usually an intangible asset or a financial asset depending on the jurisdiction and the framework.
This matters because it changes how value changes are recorded, and it is a question for your accountant rather than for the internet.
What rate did you use
Every transaction needs a rate at the moment it happened, in your reporting currency. A dollar stablecoin is not automatically a dollar in a non-dollar reporting currency.
Record the rate at the time, from a source you use consistently. Reconstructing rates later is the single biggest time sink at year end.
Where did it come from and where did it go
Counterparty, purpose and supporting document for every movement. A hash is an identifier, not an explanation.
A spreadsheet with date, counterparty, amount, rate, purpose and hash satisfies this entirely, and it takes two minutes per transaction at the time.
What were the fees
Network fees and venue fees are costs and they are deductible in most places. They are also easy to lose, because they are deducted rather than invoiced.
A venue statement that lists them separately solves this. An exchange that treats stablecoins as a settlement asset produces one; a trading app usually does not.
How do we value what is left at year end
At the rate on the closing date, from the same source used all year. Consistency matters more than the choice of source.
Document the source once in your accounting policy and do not change it mid-year.
Can we get a statement
The question that decides how painful everything above is. A venue that issues a periodic statement in the company name, listing transactions, rates and fees, turns this into normal bookkeeping.
Collect & Exchange issues statements rather than screenshots, which is the difference between an afternoon and a reconstruction.
The one habit worth adopting
Record each transaction on the day it happens, in the same place, with the same fields. Everything else in this list follows from that, and venues that let you hold the stablecoin rather than convert it do not relieve you of it.
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