Jacob Rodman – Practice Fellow | Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)
Marissa Scicchitano – Audit Principal | Wolf & Company
Steven Baum – Managing Director | CBIZ
Reza van Roosmalen – Principal | Deloitte
Moderator: Jeff Rundlet, VP of Institutional Solutions | Cryptio
Two years after fair-value recognition gave corporates a viable way to reflect crypto holdings on balance sheets, the FASB is widening its lens.
“There were 72 different themes we heard in our latest agenda consultation — and crypto was in the top 10,” said Jacob Rodman. “Putting it on our research agenda creates a real priority for us to focus on.”
The research agenda now focuses on stablecoin classification and de-recognition and transfers – the first priorities drawn from a broader list of topics raised through stakeholder feedback, including staking, liquidity pooling, gross-versus-net presentation, and tokenization. Each highlights where traditional accounting frameworks struggle to capture on-chain economics.
This inclusion of crypto in the FASB’s top-ten priorities marks a shift from one-off standard-setting to continuous engagement. Digital assets are no longer a special case; they are becoming part of the mainstream accounting vocabulary.
Few topics capture the intersection of blockchain and balance-sheet reality like stablecoins.
How should a token designed to hold a one-dollar value be treated – as a digital asset, or as cash?
According to Marissa Scicchitano, the market isn’t waiting for a formal answer.
“I feel like the industry is not necessarily waiting for the FASB to come to a conclusion here,” she said. “If a stablecoin has fully backed reserves — something very liquid like money-market funds or U.S. Treasury bills — there’s a case that it can be cash and cash equivalents.”
That potential classification could reshape how treasurers report liquidity and working capital.
But, Scicchitano added, auditability is the sticking point: proof-of-reserve attestations are typically point-in-time, not continuous, and often rely on issuer-controlled wallets. Auditors must therefore evaluate control environments, custody structures, and the timeliness of reserve reporting before signing off on “cash-equivalent” treatment.
Steven Baum underscored the urgency from the field:
“We can’t wait a year to determine classification,” he said. “We have to come to conclusions now — to give clients and stakeholders financial information that actually makes sense.”
For Baum, the issue is one of relevance: if investors can’t interpret cash and liquidity correctly, the financials fail their purpose.
Reza van Roosmalen called stablecoins the “low-hanging fruit” for the FASB – a tangible starting point for bridging policy with practice.
“Working capital is a KPI for many companies,” he noted. “Cash is important. We already treat some money-market investments as cash equivalents even though, technically, they’re equity interests. With stablecoins, the same look-through logic can apply — but remember, when it’s a cash equivalent, it has to appear in the cash-flow statement. That’s not going to be easy for certain stablecoins.”
In response, Rodman confirmed that the board’s ongoing research focuses on value stability, collateral, and redemption rights, aligning with definitions introduced in the GENIUS Act.
“While some can reach answers on the simpler cases,” he said, “clarity would be helpful for the trickier ones.”
In short, stablecoins are testing the boundaries of what “cash” means in a digital economy – and the results will ripple through liquidity metrics, revenue recognition, and audit design alike.
Presentation matters as much as measurement.
Under current GAAP, crypto OTC desks that source liquidity from their own inventory are often treated as principals rather than agents. That means every buy and sell is recorded as gross revenue and expense – even when the firm’s true economic margin is only a few basis points.
Steven Baum illustrated the problem:
“You end up with seven billion dollars in trading revenue and six-point-nine-eight-eight billion in costs,” he said. “It makes it very challenging to understand the true impact of that financial information.”
The inflated top line can distort KPIs, confuse investors, and even affect regulatory thresholds.
Some firms lose their Emerging Growth Company status prematurely, triggering accelerated reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance purely because of presentation – not because of actual scale.
Traditional broker-dealers are exempt from this treatment under SEC guidance, but crypto trading platforms often are not, leading to inconsistent comparability across similar business models.
The panel agreed that the goal should be to align reporting with economic substance rather than technical form – ensuring financial statements communicate the true profitability and risk profile of digital-asset intermediaries.
Beyond stablecoins and presentation lies a deeper question: when is a digital asset truly transferred, and who controls it once it moves on-chain?
Reza van Roosmalen argued that while the technology is new, the economic mechanics are familiar.
“The technology is new, but the economics are old,” he said. “We’ve had staking in traditional finance for years — it was called securities lending. The same principles of control and transfer of risk and reward still apply.”
That analogy reframes staking and DeFi transactions not as accounting anomalies but as evolutions of existing financial instruments. The challenge, Reza explained, is that crypto’s legal form rarely maps cleanly to the traditional frameworks that hinge on contractual rights.
Liquid-staking tokens and LP tokens, for example, are often carried at cost less impairment even when they trade actively – an outcome many auditors feel misrepresents reality.
As Baum noted elsewhere, classifying wrapped tokens at cost “makes little sense” when instruments like wrapped BTC have observable market prices distinct from their underlying assets.
Compensation accounting adds another layer. Under ASC 710, tokens promised to employees must be re-measured at each reporting date, leading to large swings in liabilities and expenses. Baum’s pragmatic advice: “If you plan to issue tokens to staff, deliver them before year-end — it’ll save you a world of complexity.”
And then there’s DeFi.
Marissa Scicchitano captured the auditors’ dilemma succinctly:
“DeFi is probably one of the more hairy issues,” she said. “You’re not dealing with a legal entity, you’re dealing with another smart contract. They don’t have a SOC report — there’s no one on the other end to confirm balances. The existing auditing models don’t really work for DeFi, so you have to get creative.”
Marissa noted that this creativity is often necessary – but it pushes auditors to stretch traditional methods without overstepping professional assurance standards.
As more pre-IPO companies enter staking and DeFi markets, audit readiness – from SOC 1/2 controls to data traceability – will become the defining bottleneck for going public.
Behind each of these topics lies a disciplined standard-setting process. Rodman outlined how the FASB decides which issues advance from research to technical agenda status:
“In an industry evolving this quickly, an incremental approach makes sense,” he said. “Stay engaged and provide feedback — that’s how your views can be incorporated and heard.”
That feedback loop – from industry practitioners to the standard-setting table – is accelerating. Fair-value accounting was the first proof of concept; now the dialogue is expanding to encompass the broader architecture of digital-asset finance.
The conversation in New York captured a pivotal moment. Digital-asset accounting has moved beyond proving that crypto belongs on the balance sheet – it’s now about refining how those assets are measured, classified, and presented:
And through it all, the FASB and audit firms are building a shared vocabulary that translates blockchain activity into GAAP reality.
The message from the panel was consistent: progress will be incremental but continuous. Each standard, each interpretation, and each audit cycle narrows the gap between how crypto works and how it’s reported.
As Rodman emphasized, collaboration – not isolation – will define this next phase. Auditors are pushing for practical answers now, while the FASB is beginning to codify the conceptual frameworks that will anchor those judgments for years to come.
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