My take: we'll eventually move from double-entry to triple-entry accounting, and Bitcoin is the first real working example.
Double-entry means each side keeps its own books and an auditor reconciles them after the fact. Triple-entry, an idea Ian Grigg wrote up in 2005, adds a third record: a signed entry in a shared ledger that neither party can quietly edit. A public blockchain is exactly that. When a company says it holds X bitcoin at these addresses, anyone can check the balance, live, without waiting for a quarterly filing.
It won't replace auditors, though. The chain proves that a transfer happened. It doesn't prove what the transfer was for, what the asset is worth, or what the company owes off-chain. A proof of reserves with no proof of liabilities is half a balance sheet, as FTX showed. My guess is that the third entry spreads through settlement first (stablecoin payments, tokenized treasuries, proof of reserves) and that judgment stays human for a long time.
Meanwhile, the conventional rules have caught up. Under FASB's ASU 2023-08, companies now book bitcoin at fair value. The old model let them write it down but never back up. The catch is that earnings now swing with the price, so for a treasury company, BTC per share tells you more than EPS does.
For individuals, it's still property accounting. Every sale is taxable, cost basis is tracked per wallet or per account since 2025, and brokers now send 1099-DA forms. Keep your own lot-level records rather than trusting any single exchange's export. Ironically, that's double-entry discipline you still need while the third entry gets built.
Which side were you asking about: how companies report it, or how you handle it yourself?
