Reviewing the boundary between valuables and financial assets in SNA 2008 in the light of Bitcoin and similar crypto-assets and the UK experience of non-monetary gold

Abi Casey, Sam Hayes-Morgan, Richard Heys (), Matt Hughes, Pete Lee, Alison McCrae, Robert Kent-Smith and Matthew Steel

Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers from Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE)

Abstract: Gold and certain crypto-assets, such as Bitcoin, have several clear similarities. Both are highly liquid, demonstrating volatile quantities of trade and prices, but do not have a corresponding liability. At the current time under SNA08, non-monetary gold is treated as a Valuable, as a produced non-financial asset. During the process of developing propositions for updating the SNA it was proposed that crypto-assets without corresponding liability should be classified in the same way. This argument in the case of crypto-assets was rejected, partly as a result of an earlier draft of this paper, so these crypto-assets are instead recommended to be classified as a financial asset. This paper argues that non-monetary gold used for investment purposes should be similarly classified as a financial asset, both because the existing guidance is incomplete but also because by its nature it is a better conceptual match to being treated as a financial asset without corresponding liability, in the same way as monetary gold. This paper then proposes that if a wider category of financial assets without corresponding liability is being considered, this would form the natural home for crypto-assets without corresponding liability.

Keywords: crypto-assets; financial assets; gold; national accounts; non-financial assets; valuables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G1 G2 G5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mon and nep-pay
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