Accounting for Cryptocurrency Mining Operations

Rodney Elliott rodney.elliott at rbendeavours.com
Thu Oct 26 00:21:46 EDT 2017


Hi All.


If I were to purchase a cryptocurrency (say Bitcoin) with a fiat currency recognised by gnucash (say USD), then the procedure to record the transaction is clear - create an asset account of the type 'stock', associate it with a new security that uses the coin ticker (BTC) and the maximum number of significant figures supported by gnucash, etc.



What to do in the case of mining a cryptocurrency is less clear. The BTC asset account would need to be credited with the amount of coins mined, but then what? How do you balance this transaction, given that no fiat currency was involved? The cryptocurrency was effectively created out of thin air. I feel like the answer is an equity account of some description, but I do not think that it would be appropriate to have an equity account of the type 'stock'. Is there a tractable solution to this problem?





 - Rodney





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