Blockchain Applications In The Accounting Domain

There is an increasing interest in blockchain or distributed ledger technology, which is reflecting the rapid development of the blockchain ecosystem. Many organisations like IBM, CommonwealthBank, Australia Post, etc. explore this technology and invest significant amounts in different blockchain projects. Their number currently exceeds 86,000 and will continue growing in the years to come. Applications of distributed ledger technology are identified in different industries – agriculture, government, transport, and financial services. Basically, they represent solutions for transaction record keeping and most of them so far have been in financial services. From the accounting perspective, blockchain is wildly considered as a fundamental change in the accounting domain as it introduces a new way the accounting records are generated, stored and updated. Some experts even argue that it is an accounting technology as it is a platform for doing business and accounting with a huge impact on the accounting profession. In this paper we address few of the challenges facing the accountancy profession due to the recent information technology advances and their augmented business application. Our ultimate goal is to shed light on the potential implications of blockchain for the accounting professionals as distributed ledger technology is a shift from the conventional accounting and is fundamentally changing organization and functioning of the accounting systems. We also provide some insights on the regulatory landscape and identify few of the pending regulatory issues that might give rise to a variety of accounting implications. Few profound studies are used as a focal point of our attempts to better comprehend the diversified impact of blockchain technologies on the accounting domain. We contribute to this research strand by focusing on the accounting perspective and putting more emphasis on the blockchain applications in accounting.