THE ARCHITECTONICS OF VIRTUAL ASSET ACCOUNTING UNDER EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: IMPERATIVES OF ECONOMIC SECURITY

Abstract

The article is devoted to investigating the peculiarities of accounting and legal regulation of virtual assets in the European Union countries in the context of the MiCA regulation implementation. The purpose of the study is to provide a scientific rationale for a model of accounting for virtual assets based on an analysis of European experience (particularly the MiCA Regulation) and to develop a unified classification that will enable the integration of digital assets into the national framework for financial reporting and data disclosure. The creation of a coherent and comprehensive legal framework is a primary and fundamental step toward developing standardized accounting models for virtual assets. Achieving this objective requires an in-depth examination of the taxonomy of digital assets and a systematic review of EU regulatory requirements. The systematization of IFRS approaches to the recognition of virtual assets reveals significant fragmentation of regulatory solutions and confirms the absence of a single universal model for their accounting treatment. The transformation of the European regulatory architecture is analyzed, particularly the classification of assets into electronic money tokens (EMT), asset-referenced tokens (ART), and other crypto-assets. The study reveals a conceptual gap between the achieved legal certainty provided by MiCA and the fragmentation of accounting approaches that rely on adapting existing IFRS (IAS 38, IAS 2, IFRS 9) in the absence of a specialized standard. The experience of EU member states (Germany, France, Estonia, etc.) is systematized, which allowed distinguishing different regulatory models: from creating special national accounting regimes to applying general principles of financial supervision. Based on a critical analysis of current IFRS norms, the author proposes a classification of digital assets taking into account their functional nature and economic substance (utility, security, governance tokens, NFT), which allows increasing the reliability of their reflection in reporting. A promising direction for further research involves not only defining classification approaches but also clarifying the procedures for their recognition and measurement under conditions of high volatility, diverse economic characteristics, and limited availability of active markets.