As digital assets moved from speculative instruments to institutional holdings, a quieter problem emerged inside finance departments: accounting infrastructure had not matured at the same pace as the asset class itself.

Controllers responsible for month-end close increasingly found themselves navigating a fragmented operational landscape. Blockchain transactions are settled in real time, custodial reports reflect partial snapshots of activity, and enterprise ledgers often struggle to classify transactions unique to digital assets. Despite billions of dollars in institutional exposure to cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets, no widely accepted controller-grade methodology existed. Finance teams lacked clear guidance on how to actually close digital asset books.

The timing of this gap became more consequential following the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2023-08, which took effect in January 2025. This update introduced fair value accounting requirements for qualifying crypto assets. The standard resolved an important reporting question. But for many finance teams, another remained unanswered: what operational process should controllers follow to execute a compliant digital asset close?

Standards had evolved. Methodology had not.

In practice, many organizations relied on improvised workflows assembled from spreadsheets, custodian statements, wallet exports, and manually constructed reconciliations. More critically, many close processes followed a familiar sequence, from the custodian statement to the general ledger, even though the blockchain itself was the independent source of transactional truth.

The consequence was an operational blind spot.

Custodian records can lag blockchain activity, net fees differently, or omit pending transfers occurring near period cutoffs. A portfolio could appear reconciled while material variances remained undetected in the underlying chain activity. For controllers operating under increasing audit scrutiny and financial reporting obligations, the absence of a structured methodology created a meaningful control risk.

As finance leaders searched for practical ways to bring consistency to digital asset reporting, one recurring observation began surfacing across controller and accounting circles: while organizations were increasingly holding digital assets, few had established a reliable process for closing them. For Kriti Bansal, Vice President of Finance and Accounting at a digital asset technology firm , the problem appeared less like an operational inconvenience and more like a systemic control failure waiting to surface. In response, she authored DA-CORE: the Digital Asset Close, Operations & Reconciliation Engine. It is a controller-focused framework designed to bring structure to month-end close processes that had largely remained improvised.

The origins of the methodology were not theoretical. Following speaking engagements at finance leadership conferences in New York, recurring conversations with controllers, compliance leaders, and accounting professionals revealed a striking pattern. Organizations were confronting similar operational problems but lacked a standardized framework for managing them.

The challenge was especially notable because, despite the increasing institutionalization of digital assets, implementation guidance remained limited. Major accounting firms had published interpretive commentary. Standard-setters had clarified reporting expectations. But a controller-facing operational methodology remained conspicuously absent. This methodology would translate accounting principles into repeatable close procedures.

DA-CORE was designed to fill that gap. At the center of the framework is what Kriti describes as a Three-Layer Reconciliation Model, a structural departure from conventional accounting workflows. Blockchain records serve as the authoritative source in this methodology, rather than beginning with custodial reporting. The process then reconciles outward through custodial data and finally to the general ledger: on-chain → custodian → GL.

The distinction may sound technical, but its implications are operationally significant.

Traditional two-point reconciliation methods can miss categories of discrepancies that originate between blockchain settlement and custodial reporting. These gaps particularly affect transaction fees, pending transfers, timing mismatches, and incomplete activity at reporting cutoffs. By positioning blockchain activity as the starting point of reconciliation rather than a secondary reference, the framework attempts to eliminate an entire class of reporting breaks that conventional close structures often fail to detect.

Yet reconciliation represented only part of the problem. Controllers managing digital assets frequently encounter transaction types for which traditional accounting systems offer little standardization. Staking rewards, airdrops, gas fees, collateral reclassifications, inter-wallet transfers, and digital asset impairment considerations often require interpretation and bespoke internal treatment.

To address this, DA-CORE introduced a structured journal-entry taxonomy covering ten distinct digital asset transaction categories. This represents one of the most comprehensive controller-oriented classifications published for month-end close workflows. The framework also established a Risk-Tiered Exception Threshold Matrix, introducing quantitative escalation thresholds for reconciliation variances to help teams distinguish between immaterial discrepancies and exceptions warranting investigation. Just as importantly, the methodology sought to operationalize the practical implications of ASU 2023-08.

While the accounting standard established how qualifying digital assets should be measured under fair value accounting, it stopped short of prescribing how financial organizations should execute that process during close. DA-CORE translated those requirements into a repeatable workflow, incorporating valuation workpapers, journal execution protocols, and disclosure-readiness checklists into a structured five-phase process.

The resulting framework moved sequentially from source data aggregation and custody reconciliation to fair value determination, journal-entry execution, and financial disclosure preparation. Each phase was supported by defined workpaper outputs intended to improve consistency, auditability, and close discipline.

Importantly, the significance of this type of framework extends beyond cryptocurrency-native businesses.

An increasing number of traditional corporations now maintain some degree of digital asset exposure. This exposure takes various forms, including treasury allocations, payment experimentation, tokenized business models, and strategic investment activity. As that exposure expands, finance leaders face a practical governance challenge: how should emerging digital assets be controlled with the same rigor expected of conventional financial systems?

The answer may depend less on accounting theory and more on operational architecture.

Markets mature when supporting systems become repeatable. In traditional finance, month-end close processes are rarely improvised; they are documented, tested, and standardized. Digital assets, despite their growing presence in institutional finance, have until recently lacked equivalent controller infrastructure.

The DA-CORE framework, architected by Kriti, has since been publicly released, submitted for copyright registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, and formally adopted as an internal close methodology at a digital asset technology firm. Its public dissemination also created a dated and citable record of authorship, one that practitioners, researchers, and finance teams can evaluate as institutional accounting practices around digital assets continue to evolve.

For finance leaders, the larger takeaway may be straightforward: the next phase of digital asset maturity will likely depend not only on regulatory clarity or market adoption, but on whether the operational systems behind financial reporting become sophisticated enough to support them.