Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies: Where is the Accounting?

In a recent survey of academic research, Fintech topics broadly classified as cryptocurrency studies, were by far the most researched topics in the social sciences. What is perhaps surprising is that even though cryptocurrencies rely on a distributed accounting ledger technology, relatively few of those recent studies were conducted by accounting academics. While some of the features of a system like Bitcoin including the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus, do not rely on a traditional accounting knowledge base (instead locating in the realms of cryptography and computer science) that does not necessarily imply that other potentially useful distributed ledger designs are also required to rely on such extreme (accounting free) features that arise in the Bitcoin environment. Building on a foundational framework developed by Risius and Spohrer (2017), we provide support for their hypothesis that to date research in this area has been predominantly of a somewhat narrow focus, based upon exploiting existing programming solutions without adequately considering the fundamental needs of users. We provide a wider appreciation of value creation and governance issues by considering four applied classes of problems where a blockchain (distributed ledger) could add value without requiring a cryptocurrency to be an integral part of the functioning system. We show how accounting knowledge is still relevant when one shifts from centralized to decentralized systems. We contribute to the debate on the development of (cryptocurrency free) value creating distributed systems by proposing that accounting knowledge has a potentially much wider impact than just narrowly in the areas of auditing and operations management.