Recent years have shown a significant acceleration in the spread of crypto-assets, with possibly sizeable consequences for official statistics. This paper presents the current status of the classifications of these instruments (some not yet defined at international level), analyses the impacts that cryptoassets may have on the compilation of external statistics, and describes their potential effects on specific balance of payments items.
This paper shows that the relevance and magnitude of the effects of the increasing use of crypto-assets on the compilation of external statistics depend in part on the choices that will be made at international level regarding the classification of these instruments. The analysis also highlights the kind of information needed for the statistical recording of crypto-assets and explores how their missing or incorrect detection may result in distortions in external statistics.
