Blockchain and the Future of Accountancy: A Review on Policies and Regulations

Distributed ledger technology or blockchain is an effervescent innovation technology that has drawn significant attention from numerous stakeholders, such as financial institutions, energy industries, national policymakers, startups, and academia. Evidence from industrial experience illustrates that blockchain technology has tremendous potential to deliver substantial advantages in the stated domains by pledging transparent and safe platforms, which combined with smart contracts, would allow new management services. This study provides an in-depth review of the basic principles underlying blockchain technology. After a thorough analysis of the literature and existing scenarios, this study scrutinizes the contemporary blockchain applications employed in the accounting and auditing sector and discusses the prospects and challenges of introducing blockchain technology in the auditing industry with a legal and regulatory lens. There are many questions that need to be resolved regarding the legal and regulatory frameworks for accounting, recognizing, and valuing crypto-assets. The qualitative analysis in this study attempts to understand how blockchain, intertwined with different regulatory dimensions, can play a role in digitizing conventional accounting and auditing systems.