Fair-Value Accounting
Recording an asset at what it could be sold for now, with each change in that value flowing through the income statement.
Fair value is measured with a hierarchy: Level 1 uses quoted prices in active markets, Level 2 uses observable inputs for similar assets, and Level 3 relies on unobservable model inputs. Actively traded digital assets typically sit at Level 1 or 2, which is what made the shift to fair value practical for them. The consequence for readers of financial statements is that reported earnings swing with market moves even in quarters when the company bought and sold nothing, so a headline loss can be entirely unrealized. This is a different thing from revenue or operating profit, and treating a fair-value gain as business performance misreads the statement.
En pratique
A company holding an unchanged quantity of a digital asset will report a gain in one quarter and a loss in the next purely because the market price moved, with no transaction in either period.
Le malentendu courant
That fair-value gains are money the company can spend, when they are unrealized marks that reverse if the price moves back and generate no cash until a sale occurs.