Move over bitcoin: stablecoins are having a moment as U.S. lawmakers wrangle over legislation and the Trump administration, according to comments last week by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, aims to use the digital assets  to ensure the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency.

This month, stablecoins are also getting attention from the American Institute of CPAs, one of the accounting industry’s biggest trade organizations, which has published reporting guidance and criteria intended to bring more transparency and standardization to issuer reports on “fiat-backed” stablecoins. 

The AICPA’s 27-page document, titled “2025 Criteria for Stablecoin Reporting,” is the culmination of a roughly three-year initiative aimed at standardizing the reports issuers put out on the assets, according to Ami Beers, senior director, assurance and advisory innovation at the AICPA. The report is designed to set criteria for stablecoin issuer reports that would give investors a better understanding of how their assets were being handled as well as to provide a framework for CPAs performing attestation engagements.

“Today there is no common framework for stablecoin issuers to report to investors on these coins,” Beers said in an interview. “What we’re trying to get is transparency and for issuers to report some of their policies, how they determine which coins are redeemable, where they’re going to invest reserve assets, and how they reconcile whether the coins outstanding are sufficiently supported by the reserve assets.”

Beers made clear that the AICPA is not issuing accounting guidance to be used by preparers of financial statements and noted that compliance is “voluntary.” Rather, she said it is criteria for a presentation and disclosure framework that creates common, consistent and transparent reporting that can be used in a CPA engagement when accountants provide attestation services, she said. 

The guide is also only focused on fiat-based stablecoins backed by traditional currencies such as the U.S. dollar. Some of the biggest such stablecoins include Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT.

The current lack of “uniformity” in the issuer reports make it difficult for investors to assess their stability, according to a March 7 report on the new guidance from BPM, a tax, advisory and accounting firm. Issuers following the new guidance would provide details on such key areas as the total number of stablecoins in circulation, and the types and amounts of assets backing the stablecoin value, the report states.

Beers likens the relationship of the investors to the stablecoin issuers as similar to that of a casino operator and its customers.

“Similar to a casino, you’re going to get your chip, you’re going to go and you’re going to play at all the different tables in the casino but when you get back you want to be able to turn your chip in for a dollar,” Beers said. “And you want to make sure that the casino is holding funds and that you can trust they’re going to be able to repay you that dollar.” 

The new guidance for stablecoins comes just under two years after the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued narrowly-focused accounting standards that required companies to report qualifying crypto assets using the fair market value accounting method. 

There is precedent for the AICPA providing such guidance. The Financial Accounting Standards Board is charged with setting U.S. accounting guidance that underpins generally accepted accounting principles, and the AICPA sets attestation standards for CPA practitioners, according to Daniel Figueredo, an advisory and assurance partner at BPM. At the same time that they often work “iteratively” with one another, he said. 

“While the FASB sets authoritative GAAP in the U.S., it is based on principles that need to be boiled down for practical application,” Figueredo said in an email.

“For example, the AICPA had published guidance on digital asset accounting before the FASB was able to finalize its recently issued crypto asset standard,” he said. “Given the rapid evolution of digital assets and stablecoins the AICPA has taken a proactive role in establishing best practices…FASB may issue formal guidance in the future, until then the AICPA guidance is available to assist in navigating this space.”