IMF updates SNA to reflect crypto AI, and digitalization

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Emilio Ghigini

01.08.2025

IMF updates SNA to reflect crypto AI, and digitalization — $114T gobal economy gets modern metrics for digital era

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations (UN), World Bank, European Commission, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have collaborated to update the System of National Accounts (SNA) to reflect new technologies, digital services, and intangible assets.

According to the IMF, the updated SNA will better account for digitalization, trade, public finance, and financial innovation, offering governments improved tools to manage economic growth, job creation, and crisis response. It also emphasizes the need for economies to adapt to the digital transformation.

“Measurements for the $114 trillion global economy must keep pace with the times. If they fall behind, central banks and finance ministries may end up making monetary or fiscal decisions based on incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate data,” the authors of the revised SNA warned.

Now in its sixth revision, the SNA has served as the international standard for tracking national indicators—such as output, income, expenditure, investment, financial flows, and wealth—for nearly nine decades.

With this latest update, the IMF aims to better capture the impact of digitalization, which it says is often underestimated. Despite accelerating digital transformation, productivity growth has slowed in many developed countries, raising concerns about the adequacy of current measurement systems.

The new SNA will include guidelines for tracking crypto assets like Bitcoin and defining artificial intelligence (AI). It aims to improve evaluation of digital services, cloud platforms, and intangible assets, enabling governments to make more informed economic decisions.

Improved measurement including crypto and AI impacts

The IMF recognizes Bitcoin as having real economic value and notes it consumes as much electricity as Argentina. Yet, it remains excluded from GDP calculations because it does not produce conventional goods or services. In the revised SNA, crypto assets like Bitcoin will be classified as “non-produced non-financial assets,” allowing them to be counted in national wealth estimates.

The updated SNA also urges countries to develop comprehensive metrics for sectors like AI, cloud computing, e-commerce, and digital platforms. It proposes a unified definition of AI to ensure consistency in national economic data analysis. It also includes recommendations for better monitoring of financial risks and instability, particularly in the context of growing non-bank financial institutions.

The SNA update includes detailed guidance on the production and profit distribution practices of large multinational corporations. According to the IMF, this information will help national accounts more accurately reflect the output and earnings of companies that outsource production but retain control over key assets like design, branding, and intellectual property.

Additionally, the new system highlights Net Domestic Product (NDP) as a key indicator alongside GDP. NDP goes further by subtracting capital depreciation and natural resource depletion—factors not captured in standard GDP. NDP typically lags GDP by 10–25%, with the gap being larger in resource-dependent economies like mining-heavy countries.

The IMF has already offered technical assistance, expert guidance, and training programs to support the transition to the revised SNA and BPM frameworks by 2029–2030.

As we wrote, IMF questions daily bitcoin purchases by El Salvador

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