Standards-anchored to primary IFRS and FASB text. Worked figures are illustrative. Not accounting advice.
TCTokenCapitalisation
Standard, US GAAP

ASC 985-20 Software to Be Sold, Leased or Marketed

Standard
ASC 985-20 governs software to be sold, leased or otherwise marketed. Costs are expensed until technological feasibility is established, after which eligible costs are capitalised until the product is available for general release ASC 985-20. It applies where a token-built model is part of a product sold to customers rather than used internally.

When it applies instead of ASC 350-40

The dividing question is who the software is for. Software developed for the entity's own internal operations falls under ASC 350-40; software developed to be sold, leased or marketed to customers falls under ASC 985-20 ASC 985-20. A token-built model embedded in a product a company sells is more likely to sit here than in the internal-use standard.

The technological-feasibility threshold

Under ASC 985-20 all costs are expensed until technological feasibility is established, meaning the entity has completed the planning, design, coding and testing necessary to establish that the product can be produced to meet its design specifications. Only after that point are eligible development costs capitalised, and capitalisation stops when the product is available for general release.

Applied to a marketed token-built model

For a model shipped inside a product, development-phase token spend consumed after technological feasibility, for example final fine-tuning and evaluation of the release candidate, is a candidate for capitalisation, while earlier exploratory spend is expensed. The token ledger's phase marker again evidences the boundary, this time keyed to feasibility rather than to the internal-use threshold.

Why the distinction matters

The two US GAAP standards can produce different capitalisation start points and different amounts for what is economically a similar model, purely because of how the software is deployed. Establishing at the outset whether an asset is internal-use or marketed avoids applying the wrong threshold and having to unwind it later.