Crypto-asset Taxonomy for Investors and Regulators

2026-02-04

AI Summary

This study addresses the absence of a unified and comprehensive classification framework for crypto assets, which hampers informed investment decisions and effective regulatory evaluation. To bridge this gap, the paper proposes a multidimensional taxonomy that integrates technical design, market structure, and regulatory considerations. For the first time, it systematically incorporates dimensions such as technical standards, degrees of resource centralization, asset functionality, legal attributes, and minting and yield mechanisms. Through theoretical derivation, regulatory analysis, and case studies, the framework maps the top 100 mainstream crypto assets, revealing underlying control patterns even in ostensibly decentralized assets. It also accommodates ambiguous edge cases and identifies recurring design paradigms, thereby offering a practical analytical tool for regulatory risk assessment, cross-asset comparison, and the development of digital financial platforms.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Security and Privacy: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Bridging structured and unstructured data

Abstract

Crypto-assets are a main segment of electronic markets, with growing trade volume and market share, yet there's no unified and comprehensive asset level taxonomy framework. This paper develops a multidimensional taxonomy for crypto-assets that connects technical design to market structure and regulation. Building on established taxonomy guideline and existing models, we derive dimensions from theory, regulatory frameworks, and case studies. We then map top 100 assets within the structure and provide several detailed case studies. The taxonomy covers technology standard, centralisation of critical resources, asset function, legal classification and mechanism designs of minting, yield, redemption. The asset mapping and case studies reveal recurring design patterns, capture features of edge cases that sit on boundaries of current categorisations, and document centralised control of nominal decentralised assets. This paper provides framework for systematic study for crypto markets, supports regulators in assessing token risks, and offers investors and digital platform designers a tool to compare assets when building or participate in electronic markets.

Problem

• crypto-asset
• taxonomy
• regulation
• market structure
• classification

Innovation

• crypto-asset taxonomy
• multidimensional classification
• decentralization analysis
• regulatory framework
• token design patterns