Standards-anchored to primary IFRS and FASB text. Worked figures are illustrative. Not accounting advice.
TCTokenCapitalisation
Measure phase

Building the auditor's nexus of cost

Measure
A nexus of cost is the unbroken evidence chain from a tagged token request, through the token ledger, to a recognised intangible asset. It is what demonstrates that a cost is directly attributable to the asset rather than a general overhead, which is the test IAS 38 applies to what may enter the carrying amount IAS 38.

Why the auditor needs it

IAS 38 permits only directly attributable cost to be included in the cost of an internally generated intangible. The auditor's job is to test that the amount capitalised really is directly attributable, and not, say, ordinary production or an unrelated experiment. The nexus of cost is the structure that lets that test pass: every capitalised dollar traces to a tagged request that traces to the asset.

The links in the chain

Demonstrating directly attributable cost

Directly attributable means the cost would not have been incurred but for building the asset, and can be attributed to it on a reasonable and consistent basis. Tagged development-phase tokens meet this squarely: they were consumed to build the specific asset, and the tag makes the attribution explicit rather than inferred. General experimentation and production serving fail it, which is why the phase marker matters as much as the project tag IAS 38 §54-62.

What breaks the nexus

The chain breaks where a link is missing. Untagged spend cannot be attributed and should be expensed. Ledger rows purged before the audit period leave the posting unsupported. A tag that changes mid-build, or one project tag reused across unrelated assets, destroys the one-to-one mapping. Each break turns a measured amount back into an assertion, so the discipline is as much about what you keep and how you tag as about what you capitalise.