It's "triple" entry because the entity doing the recording is different, but if you want to get pedantic about the definitions it all sort of devolves. In the paradigms of normal single and double entry accounting it matters who records it. In crypto it doesn't really because it's all done by the trustless network ledger, but describing it as "triple entry" is an easy way to get at the heart of why a trustless ledger is valuable in terms of normal single/double entry accounting.
Double entry accounting is as old as the sun. The whole point is that you rob Peter to pay Paul. Peter gets an entry. Paul gets an entry. Credit Peter. Debit Paul. Those are your two entries. That's the "double" of it, the take and the give. It doesn't matter who records it. It's a zero sum game, and that's the point. It's why Revenue is a credit account (increasing with credit), because we take from Revenue to pay Cash or Accounts Receivable. If you prefer arithmetic over bookkeeping convention, you might say that Revenue normally has a negative balance. It might seem weird to keep robbing your Revenue to pay your Cash, but if you didn't then that income money would just appear magically. In double entry accounting it must always come from somewhere. There must always be a Peter to rob whenever Paul gets paid.
I've seen blog posts claiming crypto is triple entry, or some new paradigm too. Complete rubbish they are.
The core point is that the ledger is immutable. You don't have to trust Peter or Paul's version of the accounting.
Ultimately you're right, it's not "triple entry" it's just trustless accounting.
All accounting journals are immutable in principle. That's why you can get a card refund instead of a voided transaction and consider yourself even with the store. Typically you'd want to preserve independence between time of entry and time of transaction though, so this is a lot like treating the journal as mutable from the account balance history point of view. Of course addition is commutative so if all you care about is real-time balance or inventory quantity then the order of journal operations don't matter and you don't have to rebuild account history for each new out-of-order journal entry. With crypto it's desirable to always present the immutable view so it's actually simpler than a general purpose accounting system i.e. no voided transactions and no rebuilding account history if a journal entry comes in out of order.
Then call it what it actually is - third party verification/confirmation.
That's not accurate either because there is no single entity third party that verifies it. If there was it wouldn't be trustless.
If you think of third party as an auditing firm, then no, it wouldn't make sense. But in this sense, everybody that isn't Party A transferring to Party B would be third party.
(post is archived)