RE: It's official, cryptocurrency has at least 3 million users! But tax complications threaten to rub out all legitimate use cases
Yes many many scenarios. Someone can send you something worth something on an index which you cannot sell at that liquidity for that price. Someone can send you something which you can sell but don't, but I don't see why a person should be punished for not selling the instant they get it either. Of course that is a moral not legal argument I'm making and whatever the law says is what it says.
In the case of Bitshares, I believe when they raised money via Angelshares they almost got screwed by a technicality like that. Then the market for Bitcoin and everything crashed and they couldn't get out as much as they were sent at the time to pay their tax. This happens a lot actually because the price you receive payment isn't necessary what you end up selling it for if the price crashes before you can sell it.
Probably most of these projects if it really is a bubble, are in position to be screwed by the IRS. How will they deal with it if they received $150 million dollars in ETH today, but a few months from now that's $5 million and they owe taxes? My whole argument is if the IRS cracks down on stuff like that it actually results in them getting less money than they could get if people just paid taxes.
Projects and people who are bankrupt cannot pay as much over the long term.
If I were to get $150M today, I would immediately start selling what I expected to owe for taxes. Then I could hold the rest after the crash.
If you don't have such foresight, you WILL be forced to sell it all. Also, while (estimated) taxes are due on a quarterly basis, the reality is that you'll have until April 15th of the following year (i.e. longer than the 3 month power down) to power down and sell. (The 2-year power down could have caused a nightmare scenario though)