On Thursday, November 30, 2017, 11:12:03 AM PST, grarpamp
   <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
   ;  [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815811
   In that cite, somebody foolishly claimed:
   "Case 2: taxes. BTC is an asset. If you buy at price X and sell at
   price Y, guess what, you owe taxes on Y-X. I don't understand how this
   is news to anyone."
   The person writing this apparently does not "get" that the rule for
   currencies  (Euro, Yen, Pound, etc) is that there are no "gains":  A
   person can change dollars into Euros; If the relative value between
   Euros and dollars increases, and the person changes his asset back to
   dollars, he then has more dollars, but this isn't called a "gain", or a
   "capital gain".  That transaction simply isn't taxable, and the IRS
   doesn't dispute that.
   What happened?  As I recall, a few years ago the IRS decided that they
   would treat Bitcoin as an asset, not a currency.  Why?  That was a
   hugely self-serving decision!  They knew that give the extreme
   deflationary arc of bitcoins, taking that position would render most
   such increases taxable.  Had they treated bitcoin as the currency it
   clearly was and is, the Federal government would not be able to rob its
   claimed share.
   My proposed solution is obvious.  Consider the following scenario:
   Suppose the Federal Government collects 3 trillion dollars in taxes
   each year.  Suppose each person who paid such taxes, paid 1% of that
   same value into an AP-type fund, aimed at tax collectors and other
   major government employees.  That's a fund of $30 billion.  If it costs
   $100,000 to "predict" a death, that's 300,000 such deaths.
   According to Google, the IRS has about 80,000 employees.  The Federal
   government has about 1.4 million civilian employees.  Might there be
   100,000 managers?  80,000 + 100,000 = 180,000.
   It would be a vastly better deal for taxpayers to contribute to such a
   fund, because the Federal government's ability to collect taxes the
   next year would be drastically reduced...if the number of employees
   remaining to collect such taxes is drastically reduced.
   jimbellproject.org
                Jim Bell

References

   1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815811