So this is only a problem for the people cashing out, and if they've cashed out then they should have the cash to cover their tax bill.

And this assumes they didn't cash out to the Cayman Islands account. Probably not a lot of capital gains will be reported to the IRS this year for cryptocoin related profits.

What I'm saying is that trading btc for ltc is barter- and it is taxible.

Note this is only true if you hold onto particular coins. If you exchange some bitcoin for etherium, for example, you will realize capital gains or losses. This has nothing specifically to do with cryptocoins, the same thing would happen to you if you bough silver, say, and then exchanged it for gold.

Your latter point is straightforward tax evasion and will be caught or not in much the same ways as other forms.

I would love to see an after the fact analysis that deduces the relative market power of buyers and sellers from the transaction history.

> The first ever Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius Crassus... One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value.

Through this and other schemes, Crassus became one of the richest men in Rome. He used this fortune to amass substantial political power, eventually rising to the peak of power in the Roman system by joining the First Triumvirate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate) with Pompey the Great and and ambitious young go-getter named Julius Caesar.

" [...]Tom Lee notes that U.S. households owe an estimated twenty five billion dollars in capital gains taxes due to crypto gains."

Total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, as of 12:18PM EST on April 6, 2018 is $248,821,531,204.

According to Mr. Lee, each $1 taken from the market will result in a $22.50 decrease in aggregated market value (avg. of his estimated range, "$20 - $25").

     25B * $22.50 = $562.5B   

The alternative explanation I can come up with is if the statement was poorly formed and what he was really talking about was $25B in investment income will need to be reported and the appropriate short-term or long-term tax rates would need to be applied.

Rough, back of napkin estimation, assuming an even distribution between short-term and long-term capital gains tax rates--which isn't going to be accurate, but I don't have a better way to estimate for this analysis--would be:

    Short-term: $12.5B * 28%[1] = $3.5B
    Long-term:  $12.5B * 15%[2] = $1.875B
    Total Estimated Taxes Due: $5.375B

    Estimated impact on total market capitalization:
    5.375B * $22.50 = $121B

That doesn't sound right, either. Am I totally off-base for both interpretations?

---

[1] Making an educated guess about the "typical" cryptocurrency investors' income bracket, but without actual numbers I'm open to this estimate being higher than reality.

[2] https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/11/long-term-capital...