I feel that people believe that they can get away with things because they imagine a situation where you can argue on a technicality and get away with it.
In reality if they want to punish you for this they'll see right through it. Loopholes are only loopholes because there's an established history of authorities not willing to enforce it (brown paper bags around liquor bottles, "Suggested Donations").
You transacted into (what you believed was) a proxy for cash. That's obviously selling.
Every tax jurisdiction has rules about this because every tax jurisdiction has idiots who thought they'd found a clever workaround. (I think the first American one involved a guy in the 19th century selling property for the key to a lockbox full of cash.)