A fictional story and any basis on actual tax laws, people, or events is purely coincidental. I was laughing and laughing as I wrote this so please keep that in mind.
A drop of ink blown by the air and dried on the paper:
The US tax law requires payments on “airdrops” at the time they are received – this amounts to taxation on unrealized capital gains imho.
Somewhere and sometime in the future in an industrial park, an orange power cord stretches from a public restroom towards a ramshackle RV where Tracy sits starring at her smart phone. Suddenly, our humble hero Tracy receives an airdrop of six million FUDME coin. Rushing over to the Fudmetoo exchange, (the only exchange where the coin is listed) she notices the amazing price.
“I’m rich, I’m rich!” she proclaims. She starts checking out all the documentation and after briefly looking at the white paper said, “Looks like this was quickly written by some gig worker but there’s some interesting ideas here.”
With some hesitancy she fills out the KYC.
“Address and phone number… photo of license… fair enough I guess, worth doing for this large payout I suppose.” she said while mumbling to herself.
Waiting… waiting… no KYC approval yet… days later she signs back into the exchange.
“Where are all the buy orders?” she wonders aloud. “Twelve sat, maybe it’s worth dumping a few FUDME.”
Trying to move FUDME tokens onto the exchange takes hours and hours and even with the stated number of block confirmations it’s not released for trading. She watches in horror as the buy orders get filled one by one the price keeps dropping lower and lower. Suddenly the whole exchange went down with a black screen and a “Please sign in later – technical issues,” message.
Days later FUDME token appeared to be tradable again with over a billion available at one sat. Occasional volume seemed to be happening from people purchasing smaller amounts. Tracy moved on to other things FUDME appeared to be not such a good investment although the white paper sounded a bit promising.
Months pass…
The Fudmetoo exchange goes into receivership after claiming that hackers drained their cold wallet and might have got some of their records. Their CEO “Big Al” fled to China??? leaving no forwarding address. People kept looking for a Fudmethree exchange opening up but nothing could ever be tied back to Big Al.
An official looking letter arrived in the PO Box. Tracy opens it and after reading it briefly exclaims, “O.M.G. the IRS thinks I owe what?!? The freakin FUDME coin isn’t worth crap, how am I ever going to pay this?”
We zoom in on Tracy at a dingy looking bar crying in her beer.
“What’s wrong hunny?” the guy next to her asked compassionately.
The TV in the bar was showing old reruns of reality shows, the music blared, “Bad boys, bad boys, what are you gonna do when they come for you?”
Tracy sobbed, “Have you seen Orange is the New Black? I’m screwed, so screwed, the IRS thinks I owe them...” her words kind of trailed off as she sobbed hysterically.
Strange dark figures in what appeared to be SWAT outfits moved around furtively outside the bar window. Their leader said, “Now we all know what were gonna do, that six million BTC pot is nearly in our grasp.”
“Six million?” one of the guys asked. “I think it’s more like six sat in her address.”
“WHAT?!? Why didn’t you say something earlier?” the leader asked.
“I thought she was your old girlfriend or something and you were looking to get back at her.”
The leader checked his phone hastily entering some numbers.
“Oh man, I think your right, I must have fat fingered the public address earlier or something. Let’s get out of here before someone notices us.”
Meanwhile back inside the bar.
“Let me see that letter,” asked the guy. Reaching over he takes the letter and starts reading it.
“Yada, yada… I hate legalize,” he mutters as he looks it over. “Airdropper? What’s an Airdropper? Look at all these spelling errors and grammar issues. If I were you I’d dump this straight in the trash bin and forget about it.”
Tracy looked up feeling a bit better, “It does have a lot of issues when you really look at it closely. I was so worried at first that I never bothered to really read it. Besides why on earth would the IRS go after unrealized capital gains?” she laughed.
“Yup that’s all kinds of stupid,” he said and they both chuckled.
It was the beginning of a wonderful romance. The happy pair left the bar and all was rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. :D