thanks for your interest in my US Tax Considerations series. I appreciate those who read and comment on my posts.
The response to your question will be answered better with a formal blog post, than a comment thread. I will feature this question on a future US Tax Considerations piece in the next two weeks, because it touches on a number of topics (taxing digital currency as a property, barter rules when trading property with other property and capital gain deferral rules of 1031 like kind property exchanges) which I do not thing a reply in a comment thread will do justice to.
RE: How US Tax Treatment of Cryptocurrencies Helps the STEEM Ecosystem