Nice perspective! I must say my involvement in crypto took an abrupt halt when trying to unravel the confusion of tax consequences for each transaction. I went wild last year participating in everything and then come tax time was left scratching my head at trying to retrace all the activity. Every event being taxable is a nightmare. So many trades both on exchange and decentralized such as Shapeshifts, ICO's, EtherDelta, Cryptokitties, Prisms. In fact because of this I basically halted all activity after participating daily since mid-2017.
I am wondering how many others there are out there like me that were heavily involved on a daily basis during the hyperbolic phase that stopped once the reality of tax responsibility hit home?
I wish I would have kept track of every transaction at the time, but I thought foolishly it would be only a taxable event at the time of cashing out to fiat. Doing the right thing in terms of attempting to follow the current tax rules is painful, but I am hoping this effort now will payoff in terms of showing compliance in the future. After I get this tax mess straight I plan on keeping track as I go so it is not this painful and plan on jumping back in the market. Hopefully there will be others doing the same if this prevented them from participating similarly.