All you have accomplished is a) making some money for the IRS and none for yourself b) resetting the timer for long-term capital gains tax rates.
Am I missing something, or is the above interpretation accurate? Is the takeaway just that a lot of US-based traders don't plan on paying taxes or haven't looked into them enough?
yes, and yes.
that said, you could perhaps make an aggressive argument that you haven't made any bitcoin profits until withdrawing the proceeds of your trades, as if the whole thing internally was a game. that argument would likely lose if the IRS challenged it.