Bitcoins earned from signature campaigns and bounties count as ordinary income and they don't qualify for lower tax rates as capital gains. But then, the most important question is whether we should pay tax on those coins which are still in our wallet or not. Ideally, I would pay taxes only on those coins which I sold for fiat. But if Bitcoin is ordinary income, then we need to pay tax on all our coins, right?
Bitcoin is not an ordinary income because you're unable to directly cash it out from your wallet. If I could pay my taxes in Bitcoin I'd gladly do so directly, but if i'm forced to use an exchange to convert to fiat and pay fees along the way, no thank you. Nobody will make me pay taxes from tokens that are lying on some address without my name on it and that I can't spend on anything in my country but have to use an exchange first. Next thing they'll make us pay taxes for tokens earned in computer games just because theoretically we can exchange them to money on ebay.