The airdrop is akin to a "gift". The IRS tends to hold the gift giver responsible for paying any tax owed. So if Craig Wright forks Bitcoin in such a way that it initially has value upon being airdropped, he will be liable for tax payments to the IRS of the sum of all bitcoins in existence times the price.
Who pays the gift tax? The donor is generally responsible for paying the gift tax.So it's on him to hope that when he gifts the coins, they are worth zero.
The reason is because theres no donor to pay the gift tax. And theres no individual discretion nor individual control involved in creating the airdrops. The blockchain which is making the gifts (via the miners who choose to mine the new protocol) is a decentralized entity. The creator of the protocol cant force the miners to mine, and thus has no control over the assignment of the gifts. The individual miners have no control nor discretion over the rules of the protocol, they have to either mine it or not mine it collectively. Note in the case of proof-of-stake which can be provably shown to be controlled by a coordinated oligarchy, then indeed there would be individual control and thus it would be gift and that oligarchy would be liable for the gift tax!
It is explained this way:Because they are legally required to give you the prizes you've wonif, of course, you're that luckyjust like your employer is legally required to give you your wages when you work for them. (There are exceptions if you voluntarily forfeit the prizes for some reason, and the taxes you would have to pay are in fact a common reason, but the basic idea is the same.) A gift implies the lack of legal obligation for the giver to have given you anything at all and they're doing it only because they're nice people or it's a special occasion like Christmas or your birthday.
And note that giving away the airdrops (or burning them to a non-spendable address):One way you can get out of paying taxes on your game show winnings is by gifting them to friends and family members. According to IRS rules, you are eligible to gift up to $14,000 per year to as many individuals as you want.
Although you wont be able to keep the money for yourself, its a great way to share your earnings with your family and avoid paying taxes on that portion of your game show winnings.
Will not absolve the income tax liability because the value of what you donate (by the time you can transfer the airdropped Core shitcoins you received) will be much lower by the time you can donate them and you may never be able to transfer them because as the attack begins Core blockchain will slow down to perhaps one new block every week or month thus backlogging the mempool and your transaction never getting into a block ever again:You include the value of a prize won in your income. If you itemize deductions, you deduct the value of the prize won on Schedule A. Depending on the size of your prize and your other itemized deductions, you could wind up with zero net taxable income by donating a prize won to charity.
The evil powers-that-be who created Bitcoin and this trap thought it out very well. They closed all the means of escape.