Im not anti-government, nor am i trying to dodge paying my dues, but i dont like to trade on an exchange, you know how much money i lost on mt-gox? $0. Do you know how much i will lose on bitstamp when it gets hacked? $0. Now the IRS is in effect saying, you had better use those services or else we will hit you with a full-taxable amount, that is not fair, nor is it reasonable to presume a small time speculator like myself would have the ability to produce solid evidence of a p2p trade. In fact, its not reasonable to presume anyone has the ability to provide evidence of a p2p trade, this is no more possible than if you sold something on craigslist to a stranger for cash and then get audited and asked the details of the transaction, who was the buyer? prove that you sold the item in question and not illegal drugs or stolen property. This is no different, they arent taxing bitcoin, they are effective threatening the entire bitcoin community with fines and jailtime for doing anything that isnt registered with the government. This is what i mean when i say deanonymized, its not hiding, its having nothing to hide from.
The tax law never fundamentally changed, the IRS has laid claimed a portion of your income since before you were born. You accepted that responsibility by choosing to be born here. The invention of bitcoin never changed those laws.
If you had engaged in another type of economic activity, such as trading pink sheet stocks or some other niche commodity, you would be legally obligated to report your capital gains from that activity. The IRS would still require you to document your trades, if you wished to defend yourself in an audit. Dealing with bitcoin isn't fundamentally different from that.
It may seem like a onerous requirement to calculate capital gains on all your bitcoin transactions, but they are going to have apps for that that combine your wallet data with historical market data. It will probably print you a form showing your short term and long term capital gains, and you keep the wallet data for your records, in case of audit. It's not that much different than having an interest-bearing money market account and reporting the gains via the form that the institution administering the account sends you at tax time. Same thing for an "interest-bearing" bitcoin account, except there's no bank or institution administering it for you -- that's become your responsibility.