ACH direct deposit is absolutely not a currency in any sense of the concept. It's a vehicle for USD—direct deposit has no value, it's a transaction. Gift cards

ACH direct deposit is absolutely not a currency in any sense of the concept. It's a vehicle for USD—direct deposit has no value, it's a transaction. Gift cards can maybe be considered a form of currency, but they're hardly able to be treated as one since you can redeem them in exactly one way, and the issuer needs to count them as a liability in the currency they were issued in (mining a bitcoin doesn't create debt on Satoshi's corporate ledger). You can argue the semantics all day, but nobody is buying up and trading millions of dollars in Starbucks gift cards. Arguing that these rules are for any purpose other than cryptocurrency is wild. The IRS doesn't create rules for things that aren't a material concern, and cryptocurrency is the only recent "virtual currency" that is a material concern.