Yeah, and anyone who has had to spend some time digging into the nuances of capital gains taxation (e.g. active cryptocurrency traders like myself) soon realize

Yeah, and anyone who has had to spend some time digging into the nuances of capital gains taxation (e.g. active cryptocurrency traders like myself) soon realizes that almost all of the complexity is due to the intractable problem of timing: the decision to buy or sell an asset should be dictated by the economics of the asset itself, which generally has no relationship to the imaginary line between December 31st of one year and January 1st of the following year. I'm convinced that any rational and just approach to capital gains taxation must provide a mechanism for matching income to the holding period of the asset rather than the strict and arbitrary cutoff between calendar years.