There are some gray areas in the tax code, but this isn't one of them. You write off your basis in a capital loss. There's no legal justification for writing of

There are some gray areas in the tax code, but this isn't one of them. You write off your basis in a capital loss. There's no legal justification for writing off "lost profits". Trying to do so would just be tax fraud. Even if that were a thing, the fact that it would cost more to release it than not shows that the profit value is negative.