[nullc]

> I don't know what it would even mean to have a "hard fork" which does not maintain the previous state of the blockchain.

Some of these things have edited the prior state... heck even the purpose of the eth/etc hardfork was taking coins from the 'dao hacker' and assigning them to the ethereum foundation. There was some "united bitcoin" where you had to transact during some particular window to get granted coins, etc.

I agree that the case where there is a fork and where you don't get coins is degenerate-- plus the tax treatment in that case is obvious.