How would you have "received" it if you didn't manually claim it?
There are currently 1000s of free NFTs (almost all completely valueless) I could claim on random projects, if I don't manually claim them they are not a digital asset I have received. GP had to claim their reddit NFT to receive and then "own" it in their reddit vault (which is a non-custodial wallet too actually, stored on Arbitrum's blockchain).
I think it's quite likely that the government will come after the ability to defer capital gains. Avoiding taxable events is a heavily exploited 'loophole' by the very rich. In an effort to harmonize capital gains and income there will be some sort of mark-to-market wealth tax / property tax. So you may end up having to pay property tax on your NFT if you want to keep it. At least if it's valuable you can sell it to cover the tax incurred. The government doesn't have to value the property at sale price (see Chicago housing) so you could, however unlikely, end up owing more on taxes than you could sell it for - if this were to happen the government considers that more your problem than their problem.
I think that is unlikely because its not really about the state’s revenues, its about money circulating in the economy
they simply penalize people that try to hoard dollars and not circulate, via tax and inflation
so it doesnt matter to the government that rich people borrow against appreciated assets, if they spend the borrowing then vendors sell stuff and also pay tax on that. if they pay interest the bank gets that, usually. if they donate the loan proceeds or the assets thats fine too. if they invest it thats fine as well.
obviously almost no individual politician perceives it this way, and a law may be passed through their house, but the aggregate outcome is that risk and money circulating is incentivized by not being taxed, accumulation of just cash to hoard is disincentivized by heavy taxes.
My prediction is that politics will change out of necessity due to insufficient tax revenues and an increased wealth inequality will popularize tax harmonization. Rich people having more money will be of little comfort to the masses of working poor.
tax the rich always becomes raise income taxes on the upper middle class
which is palatable because the masses of working poor only relate to taxes on transactions categorized as income instead of everything else that rich people actually use