I really like your Part 2 above, because I believe you offer specifics about valuation that one might be able to use to help defend a client in an audit, or maybe in Tax Court.

I still believe that one has to ascertain the value of STEEM and Steem Power (SP) on the date received, and then track possible capital gains or losses after date received.

It appears BlockTrades will now give you a value for each.

For the conservative approach, I found this piece which I like:

https://steemit.com/tax/@lpfaust/us-tax-considerations-when-blogging-for-magic-internet-money-part-i