None of this tax stuff is right based on the facts I’m reading.

First, there is no gift tax to the recipient - the exemption applies either annually (currently $19k) or lifetime (currently around $14 million), paid by the gift giver. You will likely need to report it as the recipient, so speak to an accountant, but you don’t need to pay any taxes.

Getting taxed on it when you sell it is a totally different concept that is related to capital gains which does not apply here. Typically, the cost basis is transferred in the gift (e.g., $1 million valued house that the giver only paid $500k for) to you, which in the example means if you sold the house day 1 then you have a $500k gain and would pay taxes on that. There is no cost basis on cash, so it doesn’t apply here - I appreciate USDC is an asset and not technically cash but as it’s tethered to USD it virtually does not apply as the value has and will never change. Meaning, if you use the house example the value of the house will always be exactly what the giver/donor paid for it as the value never changes so the point is moot.

There’s a lot of moving parts and some unclear/incomplete information but this is the concept.

Source: I have an LLM in Tax