Just doing a sanity check, is crypto to crypto actually a taxable even?

Let's say I bought 10 ETH for 1 BTC. I never got any money, don't I need money to pay taxes? I simply don't understand that the government expects me to sell my investment just to pay taxes when I actually never made any money? How is this gonna work? I don't understand. Are there any tips on not having to sell my investments just so I can make taxes? I always thought the point of making investments is to make profit when I want to cash-out.

I sold a bunch of BNB because I did not want to hold on to it after the news on CZ, but I simply chose to diversify to another crypto. I did a BNB/BTC trade. I did not do BNB/USD and then USD/BTC trade. So, I never got my hands to any cash. If anything, BTC can fall to 10k at the end of the year and now I won't even have money to pay the taxes.

Example:

- I buy 100 BNB for $100

- I exchange BNB/BTC with exchange rate of 0.0002, so now I have 2 BTC. Let's assume BNB price was at $200 here. So, I have $10,000 gains according to tax laws.

- Let's say BTC price drops to $3,000 next year during tax season. Now, even if I sell all of my BTC, I still can't pay the taxes. I still would be down $4,000. What kind of joke is this? I never saw any money, so what am I paying taxes for?

I'm absolutely super frustrated and livid. What are you guys doing, do you have any tips here to stay legal? My transactions are on Binance, so there's no way to circumvent the taxes I assume.