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Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

azleg.gov

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Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#91

Post by posterboy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #81
posterboy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says that? This thread seems to be full of arm chair lawyers as another comment just told me that there is no gold standard since 1970. Whatever, the thing I want to buy with the particular coin would immediately reduce 40.000 fold in price. That might be illegal in some sense, if contracts are bound to stay valid across fluctuation, but that's basically how markets work. In the end it's all numbers on paper anyw…

> Who says that? The dictionary? The gold would be legal tender. Doesn't matter what's written on it; I can doodle artwork on a $10 bill and claim it's worth $1,000 because my art is awesome, but people aren't required to accept it as anything more than $10 towards a debt. > another comment just told me that there is no gold standard since 1970 What part of that do you object to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton…

You keep talking about gold coins on the one hand and the US Dollar on the other hand. Sorry if you are loosing me here.

Which dictionary defines Gold Coin as Dollar, in which lemma, and how can it predict and continuisly update the exchange rate if there is no authority to poll?

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#92

Post by ceejayoz »

posterboy wrote: post #91
ceejayoz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who says that? The dictionary? The gold would be legal tender. Doesn't matter what's written on it; I can doodle artwork on a $10 bill and claim it's worth $1,000 because my art is awesome, but people aren't required to accept it as anything more than $10 towards a debt. > another comment just told me that there is no gold standard since 1970 What part of that do you object to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton…

You keep talking about gold coins on the one hand and the US Dollar on the other hand. Sorry if you are loosing me here. Which dictionary defines Gold Coin as Dollar, in which lemma, and how can it predict and continuisly update the exchange rate if there is no authority to poll?

The United States Constitution does the following:

* It permits the Federal government to coin money and regulate its value.

* It specifically forbids states from making anything other than gold and silver coins legal tender. (This part is why Arizona can't declare Bitcoin as legal tender.)

Money and legal tender are related, but not the same concept.

The Legal Tender Act of 1862 (an act of the Federal government) added paper notes as legal tender. Constitutionally, states could not do this, but the Feds can. Due to the Supremacy Clause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause) this law cannot be overridden by the states; they cannot pass a law making paper notes not legal tender.

Gold coins are still legal tender. However, their value as metal is now massively more than their value as tender, so no one uses them as such. For example, a $20 gold coin sold in 2002 for $7,590,020; metal-wise it's worth about $2k, and currency-wise it's worth what it says on the coin, $20. You could use that coin to pay a $20 debt, but it would be a bad decision.

(You could come to an agreement with your creditor to accept it for any value to satisfy the debt, but your creditor is not required to do so.)

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#93

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

posterboy wrote: post #90
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you're confused about what "legal tender" is. It is up to sellers to decide what form of payment they accept. It is perfectly legal for a seller to accept only a form of electronic payment, or only certain sizes of bank notes, or payment in bitcoin or blueberries or bubblegum. This is all totally fine and has nothing at all to do with the concept of legal tender. Legal tender is simply what kind of payment mus…

You are commiting an etymological fallacy. What counts first of all is what legal tender has been in name when the constitution was written. Second, the meaning of the word when the bill was written may have reasonably changed and it may still be sensible. If this is warranted, because the state has the power to mint gold coins, they can peg the gold coin to the bitcoin, if you want to see it that way. This is illuso…

This is word salad.

The states do not have the power to mint gold coins; they only have the right to require that gold coins be accepted for the payment of monetary debt. Only the Federal government has the right to mint coins, a power reserved by Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 - which similarly reserves the right to determine value of coins.

This is very simple, it is very straightforward; anyone with a grounding in the common law would understand it exceedingly clearly - doesn't the fact that everyone in this thread disagrees with your interpretation at essentially every level give you a bit of pause?

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#94

Post by posterboy »

nybble41 wrote: post #88
posterboy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stretching the definition of what "to make legal something" means, because ... [1] It should be "to make something legal" or it requires "legal tender" to be something lexical and precisely not a sum of its parts, in which case they are not making the thing, they are just giving it a new name, which is not new at all and it is loaded with connotation that invites equating the denotated items to a group. Thus…

"Legal tender" is an idiomatic term of art and refers to the category of things which one is obligated to accept in payment of a debt. It is not merely the intersection of "legal" and "tender". The vast majority of goods which are both "legal" and "tender" (i.e. legal to use for payments provided both parties agree to the exchange) are not "legal tender". To "make" something "legal tender" means to add the thing to t…

That's just not what the phrase usually means and you (all) are clearly using "make legal" phrasal verb. Ergo you are talking cow pat, because "legal tender" becomes collocated precisely around the time that the constitution was written; meaning, you are overinterpreting your premise.

There may be reasonable precedent by now, I don't doubt it.

See ngram [1] which suffers from scanos and the remaining pieces may be coincidental

[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=legal+tender&y...

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#95

Post by dekhn »

davidw wrote: post #16
saxonww wrote: post #6

Don't get too riled up about this. "Arizona" introduced nothing. State Senator Rogers did. It's probably not going to make it out of committee in the AZ legislature. I'd be surprised if anyone took it seriously. Edit: maybe someone knowledgeable can chime in; I don't think states can even do this. The US Government determines what is legal tender in the US.

She's something of an extremist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Rogers_(politician)

I guess the one thing about hard-core Trumpets that's saved us is that most of them are so loony as to be ineffective, politically speaking. Imagine the damage these folks could have done if they were competent!

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#96

Post by nybble41 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #72
henryfjordan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you order at the counter and pay before eating, a restaurant can deny cash. If you sit down and eat all the food, then they bring you the check, they must accept cash (because now you owe a "debt").

But if the restaurant states that they don't accept cash, then you agreed to those terms.

The whole point of legal tender is that it overrides any terms you may have agreed to beforehand.

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#97

Post by posterboy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #87
posterboy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's precisely what it is because I learned French as well as English and can distinguish adjectives from adverbs without a made uply ending. A "legal term of art" still only means that it's interpretable, otherwise it would be without any interpretation. Except renegades that are not part of the circle of who's supposed to do the interpretin! I doubt that the "must accept" is part of the definition, thou…

"I doubt that the 'must accept' is part of the definition" You can doubt it all you like. https://thelawdictionary.org/legal-tender/ > Legally required commercial exchange medium for money-debt payment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender > a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5103 > 31 U.S. Code §…

Law dictionaries are neither binding nor, in many cases, very accurate as I have already indicated. As is language in general, I might add, no problem there.

But a golden Arizona bitcoin would not be foreign

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#98

Post by ceejayoz »

posterboy wrote: post #97
ceejayoz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I doubt that the 'must accept' is part of the definition" You can doubt it all you like. https://thelawdictionary.org/legal-tender/ > Legally required commercial exchange medium for money-debt payment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender > a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5103 > 31 U.S. Code §…

Law dictionaries are neither binding nor, in many cases, very accurate as I have already indicated. As is language in general, I might add, no problem there. But a golden Arizona bitcoin would not be foreign

Could you clarify which definition you're using, in that case, and where you obtained it, and explain why it's a better definition than the US Code?

> But a golden Arizona bitcoin would not be foreign

The Constitution gives the Federal government the exclusive right to mint currency. Arizona isn't allowed to do that.

Consider the possibility that if you're not aware of this basic fact, there may be other lackings in your knowledge.

Article I, Section 10, emphasis mine:

"NO STATE SHALL enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; COIN MONEY; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#99

Post by posterboy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #86
posterboy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understood that nothing lasts forever, but bank notes are not perrishable in the sense that blueberries are unless taken out of circulation. The slippery sloap that you want to go down is trivially infelicit

Perishibility doesn't matter. The Constitution doesn't say "the government shall not use perishable forms of legal tender". It's not done because it'd be dumb , not because it's forbidden.

Oh, so we are not talking about common sense anymore but about proscriptive law. In other words, there is nothing to understand here.

The constitution says "tender", which might be tenuous to lean on, but you have to admit that "shall not make legal" vs "shall not make" is equivalent to saying "English is the language of this sentence", a classical liar's paradox, because it could mean anything depending which language it's written in, particularly if it's written in legalese.

It does in fact not say "legal tender".

Re: Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]

#100

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

posterboy wrote: post #99
ceejayoz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perishibility doesn't matter. The Constitution doesn't say "the government shall not use perishable forms of legal tender". It's not done because it'd be dumb , not because it's forbidden.

Oh, so we are not talking about common sense anymore but about proscriptive law. In other words, there is nothing to understand here. The constitution says "tender", which might be tenuous to lean on, but you have to admit that "shall not make legal" vs "shall not make" is equivalent to saying "English is the language of this sentence", a classical liar's paradox, because it could mean anything depending which langua…

It says "a Tender in Payment of Debts", which is ... the same thing.

I get that you want to argue that the words are open to interpretation. To the extent that they are, these particular words have been interpreted, they now have definitions which are accepted and considering binding as a matter of legal precedent; legal precedent being the underlying basis of the common law.

It seems pretty clear that you either don't understand that, or that you don't agree with it. Either way, it means that there's very little point in trying to have a discussion about the law with you, because your basis of argumentation is non-legal.

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