Arizona Introduces a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender [pdf]
azleg.gov
azleg.gov
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.
> A Central American University survey conducted last September found that nine out of 10 citizens in the country didn’t know what bitcoin was, and eight out of 10 said they had little to no confidence in the digital cash.
Most Salvadorans I know are enthusiastic about Bitcoin. Any opposition fizzled once those who had no experience or were confused by it saw no change to their daily lives when it became available.
The politics of El Salvador have changed pretty drastically in the past few years with the election of Nayib Bukele and the subsequent dominance of his Nuevas Ideas party in the assembly. The traditional left (FMLN) and right (ARENA) parties were completely voted out.
My guess is that Bukele's plan with Bitcoin is more political--he's inviting a new class of crypto-rich that he can play off against the influence of what remains of "las catorce familias," i.e. the remains of the entrenched oligarchy that allied itself with the neoliberals. From the point of view of political economy, the adoption of Bitcoin is a smart move in the current situation, where the USD only benefits the old power structures that control imports and services, and where a move back to the colón is no longer feasible after the decimation of the export agro-economy (coffee, sugar, corn).
An analogy I hear often from Salvadorans is that El Salvador could become a Latin American Singapore, with Nayib Bukele as a kind of Lee Kuan Yew.
> Oath Keepers is an American far-right[1] anti-government militia[1][2] whose members claim to be defending the Constitution of the United States.[3] It encourages its members to disobey orders which they believe would violate the U.S. Constitution. Research on their membership determined that two thirds of the Oath Keepers are former military or law enforcement, and one tenth are active duty military or law enforcement. Most research determined the Oath Keeper membership to be approximately 5,000 members, while leaked data showed Oath Keeper rosters claiming membership of 38,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_Keepers
> Promise Keepers is an Evangelical Christian parachurch organization for men. It originated in the United States, but independent branches have also been established in Canada and New Zealand.
> Promise Keepers describes its goal as "to bring about revival through a global movement that calls men back to courageous, bold, leadership. We will be the spark that calls men back to God’s Word, sharing their faith and caring for the poor and oppressed throughout the world."[2] Promise Keepers is a non-profit organization, not affiliated with any Christian church or denomination. It opposes same-sex marriage, and champions chastity and marital fidelity and the man as being head of the household. Its most widely-publicized events tend to be mass rallies held at football stadiums and similar venues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_Keepers
(funny enough wikipedia has a warning, "not to be confused with Oath Keepers", might be time for a rebranding)
Couldn't that also be stated as "It encourages its members to obey the law"?
It's a https://www.theonion.com/area-man-passionate-defender-of-wha... scenario.
I can rightly claim that the First Amendment seems to mean I can found a religion that features human sacrifices at church every Sunday, but I'll be fairly rapidly shut down if I try it.
It's just synecdoche.
https://www.billtrack50.com/legislatordetail/25708
And no, that is not legal.
> No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing 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.
-Article I, Section 10, Clause 1
Anything in the constitution is not canonical forever.
It is, however, canonical until amended or SCOTUS interprets it away.
Constitutionally, it appears quite clear Arizona can't do this currently, and the law as a result would almost certainly be immediately stayed and struck down if passed.
Arizona can accept Bitcoin all they like. They cannot make it legal tender in Arizona.
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 anyway, so I don't see the immediate implication, except that a state is supposed not to go on a lone run.
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_Woods_system
"On 15 August 1971, the United States terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency."
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?
* 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.)
Well, they've already violated this by accepting USD, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can just do BTC too. To strike this down the courts would need a lawsuit, though, and I'm not sure who could claim damages.
> coin money
I take this to mean issuing a currency, which they are not doing here since they don't control BTC.
Standing would presumably be with the party which refused bitcoin payment in satisfaction of a debt.
Edit: I'm serious. I'm not saying that's a realistic option.
For example: there is no gold standard set by the Federal Reserve, nor any conceptual relevance of gold to the value of the dollar, since the 1970s.
... no, the US dollar is a Federal construction, created by Congress. Congress is not bound by Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 - only the states.
I don't think "make legal tender" means "create" but rather "accept as".
That clause does not forbid the Federal government from making other things legal tender, only the states.
The Federal government made paper dollars legal tender via the Legal Tender Act of 1862. (They could make blueberries legal tender, if they wanted, but Arizona cannot.)
> I don't think "make legal tender" means "create" but rather "accept as".
No. To make it legal tender means requiring acceptance of that item as payment for a monetary debt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender). It would impact everyone in Arizona, not just the state government.
Yeah, that's what they said. Everyone in Arizona is Arizona. It's called metonymy.
Arizona, the state, may not choose to require Arizonans to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. That power is reserved for the Federal government.
The bill attempts the latter, and is flatly unconstitutional.
I have heared that Disneyland is crazy like that and EC is virtually ubiquitious, but that's not the norm. Conversely, you don't expect to pay with a 500 everywhere (if you have that, EU phased it out recently)
If you did a credit card chargeback and Disneyland sued you for the new debt that caused, they'd have to accept cash as payment.
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 must be accepted for the settlement of a monetary debt. If you owe your bank $1,000 as an overdraft, the bank is required to accept repayment of that debt in U.S. currency. It cannot require another form of payment; meaning if it refuses U.S. currency then tries to sue you, the court will find that the debt has been satisfied. In practical terms, this never happens.
This is illusory of course and there might be regulations in place to prohibit this, and there might be no other ways around it.
Still, this isn't simply simple and you are selling it short.
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?
That was due to a misreading on my part.
> doesn't the fact that everyone in this thread disagrees with your interpretation at essentially every level give you a bit of pause?
Quite the opposite, it gave the impression you are willing to waste your time.
This part of the Constitution limits what states can do. It doesn't limit what the U.S. Congress can do, and the U.S. Congress has passed a law that makes U.S. coins and currency legal tender at what is currently 31 U.S. Code § 5103.
Federal law takes precedence over state law, and therefore it is the U.S. government that has decided, on Arizona's behalf, what constitutes legal tender.
The same section forbids states from making treaties with foreign powers; something that the U.S. government does all the time.
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 the problem rests on what legal tender really is. Should it be a sum of parts in origin, states have all the right to interpret what's legal. The way it's written it is nearly useless and there isn't really any precedent either unless to show that the meaning, not the word, has changed.
Blueberries, as are implied by a sibling comment, are not comparable, because, I suppose, they are perrishable. So that's only an argumentum ad absurdum.
Or in other words, you can't make a number illegal.
[1] one could quibble about flat adverbs
The compound noun "legal tender" is a legal term of art that refers to forms of payment that must be accepted in the settlement of a debt. When we say "the law would make Bitcoin legal tender in Arizona", we mean "the law would require that Bitcoin be accepted for the settlements of debt within Arizona's jurisdiction".
There is no sensible alternate reading nor lexical nor linguistic ambiguity here.
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, though it's an easier definition and therefore more commonly read than book length treaties. Clearly it's only the state who has to afford acceptable means of exchange, eg. by nurishing an exchange market.
Which is very likely the aim of the bill. Whatever you consider not sensible is without further ado, notwithstanding.
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 § 5103 - Legal tender:
> United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.
But a golden Arizona bitcoin would not be foreign
> 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."
I'm looking at this like a coder, not like a vulture, and I might just not be aware of all the #pragmas #ifdefs and #includes
I m not working from any defition but here are some original ones from upto 1500's ME [1] The verb sense "offer" seems particularly relevant, the law grant providing a trade licence as well. The near homophone tinder catches my attention because through the German cognate Zunder I'm reminded of cent (c pronounced as z /ts/ is regular especially in older writing), supposedly a hundredth («The meaning shifted 17c. to "hundredth part" ...», suggested for ¢ in 1786 [2]) which wasn't very relevant to imperial Shilling and Pound. See also "Kirchenzehnt" (tithe, decima pars). It is well comparable to census [3] and accordingly taxation [4] My point being, it's about what the state may require.
The "code" is in effect a random assortment of decisions, it defines extensively, not intensively. The literal interpretation requires an intensive definition.
That said, I did not recognize "COIN MONEY" as verb. Oops. So people have to coin it DIY is what you are saying? :'-)
[1]: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
[2]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/cent
[3]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/census#etymonline_v_8349
[4]: past participle of censere "to assess", "... Latin census also was used for "one's wealth, one's worth, wealthiness."» (o.c.) – compare excise (taxes), Spanish tenir "have"; -der is also evident in Portuguese doar "to give, present", where -l- in intervocalic position is usually lost, mind blown.
The slippery sloap that you want to go down is trivially infelicit
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".
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.
I am basicly saying that the interpretation is unacceptable, and that "they have been interpreted" is not an inherent quality of the word, because, as you have missed or may find irrelevant and impossibly complicated, like the finders of facts might, I'm interested in the historical linguistics of it and the implications for pragmatics and essentially discourse analysis. After all you are clearly saying that the intent matters.
In that sense, fuck you, no offense intended.
The way the law works feels like an insult often enough and the device of punishment is a most obvious outflow of that. It may have its reasons, but those are still quite subjective, wanton, and not at all as objective as you make them out to be.
To "make" something "legal tender" means to add the thing to the category of "legal tender". In this case, if Arizona were to make Bitcoin legal tender (in Arizona) it would mean that any creditor subject to Arizona's laws who was offered payment of a debt in full in Bitcoin would be obligated to either accept that offer of payment or simply write off the debt. Either way, so far as the state of Arizona and its courts are concerned, the debt would be considered paid.
The problem with this bill is that U.S. states—but not the federal government, unfortunately—are specifically barred from making anything but gold or silver legal tender. This is to prevent a state with a surplus of some good (wheat, for example) from declaring that everyone must now accept that good as payment regardless of any previously agreed terms and, in effect, avoiding paying the full amount that it owes. As the federal government did going off the gold standard and making USD legal tender.
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...
> It was the doctrine of the middle ages that for every commodity or service there was a just money equivalent. This had been the dictum of the Roman law. "However diversified may be the object of an obligation, it is always transferable, in the eyes of the law, into the payment of a certain sum of money." Though the English law of contract was not fully developed before the time of Henry VIII., the action of debt which lay to recover a sum of money was one of the early actions developed, being in use at least as early as the time of Henry I., and it is from the pleas allowed in defense of such action that we have the word "tender." The debtor could of course discharge his obligation by payment of the sum claimed; but sometimes, when there was dissatisfaction on the part of the creditor, he could acquit himself by tender to the creditor of the amount admitted by him as due. Should the creditor refuse the sum tendered, the debtor could then deposit it with the court, leaving with the court the question of the adequacy of the tender. (emphasis added)
[0] Breckinridge, S P. "Legal tender, a study in English and American monetary history". 1903. Page 22. <https://archive.org/download/legaltenderstudy00brecuoft/lega...>
So, all things considered, Breckinridge is likely refering to one of those maximally English etymologies.
I reckognize that this has little bearing on an 18th century interpretation if the word was free to be interpeted. It just has nothing to do with literal interpretation, and beyond that I'm not really interested, or not equipped to argue on the basis of case law.
Whatever "make" means is so poorly defined, you could as well delete it from the sentence. What they really can't do is make SCOTUS interpret the word as needed.
The way I read it says a) a state must not [glob] legal tender b) unless they literally make gold and silver coin. Because states issue coin with heads in local custom as much as their reserves allow.
Though an etymologic fallacy, that's closer to the sense of making bread, compare to mix, etc. Grammatically, a legal tender can well be adverbial, Gold the legal tender and nothing else shall be made by the state, where the scope of the verb is pragmatically restricted to the context as per usual.
The Federal government has (and has exercised) the power to expand the definition of legal tender. The states do not.
(And that could actually happen. Say the state decides that they don't want to do X, but state or federal law says they have to. Well, fine, but there's a fee for X. The state just requires that you have to pay it in gold or silver.)
Seriously, if it reaches that point, sure maybe Bitcoin is not going to work and we will pick something “new,” but for payment processing it doesn’t matter as intermediaries will pop up as they did for cash.
Edit: Disclaimer: I worked and work on that “new” stuff.
I heard Cashapp's lightning implementation works well.
Consider cash:
> There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...
It is, of course, a bit different since cash, check, and credit are all denominated in dollars, whereas Bitcoin is denominated in Bitcoin.
From Investopedia: "Creditors are required to accept them as payment offered to discharge a debt; however, except where prohibited by state law, private businesses may refuse to accept some or all forms of cash tender provided that a transaction has not already occurred and debt has not been incurred by the customer."
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
> There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law that says otherwise.
Only debts. Receiving a good/service might generate a debt, but not always; for example, if you pay in advance for a service.
I suppose it's just like the Assange and Snowden situation. The USA releases all kinds of reports about press freedoms around the world and "authoritarianism", but somehow the USA never includes itself in these reports.
Under capitalisms fourth epoch, neoliberalism, there simply isnt much left for the state to really do. Its completely divorced by monetary policy save for ardent enforcement of austerity or the class structure through physical means, and its only ever called upon each decade to bless the rescue of lumbering appendages such as trade and banking when they fail. The state runs the military but has no real say in foreign trade, save when its called upon to enact the will of its true constituency (the capital class) in affecting the firm will of globalization in its varied permutations. the state runs education only in that it may abdicate itself from the role through privatization, and the state has a say in healthcare only in that its made compulsory its purchase through law. its regulatory agency has largely been diluted to a brisk rubber stamp in all but the most arcane function.
So left to their own devices, states must remain relevant in that they exude autonomy and purpose, lest their citizens grow restless and apathetic to the call of democracy twice or thrice a year. a law here, an edict there, some popcorn and theatricality always help...even if its ultimately at the expense of the tax payer through lawsuits and defeat, it at least keeps them interested and entertained. it acts as a bundle of shiny car keys to a child, lest apathy at the polls completely delegitimize the state as an organism.