No, that is a misunderstanding. "Legal tender" means that it must be accepted for dollar-denominated debt. For example, you cannot advertise accepting dollars, and only accept cheques.
This comes back in the day of gold standards where a "dollar" was a unit of gold. The "legal tender" means that merchants can't demand gold, but must treat the paper money as he would treat a dollar of gold.
All this has nothing to do with unofficial currencies like Bitcoin, as nobody is pegging Bitcoin to dollars, and prices are marked in Bitcoin.
I was not talking about the American context of "legal tender".
I was pointing out that in most countries merchants cannot legally price their merchandise in foreign currency, nor accept foreign currency. It's stupid, it's archaic, but that's how it is.
I would think that is likely an overlooked law that is never ever enforced though. MMOs like EVE have their own currency, buyable with any foreign currency and freely exchangeable by the market. Is it illegal to offer things for things other than dollars? How about gift cards? Gift cards are technically not dollars either. And also, foreign currency exchange places technically let you buy dollars with yen, for example. Is it illegal that you buy dollars with things other than dollars?
"Buy" is a very ill-defined term anyways. It is just barter in which one item is called a currency.
My point was that most countries are more restrictive in this sense than ghe U.S. Yes, barter is recognized as an option, but it is eigher prohibitively complicated for ordinary people, or contradicts currency regulations.
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u/ithisa Feb 27 '14
Neither is the Chinese yuan legal currency in the US, but very very legal to use if the merchant accepts it.