But what about Trump saying he'll let China take Taiwan if they want to? Maybe this is "America first" in some narrow way, but that seems like it would be pretty bad for us in the long run.

But Trump recently implied that he agreed with the CPC that Taiwan was part of China, and that the US should not intervene should China attack Taiwan, essentially green-lighting the invasion should he win in November. Do you agree with that?

You seem to agree with Putin that Ukraine is properly party of Russia (thus justifying Russia's attack on Ukraine).

So would you agree with China as well with respect to Taiwan?

Just out of curiosity, when China says that Taiwan is part of China--presumably justifying a forthcoming invasion of that country by them--do you agree with them too?

Oh, it wasn't very quiet. In fact it was the central theme of the interview.

Putin's objective for this interview is to signal to the 40% of Americans who already want to vote for Trump that he's on their side, and against the other side.

Trump is surely the first major presidential candidate in the history of the USA who will have benefitted from the endorsement of one of our country's primary enemies.

Strange times indeed...

He's a trained KGB agent, he's not going to give the CIA anything new.

https://boingboing.net/2024/02/09/putin-barely-let-carlson-speak-then-humiliated-him.html

From the article:

"This is a hilarious [crap] show. Putin is now 28 minutes into his history lesson. This is the 3rd time Tucker tries to interrupt and Putin mocks Tucker for just being an entertainer and not a serious journalist. Tucker tries to fake laugh it off while Putin emasculates him."


Imagine how this interview is going to look in the history books...

I've said this several times in this thread: El Salvador's law is not enforced. Indeed, El Salvador's law is, practically speaking, a joke.

I began this topic by trying to tell people to not ask for legal tender status for Bitcoin because it's not what you want for multiple reasons, and it's usually not what people think it is.

I suspect that the El Salvador law was initiated by politicians who didn't understand what the term specifically meant, and then the lawyers wrote the law according to actual legal definitions. Probably all the politicians understood was that the value of their personal Bitcoin holdings would go up in value if they passed this law, so they did it.

But some people actually understand the exact legal definition of "legal tender" and would necessarily find people clamoring for this status for Bitcoin rather appalling, going against everything Bitcoin has ever stood for and being unfair and impractical all at once. That's all I'm saying...

So I guess the take-away here is that if you want the US political system to be like the one they have today in Russia, vote Republican?

I'll try this one more time, and then I'm done.

The country's legal tender currency is the "backstop" of the legal system with respect to debts. A judge can order an amount in US dollars to provide just compensation for a debt, along side compensation that the plaintiff would agree to. In other words, if I am owed a car in court, the judge may say I get a car, but failing that, I will be awarded some amount is US dollars. I have no choice about the latter since US dollars are legal tender: I must be prepared to accept US dollars whether I want them or not.

That's all legal tender means. It does not mean the same thing as "legal". It does not do anything else that is tangible. It does not preclude people from freely trading in some other currency when both sides of the transaction agree to the trade (as you keep asserting that my posts assert, which they don't).

And again, I'm done with this branch of the thread, I think we've beaten it to death.


Please please PLEASE lookup the definition and origin of the phrase, "legal tender". The government forcing people to accept the form of payment is exactly what it means.

It does not mean the same as "legal", which is the way you are using the term in your post.

And I do think this is something to fight about, because governments do stupid things based on people having false notions, e.g. what El Salvador did by giving Bitcoin a duopoly and spending millions of dollars that tiny country doesn't have in what amounts to a massive pump-and-dump scheme. I could very much see a push like this happening in our totally crazy Congress here in the US, but in our case it would cost us tens of billions of dollars just to implement the laws, we'd have an army of lawyers ready to exploit the law and sue people over it, and the US making such a move to put so much focus on one volatile asset could destabilize the world economy.

I've said many, many times here that there is no law (in the US at least) that stops anybody from taking any form of payment they want, including air miles--and legal tender has nothing to do with that. I don't know how more times I will need to say this, but I guess I'll keep going until it's no longer necessary.

Legal tender status forces the payee to accept the form of payment whether they want to or not.

It would be like an airline that does not want to accept air miles, but you passed a law in Congress forcing them to do so anyhow.

And yes, a court judgement can list things other than legal tender currency, and they often do. The legal tender law says, "all debts, public and private". That does not preclude other things from being used to fulfill the debt as long as the payee agrees. If you smash my car, I can say, "give me a new car now", and you can do that to settle our dispute--but thanks to legal tender laws, you can also provide just compensation in US dollars.

And if you thinking, "gee, legal tender hardly ever comes up as a legal issue" then you'd be right--and that's the whole point of this thread: not only is begging Bitcoin to be given special status by the government immoral, impractical and against the philosophy of Bitcoin, it's actually almost... meaningless in practical reality...

I agree with all of that. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with making Bitcoin the second legal tender currency in the USA though.

I guess I don't want to argue semantics. The bottom line is that a government can control the use of Bitcoin if they want to.


In all of the ways I and others mentioned in previous posts--and a lot more ways we haven't thought of, yes, yes they can.

If you live in the US or a relatively free country like it, you shouldn't take that for granted. All I'm saying...

Well I guess if you get reductive about it, then no thing in the world is regulated, only people who use those things are. You can't regulate dollar bills, either, only the people who carry them. You can't regulate illicit drugs, only those who traffic them. And so forth. I'm not sure how useful this analysis is  .

The bottom line is that a government can stop its citizens from holding and trading Bitcoin if it wanted to, and it could dictate the way people use it if it wanted to.

It's as if you are saying, "It's not about the government giving McDonald's any status, it's about the government recognizing that McDonald's is the best fast food that puts all of the other places to shame because their hamburgers taste better, so they need to pass a law making McDonald's the country's official restaurant".

If Bitcoin is such an awesome replacement for US dollars, why would you need the government to pass a law forcing people to accept it?

No other popular technology needed this kind of help from the government. What does Bitcoin need this kind of help?

(Could it be because Bitcoin transactions take up to 30 minutes, and can cost $30 each?)



You've acknowledge that "legal tender" and "legal" are different things, so I'm good...


In El Salvador, the legal tender law there is a joke because making Bitcoin legal tender is a practical impossibility there. So they have the laws on the books, but they don't enforce it.

And legal tender laws do not force people to pay with a certain mechanism, they force people to accept payment in with a certain mechanism.

You can pay with cigarettes or matchsticks or gold or Euros or whatever you want if the payee will accept it. There are almost no laws anywhere about how two entities will settle their payment except in the case of a dispute in court, as which point the court can order payment in the "legal tender" medium, which for most countries is their sovereign currency. This is why legal tender laws effectively force vendors to accept the currency in question.

What El Salvador tried to say with Bitcoin was, "you must accept Bitcoin as payment, and if you don't, you go to jail or we will fine you".

Of course Bitcoin is unsuitable to be used as a mainstream payment mechanism, and the entire thing there is a government boondoggle that was a huge waste of money there, but on paper at least, they were indeed trying to force people in their country to accept Bitcoin.

For the umpteenth time, "legal" is not the same thing as "legal tender". I know they share a word, but they are not the same thing. Bitcoin is legal in the USA and in most countries. It is de jure, but not de facto legal tender in El Salvador and nowhere else.

Please google what "legal tender" means...


Something being legal for payment is not the same thing as "legal tender".

But yes, forcing citizens to accept a currency (which is what legal tender does) will certainly promote it. Why should Bitcoin get this privilege and not say all of the other forms of payment like other cryptos and Haypenny currencies?

This sounds like the government playing favorites to me, which is unfair (and also very unwise).

I know it's not the case because they don't enforce their law: they can't, because it's a stupid law (or it was just put there so the country's leaders could profit from their Bitcoin holdings).

And the government forcing you to do something you don't want to do is not "more choice" it's less choice. Like any government-granted monopoly, Bitcoin being given a special status will necessarily diminish other products that didn't get the benefit of the government's largess. It would be like the US making McDonald's the official fast food of the USA: this would screw-over Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wendy's, and everybody else who isn't McDonald's.

Correct. But legal tender laws means that you are forced to accept a given method as payment even if you don't want to in court judgements.

Today in the USA, the only form of payment like that is US dollars.

In El Salvador, they are forcing everybody to have the crypto app so citizens can follow the law. It doesn't work and it's stupid, but that's what they are doing.


No, force is about making it a mandatory "option" (which isn't an "option" if the law says you must accept Bitcoin).


Yes, but if forces people to accept bitcoin if a payer wants to settle a debt in that medium.

El Salvador basically gave one technology procuct--Bitcoin--a duopoly along with their sovereign currency.



Um, yeah, I guess the government forcing people to use your product sure does give it a boost in the marketplace.

Question for you: why especially should Bitcoin be given this status? Why not Ethereum too? Dogecoin too? Why not Haypenny currencies?

How come Bitcoin should be given a special status by the government and not other products?

Words mean what they mean. The phrase, "legal tender" has a very specific meaning derived from the US Constitution, Section 10.

What most people want--and already have in almost all countries--is for Bitcoin to be legal. The phrase, "legal tender" means something completely different, and it's not what one should strive for.


When you are asking for a government to pass a law, as would be required to make Bitcoin legal tender, then you are effectively asking that government to send people to jail (or fine them, or whatever) if they don't accept Bitcoin as payment. 

It is true that El Salvador's (ridiculous) law has not been followed because it's impractical and stupid, but that doesn't mean it's not a law.


Again, like so many people here, you are confusing the terms, "legal" with "legal tender". They are two very different things. Bitcoin is "legal" in most countries, and El Salvador passed a (hardly followed) "legal tender" law in order to force its citizens to accept Bitcoin.

And if Bitcoin loses 66% of its value again, like it did 18 months ago, we'll see how Nayib Bukele's reelection prospects look  .


You don't have to go any further than this very thread to see lots of people asking the government to make Bitcoin legal tender.

I agree with you that they don't actually know what they are asking for, and if they learned the actual definition of the term most people would not want that, but people do indeed ask for Bitcoin to be given a government-mandated duopoly (which, I guess if you own a lot of Bitcoin, that's really good for your investment portfolio, right?).



Again, that's simply not what the term means. Please use Google to learn more about what this term actually means, or read about it in this thread.

This is the entire point of this thread: people are using the term, "legal tender" and not understanding what they are actually asking for. Please learn, and I think if people did learn it, they would stop using this phrase.

It's fine to ask for Bitcoin to be "legal" or even "regulated", but that's very different that a government forcing people to accept it which is what legal tender does.

Okay, fine. Off the top of my head:

1. A government could create a network of citizen spies wherein they give any citizen ten thousand dollars if they give information about any fellow citizen using Bitcoin, wherein the fellow citizen would be arrested and imprisoned for 20 years.

2. A government could setup a network of honeypot agents all over the Internet in order to catch its citizens using Bitcoin illegally, wherein if they are caught doing so they are imprisoned for 20 years.

3. A government could monitor Internet traffic transpiring within its borders and detect connections to Bitcoin servers.

Governments have guns and prisons on their side. You really can't win.