Not only is it wrong, even if CA wanted to make bitcoins, legal tender they have no authority to do as that is reserved by the federal government. So unless CA has successfully fought a civil war and become an independent nation before making bitcoins "legal tender" we can safely assume the author of the article has no idea what legal tender means.
Section 5103 of title 31, United States 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.
CA law makes it illegal for someone to mint, or circulate any money but the money of the United States. It was a very poorly written bill a long time ago.
no corporation, flexible purpose corporation, association, or individual shall not issue or put in circulation, as money, anything but the lawful money of the United States.
In theory that prohibition could apply to Bitcoin miners or Bitcoin merchants, but it would also apply to someone circulating a euro note.
The proposed bill would change that section to read like this
no corporation, flexible purpose corporation, association, or individual shall not issue or put in circulation, as money of the United States, anything but the lawful money of the United States.
So as long as you don't pass your money off as "the money" of the United States it wouldn't be prohibited. This was likely the original intent of the existing law anyways. Someone wrote it sloppy and it really didn't matter until now because a case could be made that miners are breaking the letter of the law even if it wasn't intended to be that board. Notice how the bill passed unanimously this is more a correcting the grammar of the existing code than anything else. There is no reason to believe it was the intent of the original bill to ban Bitcoin more than 100 years before Bitcoin was created.
