So it will soon be possible to pay for purchases in shops in this city with bitcoin? That's certainly good news, especially from a developed country like Switzerland. The only thing I don't understand is whether it has anything to do with the Tether partnership. If I understand correctly, bitcoin will be converted into USDT which equals 1:1 to the dollar. Or does the bitcoin remain bitcoin and goes to the BTC address? If not, it's a tricky business for Tether.
Yeah that is right. That is what legal tender do, to make use of bitcoin directly to buy goods without needing to convert to fiat or any other cryptocurrencies. It's a good news but the op is not convinced somehow for some reasons maybe because the statement is not only about using btc as a legal tender but there is some extra rule about it but they didn't say something about btc being converted to usdt by the time you made a payment.
To answer both why I'm not really convinced it will be as some imagine.
First, you can already pay with bitcoins in shops in Europe, and in Switzerland alone, we have enough cases to date of businesses accepting bitcoin for payments, it's not a new thing, you don't have to declare it legal tender in order to achieve that.
Second, the definition of legal tender varies from country to country, you maybe have seen maybe those signs all over the US with "Cash only", so despite you having dollars on your credit/debit card and the dollar being obvious legal tender nobody is forced to accept them as means of payment, in Sweden, there are shops who are not taking cash anymore, in Salvador is completely different, merchants were forced to accept payments via Bitcoin so you couldn't refuse it.
And even in Salvador merchants can opt for the BTC to be converted directly in $, so the whole debate about making it legal tender is useless until we see the applicable law, and we're talking here about a city, not a country. That's why I said it, take it with a grain of salt because it might not be what you wish for.