1) the law says otherwise,
Really? Where? Where does the law say that you can repay a 1000 dollar debt with a 10 dollar bill?
It's written on every bill ever printed.
Exhibit a)
Where does the law say that you can repay a 1000 dollar debt with a 10 dollar bill?
It doesn't. It only says you can repay any debt (in your case BTC) using USD. Which is exactly your situation. I know you feel hurt because your BTC is worth more now then it was in the past, but that's just how it is. If your BTC was worth less now, would you be so upset? They would still have to refund you at the rate it was at the time of the transaction. Keep in mind- USD is legal tender and BTC is not recognized by any government as legal tender. If it WERE recognized as legal tender the situation would be different, but it's not, so it's as good a trading cows.
1)2) If you paid in cows and the cows died, they obviously couldn't pay you back with the same cows, and any replacement cows would be subjective as to if they were exactly equivalent in all their 'cowness'.
Of course! The replacement cows are subjective as to the CURRENT cow/$ rate, not subjective to the THEN cow/$ when debt was made. If you can't see the difference, nobody can help you because you just don't want to see it.
Perhaps the cow example wasn't such a good one. You're looking at it like a replacement of value, while i intended the cow to substitute as currency in and of itself. In this situation the debt was not actually denominated in cows, it was denominated in USD. They were accepting COWS (by cows I mean BTC) at the current market rate of cow/btc. However this did not make the debt denominated in cows- they were only accepting the value of the cow at current prices.
Get it?
You think that you were denominating the debt in BTC because that is what you paid in. However that's not true, nor enforceable, you were entering the debt denominated as USD but they were accepting BTC in exchange. Perhaps you could have been more clearly explained this at the start, but unfortunately this is the case now. You would be better off perhaps keeping the pre-order and just waiting.