[posterboy]

Who says that? This thread seems to be full of arm chair lawyers as another comment just told me that there is no gold standard since 1970.

Whatever, the thing I want to buy with the particular coin would immediately reduce 40.000 fold in price. That might be illegal in some sense, if contracts are bound to stay valid across fluctuation, but that's basically how markets work.

In the end it's all numbers on paper anyway, so I don't see the immediate implication, except that a state is supposed not to go on a lone run.

[ceejayoz]

> Who says that?

The dictionary?

The gold would be legal tender. Doesn't matter what's written on it; I can doodle artwork on a $10 bill and claim it's worth $1,000 because my art is awesome, but people aren't required to accept it as anything more than $10 towards a debt.

> another comment just told me that there is no gold standard since 1970

What part of that do you object to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

"On 15 August 1971, the United States terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency."

[posterboy]

You keep talking about gold coins on the one hand and the US Dollar on the other hand. Sorry if you are loosing me here.

Which dictionary defines Gold Coin as Dollar, in which lemma, and how can it predict and continuisly update the exchange rate if there is no authority to poll?

[ceejayoz]

The United States Constitution does the following:

* It permits the Federal government to coin money and regulate its value.

* It specifically forbids states from making anything other than gold and silver coins legal tender. (This part is why Arizona can't declare Bitcoin as legal tender.)

Money and legal tender are related, but not the same concept.

The Legal Tender Act of 1862 (an act of the Federal government) added paper notes as legal tender. Constitutionally, states could not do this, but the Feds can. Due to the Supremacy Clause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause) this law cannot be overridden by the states; they cannot pass a law making paper notes not legal tender.

Gold coins are still legal tender. However, their value as metal is now massively more than their value as tender, so no one uses them as such. For example, a $20 gold coin sold in 2002 for $7,590,020; metal-wise it's worth about $2k, and currency-wise it's worth what it says on the coin, $20. You could use that coin to pay a $20 debt, but it would be a bad decision.

(You could come to an agreement with your creditor to accept it for any value to satisfy the debt, but your creditor is not required to do so.)