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by morganvachon 4203 days ago
> Money represents work. When you do work, you get money.

If that were 100% true, I could make more money digging ditches than your average mid-level manager. But it's not that simple.

> In fact it's illegal for someone to not accept legal tender.

Bullshit. From the Federal Reserve's website[1] (emphasis mine):

"Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," states: "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."

This statute means that all United States money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law which says otherwise."

[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

1 comments

I think that the only restriction is relative to taxes. You can only pay taxes in the legal tender, and since you have to pay taxes in any transaction even if the transaction is made in a different form of payment, it is convenient to have the transaction itself to happen in the local currency.
Taxes are an issue, but the other big things are:

(1) A tender of payment of a debt in legal tender currency, with some caveats and provisos, fulfills the obligation under the debt whether or not the person to whom the debt is owned wants to accept the currency, which has an effect if that person later tries to enforce the debt through the courts.

(2) If a US court awards damages, even if the injury consisted of deprivation of some other currency than the legal tender currency, it is going to award them in dollars. If the currency you actually hold is something else, you'll have to trade it for dollars to satisfy the debt thus created, unless the other party is willing to enter into an agreement to accept the other currency as a substitute.