Can Bitcoin Become Legal Tender in America? With Aaron Daniel - WBD531
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2022
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aaron Daniel is an Appellate attorney and author of The Bitcoin Brief, a newsletter analysing Bitcoin's effect on law and society. In this interview, we discuss the legal arguments around making Bitcoin US legal tender, and whether it would actually confer any meaningful benefits.
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It is assumed that for Bitcoin to become widely adopted within the US, it would need to be made legal tender. Without such legal clarity, Bitcoin may continue to be viewed by the general population as an unofficial and risky form of money, liable to be prohibited by the state. Therefore, gaining legal tender status would be a seismic positive shift in Bitcoins development.
Attempts to move the country in this direction are often applauded by Bitcoiners. Whether it is US states commencing processes to establish protections for Bitcoin's use (including efforts in Arizona to declare Bitcoin as legal tender), to activists and politicians advocating for the Federal government to consider making Bitcoin legal tender. The assumption is these are worthy actions.
But, what is legal tender? What utility and protections does such status provide money? What legal framework(s) would be used to confer legal tender status? And, is it necessarily so that such a classification would benefit Bitcoin and it's users?
The consideration of any nascent technology in legal terms is always fraught with uncertainty and interpretation. The constitution and bill of rights are a firm basis for the development of the world's oldest and most enduring democracy. But, the consideration of modern developments through the prism of the 18th-century founders results in legal arguments that need testing.
Whist such testing is worthwhile, seeking to make a private digital currency legal tender in the US will be a huge endeavour. And, rushing to develop the legal case misses the more essential policy question: is it beneficial to Bitcoin and its users to mandate its legal standing? Fundamentally, should freedom money remain free: free from state interference, but also free for all people to accept or reject?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We all want freedom, right? That's what that's that's why Bitcoin exists is to be |
| 0:09.3 | a political freedom money separate from the state and when you start to then advocate for the state to come and be involved in your freedom money, |
| 0:19.0 | you know, it's, I hate the phrase slippery slope, but it starts to be a slippery slope. |
| 0:24.0 | Hello there, how are you all doing? |
| 0:26.0 | Welcome to the What Bitcoin did podcast, |
| 0:28.0 | which is brought to you by Gemini, |
| 0:30.0 | the only place I am using to buy Bitcoin. |
| 0:32.0 | I'm your host, Peter Peter McCormack and before we get into today's |
| 0:35.9 | interview I do have a message from my show sponsors. This show is brought to you by |
| 0:40.5 | Compass Mining who are not just a sponsor. I am a customer |
| 0:44.0 | theirs and I am back mining Bitcoin and actually you know what I've actually been |
| 0:47.5 | back mining Bitcoin for about nine months with Compass and I've already mined |
| 0:50.8 | over 0.7 Bitcoin which has pretty much paid off two of my S-19s already. |
| 0:56.0 | And it's so good to be about mining. It's been a really interesting year. |
| 0:58.8 | It's forced me to learn a lot more about mining again. |
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| 1:18.2 | Compass has made mining accessible to everyone and as a Bitcoiner, |
| 1:21.7 | I'm happy to be supporting the |
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