no, such-and-such place did not make Bitcoin "legal tender"

Last year it was Ecuador.  Last week it was Lugano.  Places keep claiming they have made Bitcoin "legal tender", and tards keep repeating it.  I watched some Max Kaiser thing on Youtube the other day.  He kept saying Bitcoin was legal tender in Ecuador.

Legal tender means if it's offered in settlement of a debt, and refused, then the debt is cancelled.  So every business, and every individual, must have a capability to accept it.

Example: last year I went, based on a recommendation from a friend, to a restaurant called "Wilding" on Little Clarendon St in Oxford.  They forgot the order and there was a delay of around an hour, but the food was tasty.  When it came time to pay, I took cash from my wallet.  They preciously informed me they "only accept" card payments.  I informed them that I wouldn't be doing that, and that they were free to refuse my payment in cash, but this would cancel any debt from me to them, due to the legal tender law.

Legal tender stops someone presuming to impose arbitrary stupid payment requirements.  Refuse the cash, the debt is cancelled.

So how would Bitcoin legal tender "work"?  Someone offers to settle their bill in Bitcoin, and the person or business on the receiving end may have heard of Bitcoin, but probably does not have the capability to receive it.  That would be the most common case.  And at this point that debt is cancelled?  There is also the matter of setting the rate, assuming the original debt was denominated in something sensible.  But the main issue is the technical capability to receive Bitcoin transactions.

Another way of putting this is that there's an onus on every economic actor, meaning at least every capable adult person, and every business, to have sufficient proficiency in Bitcoin to transact in Bitcoin.  Otherwise they no longer get to be an economic actor, because any other economic actor can now cancel a debt to them by "offering" to pay it in Bitcoin.

So they're misusing the term "legal tender", but is anything interesting going on anyway?  There seem to be two possibilities: somewhere declares Bitcoin somehow allowed or valid for transactions, assuming both parties agree.  And somewhere allows tax to be settled in Bitcoin.

If it's just making Bitcoin allowed when both parties agree, this raises the question: was it disallowed previously?  If so, why?  Does the jurisdiction have some kind of disallowed-by-default setup for everything?  Would anyone want to live in such a place?  Or if, like any normal place, things are allowed unless explicitly forbidden, perhaps they are just attention-seeking, by sort of confirming that it's allowed?

Being able to settle the tax bill in Bitcoin is more interesting.  It potentially cuts out banks from handling one of the largest single expenses faced by individuals and businesses.  Since doing anything thru banks generates weeks or months of paperwork each time, any large flow that bypasses them is an advantage.  To be useful, the amount of tax that can be settled this way should not be limited (I think in Zug, it's only possible for tiny amounts).

Has anyone read these "legal tender" laws in Ecuador (presumably Spanish) and Lugano (presumably Italian) and anywhere else that people are making this claim?  It would be interesting to hear the exact details.

While we're at it, can you stop referring to Bitcoin as "perfect money"?  It has a hard limit in the quantity, and that's great.  That is very different from being "perfect money".  This is so ridiculous a claim, it just reduces your credibility.