For those reading along, a useful baseline to get you straight on legal tender is in countries where fiat currencies are just broadly assumed to be valuable any legal tender laws are basically just ornamentation. Scotland, for example, doesn't have any bank notes as legal tender, just some old coins. Nobody in Scotland doubts that the notes they have are valuable, but its laws don't bother explicitly privileging this as "legal tender". Nevertheless if you get on a bus in Edinburgh with a goose and some shiny rocks and try to barter, well, you'll be lucky if the other passengers let you back off in one piece, let alone to get an actual ride. "Exact cash fare only".
Yes I have linked to it.
edit: In German: https://www.scribd.com/document/372651554/2018-02-27-Umsatzs...
The European Commission says [1]:
"Within the euro area, only the euro has the status of legal tender."
"Yet...contractual parties are free to use...virtual currency schemes (e.g. Bitcoin). Although these are not official currencies and have no legal tender status, parties can agree to use them".
Germany has not made Bitcoin legal tender. Don't fool yourself.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/euro-area/eu...
The link I provided is jurisprudence in Germany but it doesn't impact the whole of the EU. Malta might soon join though.
If there are "a few countries here in Europe where cryptos are legal tender" then this is a big deal and you need to provide a reference.
Otherwise you just come across badly. Terms are important.
The German source says that for some purposes it is "treated equally to legal tender" and that "exchanging virtual currencies to legal tender and back is tax free". Neither statement makes sense if it were legal tender.
Its status for some purposes is similar to that of other non-Euro currencies (e.g. contracts between private parties agreeing on it etc), none of which are legal tender in Germany.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are treated equally to legal tender in Germany.
I’m sceptical that you spent 20 years in fintech without learning the definition of legal tender.
If you go to a restaurant, eat your meal (thereby accumulating a debt) and slap legal tender on the table, the restaurant must accept it. They may also accept other things, like Visa credit cards or Ethereum. But they aren’t obligated to. The former is legal tender. The latter is a way to pay. Obligations around settling debt are the sole defining characteristic of legal tender, so it doesn’t make any sense to say one thing is “treated equally” to legal tender if it lacks this core characteristic.
If you travel abroad you may have to exchange your currency to pay for a meal, because your coin is not treated equality to legal tender locally, and the defining characteristic is that it settles the debt at the time of exchange. I believe that's a function that cryptocurrencies fulfil by design and if the court states they are to be treated equally to legal tender that seems to prove my point.
Legal tender must be accepted to extinguish a debt, by any party.
Just because bitcoin is not illegal doesn't make it legal tender. It may be used if all parties agree.
I understand the first link you gave says that Germany accepts Bitcoin as legal tender, but that is from a misunderstanding of what legal tender is. German vendors are within their rights to refuse it and insist upon real legal tender.