The laws that allow a platinum coin of arbitrary nominal value have already been created. Paper money, and all other coin metals, have their denominations defined. It's basically a bureaucratic loophole.

This is correct. Minting a platinum coin with any and unlimited value is already set in law just after the Great Depression, so the executive branch can do it alone. Anything else, including creating a new denomination in notepaper or other metals (or its alloys), needs the involvement of the legislature (power of the purse, power to... legislate), which right now... is in a deadlock.

I won't be shocked if this coin has been stamped there would be a court challenge, especially in terms of the said law's constitutionality.

(Edited because despite having "Depression" in my mind I still typed "Recession". The law was from the last century, not this century.)

No, it was from 1997 [1], not the Great Depression. It was intended to allow the minting of smaller denomination coins, but did not specify that in the text, so a textual reading will not forbid this usage.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3610...

Congress has delegated lots of its powers to the executive's bureaucratic apparatus, so I'm not sure why this would be any different.

I mean, controversial but (ultimately confirmed) constitutional laws has a tendency to be challenged anyway, especially when the person who disagrees is in the government. This is not specific to this law, but instead just a general commentary on who brings cases to the court.

Specifically to this case though, they might argue it's violating the so-called "power of the purse", which constitutionally is solely given to the Houses. I'm not sure if it will be enough (given common-law precedent), but I won't be shocked if someone will use this argument.

> Specifically to this case though, they might argue it's violating the so-called "power of the purse", which constitutionally is solely given to the Houses.

Unlikely to work. The Appropriations Clause gives Congress control over spending; the debt ceiling only affects money that's already spent per Congressional appropriation.

Because the current make up of the court, as well recent rulings seems to indicate that the Supreme Court is willing to start looking at limiting the ability of Congress is just hand wave is responsibility of making defined laws away to the executive branch like they have been prone to do for the last few decades.

Congress needs to legislate not just demand the executive / Administrative state do all the things.

When was the last time we used coinage that was actually worth its face value? Seems meaningless to me

As I said there is a difference between 1$ and 1 trillion.

People don't question the face value of 1$ given the fact that it's cheap change.

Our current coins in regular circulation are basically worthless in terms of metal content. On the other hand, US Mint-produced $50 gold eagles contain ~$1,800 of gold.

Political opinions aside, it seems obvious to me that the value of the metal content of US coinage is unrelated to the face value.

> Our current coins in regular circulation are basically worthless in terms of metal content. On the other hand, US Mint-produced $50 gold eagles contain ~$1,800 of gold.

That sounded so ludicrous that I thought you must be mistaken or exaggerating, but, as with all things currency-related, I think it's impossible to out-absurd the reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gold_Eagle#Value

Nobody cares about 1$ coins, people would care about a 1T$ coin.

No one expects a $100 bill to be made out of $100 worth of paper, nor 100x the paper of a $1 bill.