From securities to currencies: the regulatory consequences of adopting cryptocurrencies as legal tender

In 2021, El Salvador designated Bitcoin as legal tender within that country, payable for all debts, public and private. The move is novel in the realm of cryptocurrency regulation, but fits within a time-honoured battle over monetary policy with which every country engages. This piece examines the impacts of legal tender designations in these various areas and maps the current regulatory framework of cryptocurrency transactions, to argue that cryptocurrency's practical uses are decoupling states from monetary control and developing a transnational legal theory agnostic to concerns such as the legal tender question. It shows how the El Salvador regulation threatens to shift the dominant global economic regime towards a world wherein money may not be governed by states at all. The paper develops this transnational legal theory through mapping the US regulatory framework regarding cryptocurrency and examining the impact of the El Salvador regulation from a US point of view.