From what I understand state lotto and scratch off tickets are a bearer instrument, meaning the person holding the ticket is entitled to that sum. Does this amount to state sponsored currency and is that allowed under US fed law?
Generally, the Lottery systems instruct you to sign the back of your tickets, ensuring that only you can collect on them. So, in that case at least, they are not bearer instruments. They are owned and payable only to the person whose name is on them.
The simple (glib) answer to the other question is that they clearly are allowed under current US law or, if it were found that they were technically not legal, they very quickly would be after a quick legislative scramble, so for all practical purposes, they are legal.
Even if they were bearer instruments, bearer instruments are not currency.
sure it’s currency. it’s not legal tender, but it’s currency nonetheless.
it isn’t bearer paper at all, anyhow. you aren’t entitled to diddly shit if you hold a lotto ticket - you still have to meet their eligibility guidelines. that fact makes it non-bearer.
I bought a New Year’s Millionaire Raffle ticket from the Virginia Lottery this month and it states on the back that it is a bearer instrument until signed, but it also states that you must be a US Citizen or Green Card holder to collect.
Of course, I probably won’t win, so the language is pretty much moot.
“Currency” is that which actually circulates as a medium of exchange. This does not include lottery tickets.
there is no requirement for currency to circulate to be currency.
will someone trade you something of value for your winning lotto ticket? it’s currency. (yes, i am taking a very narrow view of what “currency” is)
No, you’re taking a very broad view of what currency is!
If what you say were true, then groceries would be currency, since grocers will cheerfully trade them for something of value - namely, cash. In fact, on this view anything that you can buy or sell would be currency.
This is not a useful definition of currency. I could in principle give value for any goods or services at all on foot of an expectation that I could later barter them for something else, but we don’t therefore regard all goods and services as currency. Cigarettes, to take an actual example, are only considered currency when they are in fact used and valued as a medium of exchange in this way.
Even the etymology of the word points to this. Currency is the quality of being current. To be current is to be running or flowing. In the economic sense, currency is that which passes from person to person as a medium of exchange. A great many things are potentially currency but, in most societies, rather fewer things actually are.
I’m willing to accept that winning tickets could function as currency, but I’m sceptical that they actually do.
Respectfully, Mirriam-Webster online might disagree [bold mine].
Definition of CURRENCY
1a : **circulation **as a medium of exchange
b : general use, acceptance, or prevalence <a story gaining currency>
c : the quality or state of being current : currentness
2a : something (as coins, treasury notes, and banknotes) that is in circulation as a medium of exchange
b : paper money in circulation
c : a common article for bartering
d : a medium of verbal or intellectual expression
and dictionary.com/Random House has a different definition:
cur·ren·cy
/ˈkɜrənsi, ˈkʌr-/ Show Spelled[kur-uhn-see, kuhr-] Show IPA
–noun, plural -cies.
- something that is used as a medium of exchange; money.
- general acceptance; prevalence; vogue.
- a time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated.
- the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person.
- circulation, as of coin.
I consider it “currency” because the ticket itself is not what has value - like most forms of normal money. You trade me $100/a goat for my claim to receive a prize from Lotto Agency X - the ticket is how the deal is effectuated. It’s the medium.
The crucial term to answer what the OP is ultimately getting at (are state lottery tickets in violation of federal law?) is not currency:
We don’t need a semantic debate about what the meaning of the word “currency” is - the crucial question is: Are lottery tickets:
- made by states a tender in payment of debts? Answer: Certainly not.
- bills of credit? Answer: Under the usual understanding of the term, no.
- “money”? Here we migt enter into a sematic debate concerning the meaning of that term, but the prevalent definition in economics (the three money functions: storage of value, unit of account, medium of exchange) would imply: No.
[QUOTE=Rumor_Watkins;13125371
I consider it “currency” because the ticket itself is not what has value - like most forms of normal money. You trade me $100/a goat for my claim to receive a prize from Lotto Agency X - the ticket is how the deal is effectuated. It’s the medium.[/QUOTE]
In which case the goat is equally “currency” by your definition. Pretty much anything can be traded to someone for something, that would make all goods “currency”.
The only exception being the “(boom-boom-boom) thing” in the song by Phil Harris.
It’s in the first definition you quote, Rumor. It’s currency if it “is used as a medium of exchange”. But being used as medium of exchange is what we call “circulating” - i.e. it’s passed on from one person to another in exchange for goods and services.
So in the old days gold coins were not currency, because the coins themselves were what had value? And bonds, stocks, postage stamps, casino chips, and gift cards are currency?
Sure gold coins were currency. People weren’t using the coins for anything. Unless they were goldsmiths, they only accepted a gold coin in a transaction because they knew they could then use the gold coin in another transaction later. That’s pretty much what currency is (a tight definition would have to avoid the goods that retailers and wholesalers re-sell, but you get the picture).
I’d say casino chips are probably currency, for some people at some times (I’m sure professional gamblers would treat chips from a local casino as nearly the same as money. Me, on the other hand, wouldn’t because I can’t easily convert them back to something useful).
Postage stamps aren’t currency – nobody accepts stamps as payment for anything but mailing letters. Ditto gift cards.
Stocks and Bonds aren’t currency, either. They’re investments with a real value (dividends and bond coupons).
Just because something can be used directly (gold coins, cigarettes) that doesn’t mean it can’t be a currency. What makes it a currency is that people who have no intention of using the object will accept it in a transaction because they know that they can then use it to buy something else later.
There was a huge bruhaha in New Jersey once when a winner came forth with a multi-million dollar ticket, then someone else insisted she always played those numbers at the place that sold it and she lost that ticket in the parking lot, and the person who came forward must have found it and it was not right for the winner to cash it in cause she was the one that bought it.
Might have made more sense if the store didn’t have the winner on the security tape buying the lottery ticket right when it was sold.
Here in France, in spite of Quercus, postage stamps are “legal tender” one can effectively pay (your income taxes) by sending a sufficient number of stamps. Some post order or equivalent commands are explicitly payable in this manner. A check is accepted as payment, and I could still write a check on a piece of wood, as long as the legal mentions are included (though I woudn’t garanty the speed of treatment).
Casino chips on the contrary would be “private money” as unusable as company chips etc.
But that is not what the definition of “legal tender” is. You can pay debts with basically anything the other side will be willing to accept in payment. If you offer me to pay the money you owe me in the form of gummy bears, and I agree, then that’s fine, but it doesn’t make gummy bears legal tender. “Legal tender” means the creditor has to accept what is offered to him in payment, whether he likes it or not (this refers only to debt already owed, of course - anybody can refuse to conclude a new contract if he or she disagrees with the mode of payment intended by the other side, irrespective of whether the payment offered is legal tender or not). So, while French authorities might, as a matter of practice, accept tax payments in the form of postage stamps, stamps would still not be legal tender if this is just a practice of the authorities without a legal obligation to do so. Same for cheques - in commercial practice, they are regularly accepted as payment, but I don’t know of any country where cheques are legal tender.