Bitcoin Forum

I like the idea of bitcoin, but buying an egg for 0,00000000000000000000000000000001 in 50 years is kind of stupid. In my opinion a digital currency needs the capability to be useable by everyone world wide and it should be possible to use one coin to buy something small like an egg. How many coins would a digital currency need if every person on this planet would use it?

Is there already a digital currency that could accomplish this?

You wouldn't need to put a price label on the eggs of 000000000000000000.1 etc, you could either name lesser denominations below satoshi or i should imagine all product would be coded for price so you just scan over them. 

Well, that won't be an issue IMO. The world isn't gonna run on a single crypto-currency in 50 years. There are numerous Altcoins that I am sure people will use along with Bitcoins. And as WhatTheGox has mentioned, we can always name the lesser denominations. :)

One of the problems with physical currency is that cash is being printed every single day and in a few decades from now, a single coke bottle will cost hundreds of dollars, for example, and a BMW will probably cost a billion dollars. When compared to that system, I think that the Bitcoin system is better, and there is always lesser chance of Black Money - I'm not an expert but just an opinion.

[Edit]: Also assuming that the world has around 7 Billion people and the population isn't going to steadily increase anytime in the future (it is possible given that everyone gives birth to three or more children), the amount of bitcoins that everyone is gonna hold is not going to increase. It means, there isn't going to be any inflation IINW. On the other hand, since the governments are gonna keep printing cash, the inflation is gonna keep rising.

Anyway to your original question, I think infinite number of coins would be required to completely get rid of all the denominations. Because, every single thing in this world can be bought and if the smallest thing to be sold is worth a coin, anything can be smaller than anything.

mbtc, umbtc is what you are looking for, in the case of one egg it should be 0,0003611 btc or you can simply write 0.3611 mbtc, but i actually prefer the first, where you don't need to do any math, even if it is really simple someone might find it annoying

You mistake is, that you use the term coin in here.
With digital currencies, I don't care if pay funny numbers like 0.00000049861.
With cash that is inconvenient , since I have to count various coins, to get the number right.
It also doesn't really matter if I pay 0.00000001 BTC or 1 Satoshi or if Bitcoin skyrocks even more and we suddenly have to use microSatoshi.
A digital currency is just much more flexible.

The funny numbers coming up. I guess we are using the wrong term.Coins . How about we transform it using the lesser denomination. People will find the solution anyway.

Seems you already realize the advantage of being able to divide bitcoin into small denominations, but dont like it. You can just use a mobile app and ignore the amount in bitcoin and set it to show the amount only in dollars, so that ways you don't really have to worry about the 0's after the decimal.

There isn't a definite number needed, provided that a cryptocurrency is divisible, it would probably suit the needs of the people. Buying an egg for 0,00000000000000000000000000000001 and writing all the zeros is a hard task to do, so basically you would want to assign names as denominations go and extend from the first decimal place like millibitcoins, centibicoins, microbitcoins and so on.

I see so lets say in the future when you visit some small village in africa. You buy an egg there, you use your cellphone or futuristic bitcoin device, the seller has something like that too. Both the devices don't show 0.00000000001 but yours shows 0.01 Super Mario Coins XD and the marchant likes to show it as 1 Sonic Ring both press ok. Transaction is done you get your egg.

Why are there so many articles about bc not having a future and all those alt coins then? We could just work on making BC the standard of payment worldwide by just using it everywhere.

In a weird way, I have to sort of agree with you on this. It has been a struggle to teach most people, including children the 2 decimal places in most of the fiat currencies today. The complexity of 8 decimals are a bit complex for most people.

On the other hand, it seems as though people are more clever than we think, when it comes down to money matters.

Let's take Zimbabwe as a example... On the 15th of June 2015 ...  35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars were equal to US $1 {Most people cannot even count to 1 million}

I bought one of these notes for $5 as a novelty item, to remind me, how fiat currency can collapse.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Zimbabwe_$100_trillion_2009_Obverse.jpg

Most people did not do the physical math, they just refered to these notes in colors..or they gave them nicknames {Give me 4 of the blue notes} They also gave sweets & candy as change, because the minting of the coins is too expensive.

In 2008 the monthly inflation rate hit 3.5 million percent with an egg costing 50 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

On 12 June 2015, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said it will begin a process to demonetise the Zimbabwean dollar, to officially value the fiat currency at zero.

In summary, it looks like people could adapt to changes like these, if they are forced to... BUT workarounds would quickly occur to make it easier to understand .

well, the cryptocurrency should not need infinite number of coins as if there are infinite coins of a cryptocurrency and the world accepts it so it's concequences will be just like zimbabwe.

OP you're looking suspecious from your post and i think that you are planning to make a new crypto of your own.
Please correct me if i am wrong.  :D ;D 8)

Well the smallest fraction of a Bitcoin is 0.00000001 BTC which is referred to as 1 satoshi. If you don't want to use decimals, you can always use satoshi for small amounts. I personally tend to think in satoshi for amounts less than 0.001 BTC, so for example I'll refer to 0.00042000 BTC as 42k sat. This is obviously not ideal but for now it's fine for me. I'm sure the devs will think of something as Bticoin adoption rate goes up around the world. Also, the decimals are only scary/confusing in the beginning, you'll get used to it soon enough  ;)

Well, satoshi is right now the smallest unit of BTC. However, the OP says that in the future, it may even get smaller than a satoshi and I agree with him in that.

i think they will use a sidechain for that, other wise they might screw the divisibility or you can always use another altcoin for when 1 satoshi will be worth too much, let's say 1 dollar or more

there will be always litoshi or dogetoshi, to the contrary of the popular belief, those coins are strong enough to hold their way until bitcoin will be mainstream, i doubt we will have only bitcoin as a mainstream crypto coin

First of all, if you think that as your bitcoin boosts up in the coming years, you'd be able to get 1 egg at 0.0000000000001 satoshi? LOL no. Prices will have an equal affect as bitcoin will affect the economy. Yes, it'd be a major change and quite positive for us too, negative for a few. Who cares to pay 0.000312312 or whatever as long as it just gets debited off? Its digital, yo.

@aakashsangwan lol make a cryptocurrency XD hell no, got better stuff to do. #

Im thinking of producing something and then sell it but accept cryptocurrencies only to boost popularity. Since BC seems to be the standard Ill stick with BC.

I often had this thought that if the bitcoin price boosts and there is so many new millionaires in the market, won't there be a negative effect on the economy too? Won't it screw shit up that way? I don't think so the price of an egg would be that much in the future, haha! Regardless of what price it is, why is buying it in bitcoin be an issue 'in the future?'

Its just ugly to buy an egg for 0,0000000001 something like 0,5 would be better.

If your question is that can there be equal power if everybody is a millionaire, Nope. Wealth, and more importantly power, are comparative. You're only as rich as someone else isn't. If everyone had equal wealth and equal power,it would not work. Some people would want more. You can't be satisfied. We are driven to win and compete. so if tomorrow you have everything, people would be figuring out how to get more.

First, 0,0000000001 does not exist. Bitcoin only has 8 decimals.
You should not think in decimals at all. It matters which term you use. Lets say you want to buy 1 Satoshi, so it's 0.00000001.

You can divide 1 BTC in several units which are all without decimals.
100,000,000 Satoshi or
1,000,000 μBTC or
1,000 mBTC

My guess, in the future, we will think about more in this three units instead in Bitcoin.

Question without answer in a certain meaning. In the meaning that never will be possible to know it for the all the world. It is only one way but even this may not be true because to many countries lies with their data.

Normally would be the sum of the price of all the goods in the market in all the world in one given moment. But in the other one the goods will change (maybe price, maybe amount, maybe variety) and new goods may be in the market. Even not maybe but for sure. So the amount needed need to be changed.

Normally within one nation are predictions that predict the amount of currency in the market in with those are occupied the economist. And are the monetary policies (applied by them) which determines the amount of currencies in a certain period in a country. To speak about those is not easy and cannot be a post that can be enough for that. If you want to learn a little more you can read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply)

i guess we'll find it more useful to at some point only use mbtc. it looks better than splitting everything into satoshi's and it's easier as well.

When it has to be used by everyone around the world I think it would a lot of coins. But there with digital currency I think nothing impossible.

Probably a lot more coins that is needed, I cant wait for it to happen when everyone is using this worldwide I think purchasing is a lot easier.

You have to face the reality that there are people simply not interested enough in Bitcoin to actually use it. I'm sure the current Bitcoin userbase will grow and see a rise of perhaps x10 or x20 compared to now. But then again, even if you realize these x10-x20 gains, Bitcoin will still be a small economy. mBtc is more than enough to serve & satisfy the users in the longterm.

Bitcoin could only be divisible to 0.00000001 So it is not that bad as having 20 zeroes. But still you probably won't be counting this yourself like you are counting your paper money, but instead you would be using an app to pay for groceries, so I really don't see a problem here.

Yes. I agree with you. This is highly possible to happen. Because bitcoin is divisible into any number of decimals.
So, theoretically bitcoin is already with enough number of units to serve everybody in the world regardless of how many people  would be in the population of world.

Look at the serial number of that bill, you see the double A? it means that there is huge number of bills in circulation, and the Central Bank ran out of letters (from A-Z) to use, so they add another one.
This sort of thing is happening right now in my country (Venezuela) as we reach hyperinflation. Very, very sad.

With this fact is connected one of the best qualities of bitcoin. Bitcoin is not inflationable because of the exact number of coins which are and will be always in circulation and for the fact that this number is always well known. For this quality can bitcoin be considered as a very strong currency. To tell the right this may cause problems if it will be the only coin of one country but are difficulties that can be overcomes. Even this cannot be sure always because are to many the factors which must and need to be taken in consideration