Bitcoin Forum

Informal poll.  Do you think it's time for the Bitcoin community to change the view of the bitcoin balance in the standard client?

Absolutely. But you should make it clear that those are microbitcoins (UBT). This is a essential step in order to normalize small tradings in the midterm.

No. That time will never come.  It makes no sense whatsoever and will never happen.

OK, that's actually a reasonable point.  Changes the actual value of the currency would make no sense, but just changing the denominations that we handle would work.

Do you agree with yourself often?

6 no, but 3 would be nice IMHO

Copying my post from this thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8282.140 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8282.140).

I think that instead of coming up with names for 0.001 and 0.000001 bitcoins we should seriously consider changing the value of 1 bitcoin. I propose that what now is 0.000001 bitcoins becomes the new bitcoin. If we want bitcoin to be widely used we have start thinking about how to make things simple for Average Joe. So, a couple of reasons why this would be better:

• Bitcoin sounds like a small amount.
• While milli- and micro- is very simple to understand for a scientific community, "a thousand" and "a million" is understood more intuitively by Average Joe. So instead of having "a microbitcoin", "a millibitcoin" and "a bitcoin" in everyday use it would be better to have "a bitcoin", "a thousand bitcoins" and "a million bitcoins".
• No currency that I have used have smaller amounts than 0.01 main units. Using the new definition of a bitcoin the smallest possible amount would be just that, 0.01 bitcoins.

I don't think that it's too late to make a change like this.

The reason for doing 6 right away is that we don't want to have to do it again later.

If you do it now, people may think Mugabe overtook the network

We need to explain this, and set a date for the shift.  Otherwise this is going to have to happen later, when the average bitcoin user is much less informed than the average user of this forum.  The results, I believe, could be mass confusion.  It could cause mass confusion anyway.

I suggested 3 back in November, nobody listened.  Now we have a condition wherein we are already pricing things in fractions of a coin.  If we only move 3 over, we will have to do it again in another 6 months.

Yes, I agree. I think if we ever do it, it should probably coincide with halving the reward so people have time to prepare and adjust their thinking. Just like with summer/winter times
Alternatively, we could just leave it as it is and use mBTC uBTC

I think it's time we had an option in the client about what denomination of bitcoin to display. The default as is, and then a clear and well-explained drop-list or something for lower denominations.

maybe an option? I like the classic numbering scheme better.

Personally, I think a solution might be to allow the app's user to zoom in or zoom out (showing bitcoins, millicoins, etc.).

This way each person may decide what is appropriate for their uses.

(It also saves us from having this conversation when the bitcoin values double or the bubble bursts -- whatever comes first!)

yes, most of us find reading numbers like

1000 easier than .0001

I predict that this is one thing that must happen before bitcoins gain wider adoption, but being as the price of BTC is still so volatile (for all we know it could settle at $1=1BTC it is hard to know how many decimal places.

One thing that might help is including a currency converter within the client so even if people see that their btc balance has changed, its value has not. In the long term, people might need to get out of the habit of converting in and out of their home currency, but that is far far into the future of btc evolution

I think a change like this is inevitable. That said, it's also better done quickly because no matter how much information and warning goes out before it, there will be confusion.

Do it now, and it will affect fewer users. Not sure what this change would do the rate of new people adopting bitcoins.

My biggest concern is if all current sites and services that handle bitcoins are prepared for a change like that yet.. What happens if a site operator hasn't been paying much attention, and misses the change. Would people's coins be in any danger?

i don't have an issue with a client that presents the balance however the user wants, but I'm talking about changing the default state, and thereby changing the standard way we discuss value.  Otherwise, there will be the need to explain our personal frames of references with every transaction, or risk a misunderstanding undermining our businesses.

No, no danger there.  The value of the bitcoins won't change, just the display of them.  If the users of said site transfer their coins out from that site, their new client would display the new number.  In truth, bitcoins are just a 64 bit integer anyway, and the decimial point was put into the middle of that 16 decimal place (in base ten) integer as an arbitrary decision by Satoshi.  We have all known that it would have to move eventually, we just didn't really expect that day would come so quickly.

We do this every day. Five bucks, 2 K's, a million etc.

(Ok, so I don't do transactions of a million dollars every day, but .. )

Those are all conventions based on the same frame of reference.  Try doing that when one party thinks a bitcoin is an order of magnitude more valuable than the other party.

Do it asap, get it out of the way. 1 old BTC = 1000 new kBTC.

It is awkward to deal with more than two digits to the right of the decimal point.

No. the point is to change what we now call "microbitcoins" into "bitcoins". It should not say "microbitcoins" anywhere. When making the switch we would of course have to be very clear about what we are doing, but after that it's just "bitcoins".

When I said that I think there should be a zoom-in / zoom-out slider, what I had in mind was that the caption would update accordingly.

For example, at the default position the caption would say "bitcoin", but zoomed in a few decimal places would say "millicoins" (or whatever name we agree upon).

I support switching to microcoins as the default, but I'm unsure whether moving the decimal point is wise.

It would confuse people a lot, and the "Bitcoin critics" would have a field day. "Look, they're moving the decimal point to trick you! Scam! Ponzi! Bubble! OMGWTFBBQ!"

Is there any way, and possibly even a more simple approach to do this?

forget changing the actual denomination of bitcoins, 1 btc = 1btc. Agree on denominations, and have all clients, sites, and systems which handle bitcoins automatically drop the actual bitcoin amount into the agreed denominations.

1 have 5 bitcoins.

Would be displayed in client as user selectable 5 bitcoins, or say 5,000 bit-dollers, or 5,000,000 mega-dollers, (whatever, denominations names asside..)

I send joe 1,000 bit dollers for a purchase on his website, from my bitcoin client.

Bitcoin client knows 1,000 bit-dollers = 1 bitcoin, and sends to joe

Joe's client knows 1 btc = 1,000 bit-dollers, and he get's what he wanted, we can make up new denominations forever as the value of the original bitcoin goes up.


Or am I missing some really big point that makes this all nonsence?

I tend to agree with this. While any change is bound to cause some confusion I think the idea of an option to set how you view your bitcoins would be much easier than a sudden all out sudden change. It seems to me it would make for a smoother transition.

I have two points of view for this:

Personally I'd rather have 1000 mBTC than 1 BTC in the client just for peace of mind (you need to enter a big number to transfer a lot of value) and ease of use (0.0002 or 0.002 ??).

From my webshop I've learned that people spend 1.5 BTC on an item more easily then 15BTC. Stuff just looks cheap with only one digit in front of the dot.

But all in all this has to be done. Just look at http://bitmunchies.com/ : 0.118 BTC for a bottle of jelly. This is ridiculous and is alienating even for me, not even speaking about a newcomer just looking around.

If this is delayed too long we have two different units in the client and in the shops, which will be chaotic and a source of a lot of grief IMHO.

Just my 0.0001 BTCs worth

I voted "yes", and for diversity of opinion I'll also remind of my own proposal from a while back: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8125.msg118823#msg118823

I don't care if you want to call it UBT or BTC, but yes, we should move those 6 decimals ASAP.

This might actually be a good time. Because the jump is so huge, nobody can really afford to get confused. Nobody is going to send 5,000,000 current bitcoins instead of 5 current bitcoins. It will be weird spending hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, but the situation will get more normal as the price goes up, instead of getting worse.

It may hush some of the bubble people. $20 per btc sounds like a bubble. $0.00002, not so much. Makes it seem like there's plenty of room to grow.

Also, big numbers have number groupings (1,000,000) and decimals don't. And people have a much easier time with thousands and millions, than with millis and micros. I think it should be done quickly and confidently, 1 btc = 1,000,000 btc.

Totally agree on the move ASAP!

As for the name: I'd vote for BTC because just Bitcoin has a much nicer ring to it than anything micro- or milli- and thanks to the media is already known pretty widely.

Also there is really no risk of confusing two prices with a 10^6 jump.

Heh -- and it makes us all millionares...

Yes - and more importantly: potential newcomers also have the chance to be millionaires, again which probably is a great selling argument ;)

It could also alleviate the early-adopter-greed-factor!

We could probably get away with only a 5 decimal point shift, but not a 4.  Six would be a decades long solution. If we want to do this twice, we could only shift 3; but we need to do this together.  Just depending upon the end user to select the most appropriate view is going to do more harm than good if we don't adjust the default view.

I agree that this would be a very useful change, and it does feel kind of urgent. After all, Bitcoins are still "beta" and that's the kind of thing that can happen during a beta. And while Bitcoins did get a lot of press lately - most people still are completely unaware that Bitcoins even exist.

1 BTC was fine when 1 BTC was worth less than a dollar, or even a dollar. But it's obvious now that it won't take long until 1 BTC (in the old system) will be worth at least $ 100, maybe even $ 1000 or more. I see it this way: There will only ever be some 21 million BTC. Think about it: That sounds like a niche currency. It doesn't really sound like it has a future of significance. That would be fine for a local currency only used in a small city - but certainly not for a global currency. This feels like an actual bug ;-)

If Bitcoin is to become a currency with a significant market (which is what we're all working on), just having 21 million BTC will be "nothing". 21 billion sounds more reasonable but still kind of little for a real global market. 21 trillion finally sounds like we're up for something. Personally, I wouldn't go beyond that. I rarely hear people talk about quadrillions - I guess that would just make it harder to explain Bitcoin to people, like: "There can only ever be 21 quadrillion Bitcoins" - "What?" - "21 Quadrillion Bitcoins" - "Ah, you must be a geek ... Bitcoins are for geeks ... leave me alone" ;-)

So shifting 6 digits sounds like the natural thing to do.

1 BTC = 1,000,000 BTC

Go for it! Fix that bug! ;-)

"There will only ever be 21 Trillion bitcoins!  This time we mean it!"

Hey everyone,

This finally got me to register. I've been looking at bitcoin for a while now, and I've gone back and forth about whether it could work or not. I'm now leaning toward the it could work side. Either way I've done a lot of thinking on it. A few years ago before there even was bitcoin I actually designed a hypothetical monetary system to solve the current problem of inflationary fiat currency.

Anyway, the reason for this post is to say I absolutely do believe it's about time to move the decimal point, but not by 6 places. I have an entire post I plan to write and propose to the forum soon which covers exactly how, when, and why to move the decimal for great effect. It also addresses the naming issue I've seen come up on the forum repeatedly.

Will post more on this soon!

5 decimal places isn't that different from 6, so might as well go all the way. It'll be a lot easier to temporarily handle prices in millions of bitcoins (5mbtc) than to have to do this whole change over again down the road.

Shifting the decimal point would be a very stupid thing to do. For one it would create confusion for the users. We wouldn't want someone to accidentally send someone else 1,000,000 when they just meant to send 1 BTC.

Move the decimal point six places, i say. I reckon it's better with just two zeros after the dot.

Not that I expect to be taken seriously with my first post . . . but shifting 6 decimals is too great a move. Part of the reason Bitcoin has the momentum it does is because the rise in price has given it credibility (bubble or not). Shift this thing 6 spots and you're looking at a Bitcoin (or whatever you want to call it at that point) worth a very small fraction of a cent.

Yes, everyone would have more Bitcoins . . . but from a psychological standpoint, I think the move is far too great. I'd go for 3 spots. I don't care that we'd have to do it again at another point in time. It's all a necessary part in growing the currency.

Wrap the whole thing up in some marketing mumbo jumbo to give the shift the air of authority and legitimacy, something to suggest that Bitcoin is shifting from a phase I implementation to a phase II implementation. Whatever. Just do it and do it soon. This whole thing is going to pop and pop soon if some action is not taken.

i really think that if you want to do 6 dot shifts in the long run, you should do it now, because if its an established currency with millions of users, the confusion will be WAY higher.

so lets bite in the lemon and just do it.

:)

That is not necessarily a bad thing either in terms of bitcoins as currency rather than bitcoins as speculative investments doubling in worth every few days. (I also don't think moving around decimal places will change the overall value of bitcoins as a currency at all). I'm intersted in how this gets implemented though, what is the decisionmaking process?

Thanks for finally voting on this :)

This is missing too many options to be worthwhile. If the common unit is to be changed, UBC (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Universal_Bitcoin) is ideal, not μBTC.

Generally people should see this "shift in decimal point" as a mechanism similar to a stock split.
Take one Bitcoin, split it in 100.000 Parts, name the new parts bitcoin and give everyone 100k of them. Would change nothing numerically in the "backend" and only change how things are displayed but would finally solve the horrible fraction-eering or even more absurd non decimal stacking.

I suggest to split Bitcoin so far that it is only divisible 100 or max 1k times, people learned how to scale upwards thanks to PC's, Mega, Giga etc are common words. Mu and other fractional terms are totally unknown, so upwards scaling is the way to go.

Thanks again for posting this chart that will make 99% of non programmers click x immediately :)) If someone would have to come up with a system to slow down the general acceptance of BTC,  "UBC" would come really close  :'(
You have dozens of totally new terms, you have terms for random numbers that only make mathematically sense and are horrible to grasp for non programmers. If bitcoin wants to move beyond "nerdsphere" UBC is certainly a disaster choice.

Shift it over 5 places, just to be sneaky.

Shift it over 6 places.  Keep the name BTC. 

It needs to be a multiple of 3 for simplicity sake, and if we shift it 3 places now we will probably need to shift it again later.  Best to do 6 places all at once and get it done and over with.

Let me see if I can put this into perspective...

So if someone has 10 BTC now, after the update to 6 decimal places:

Account would now indicate: 10,000,000 BTC ( which is 1Mil * 10 BTC)
and
1 (new)BTC =
$0.0000273 USD (using current exchange rate of $27.30 per BTC)

Correct?

So for $1 USD from the McDonalds Dollar menu, I'd have to pay:
36,630 (new)BTC

I don't see how that's going to be user friendly unless the current bitcoin rate DID jump past $1000 per BTC in Now terms.

In that case:

1 (new)BTC =
$0.001 USD

and $1 USD would convert to only 1000 bitcoins.

This makes more sense. please correct me if my math is wrong.

I think that shifting from 6 decimals is better than 3 because it would avoid a lot of mistake. I mean, if you see something (say a ring) sold for 100BTC, you might hesitate: is it a very good ring, in gold, or is it just a crap and it is sold with the new BTC currency? Is it 3000$ or 3$?

With a 6 digits move, there cannot be any doubt.

I also realized that, since BTC is over 10$, I'm not buying anymore. Just because I find silly to spend so much money for so few bitcoins. I know that this is silly but, well, I cannot control it.

I also propose the following way of making a shift:

0) Make an informal board of all bitcoin clients developpers.

1) Formal decision and announcements. From July 1st to July 31st. A special pag carrying a FAQ is done before this date. During one month, every bitcoin user could raise issues and send them to the board. That way, the board of client programmer might discuss potentially unforseen problems.

2) On July 31st, that board of developpers decide wether or not they will go for a decimal change. This decision is made public and a target date is given. (Say September 1st).

All the developers commit to make a release with the decimal change on that day. All bitcoin merchants and services have one month to adapt their software.

1) There will be confusion and problems with automated systems who have hardcoded fees and such. Can be dealt with, but will be issue I think.
2) For long term storage in databases and such less decimal places is good
3) I say don't move it.  I really like the scientific connotation it imparts.  Rather than dumb bitcoin down, make new users smarter I say.

I disagree with the proposal to recalibrate. I think it is foolish.

21 million is a good number as the total number of bitcoins.

The solution to the increasing value of bitcoins is to talk in terms of millibitcoins and, soon enough, microbitcoins.

These would be soon abbreviated to millis and micros. Having an input field for millibitcoins instead of whole bitcoins is of course trivial to implement.

Most non-programmers will only ever see the cyan SI units and the base unit, and will naturally figure out the other white binary divisions of it. They don't need to know how many Satoshis there are in a UBC.

Changing the value of what is called a "Bitcoin" is a very, very bad idea. Nothing kills a new product/service/currency like confusion/uncertainty/doubt.

If we want smaller, more usable units, then we need new names.

Eg.
1 Bitcoin = 100 Bitdollars
1 Bitdollar = 100 Bitcents

That's not confusing? I like the analogy to a stock split. Imagine if they changed the IBM ticker when they did a stock split.

It is less confusing than "Hey guys! Your balance is now one million times bigger! However, you have the same amount of money..."

At the moment:

1 Gold coin = 1000 USD (in the order of)
1 USD = 100c

so to carry those numbers across:

1 Bitcoin = 1000 Bitdollars
1 Bitdollar = 100 Bitcents

I like the idea of bitcoins being 1000000th of what they are right now, but I too fear it would damage credibility.

I'm worried about this scenario:

If we did make bitcoins 1000000 times smaller, and in a years time I've still got the current client (3.20), and I sent someone 10 BTC (thinking I was sending 10 new BTC), would it actually send 10 old BTC (=10,000,000 new BTC)?

Excellent point!

+1

Yes.

Hey guys, keep trading in bits. What a great name for a currency of an intelligent space-faring race. Microbits is the currency of the people (credits in the traditional sense), then to millibits, bits, kilobits, megabits. Of course only the helium mining associations will be trading in kilobits and megabits.

Then I think we need to bare this in mind, otherwise someone's gonna lose their bitcoin retirement fund buying peanut butter.

Can the protocol/block chain be changed so that after the changeover transactions in new BTC are marked, and only such marked transactions are accepted into the block chain?

BOOM, LanYu!
That's the answer.

The question isn't whether we should change that which we call Bitcoin, but should we start trading in millibits.

Should the client default to millibits now?  I say yes, but who the fuck am I?

This would encourage trading in millibits pretty quickly, and I think we, maybe, can rely on a significant portion of potential Bitcoin users understanding "one thousandth of". Probably.

We should move to a new UNIT!  the unit of of a 'Bitcoin' is defined in the official source code:


This should STAY THE SAME!

See:


we can just define a new one:


and so on...

The reason NOT to 'shift the decimal point' is because it will require UPDATING every codified system that uses bitcoins... It will aslo cause huge ammouts of confusion for those who use old clients.   Keep the same units..

For a real-life example where we use smaller every-day units... just look at: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tesla_%28unit%29

That is a good point. Changing the core code is really scary. It could also lead to really bad coding mistakes down the road.

Shifting the decimal really important, if only for psychological purposes. Many people have a very terrible understanding of math and simply do not understand working with numbers smaller than .01. Also, many people may reject the currency as being "overpriced" because a single currency being valued at more than $10 USD is unheard of, and decide not to enter the market. A rational person would purchase fractions of a bitcoin, but the important thing here is that most people are not rational. This probably comes as a shock to many bitcoin users who are of above average intelligence and surround themselves with above average friends and coworkers, but just head to your local DMV for an afternoon and try to imagine these people adopting the bitcoin. Perhaps it's a little different outside of America, but we need to keep the barriers to using bitcoin as low as possible.

Wow, I'm glad this option is popular now. I thought most people were on the SI prefix camp.


You are right, it will cause a lot of confusion, but that confusion would be dwarfed by the confusion of normal people trying to pay for stuff in the milli and micro levels. Most of the current users are nerds anyway so I don't think the drama after the change would last more than a couple of weeks.

Btw, I agree the code definition of a bitcoin should stay the same. The only change should be to how this number is displayed to users.

You can actually move the decimal place without causing any confusion or fear, but this strategy takes some time, so we should get startet now.

Here's the solution to the decimal problem: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13495.0

If you like that plan, reply in that thread to keep the topic up and stop replying in this thread.

</thread>

honestly in the client it isnt as important.. all those sites out there though need to start dealing in smaller values.. Virwox for instance still only deals in whole bitcoins, which makes it a very... coarse market.. you either buy or sell 6,000-10,000L$.

this is the real problem i think. Sure there is a bit of confusion with the decimals... but thats easy enough to do by making multiple fields
bitdolar: [000] (unlimited place field)
bitcoin: [00] (maximum of 2 places)
bitcent: [00] (maximum of 2 places)
fraction: [.000000] (maximum zeroes after the last place)
whatever :p i dont care about names of values..b ut the multiple fields would give a easier sense to it.. like how in the US its dolars, quarters, dimes, nickles, pennies. just everything below a bit dolar or whatever (a multiple of a bitcoin) make it a two number field max.

then as the precision gets lower as time goes on, move bitcoin to the unlimited place... then bit cent.. and so forth.. make what your default focus is, an option in the client.

Why? That would instead cause confusion for people reading the code. We are still in the very early stages of Bitcoin, we shouldn't be afraid of making changes to the code.

the code definition is a whole integer... then divided in to decimal for display. there really is no point in changing the whole integer its displayed as.

so instead of 28million btc there would now be a total maximum of 28 quadrillion?

the number of 'value' doesnt change... we just change the name of 'value' and assign 'bitcoin' from 'value' to 'value2' :p

"milli" perhaps, "micro" not so much.

That's not my main point though. Even if people understand the meaning of the prefixes it is still easier to relate "500 BTC" to "1,000,000 BTC" than it is to relate "500 μBTC" to "1 BTC". I believe this to be true for most people, scientist or not.


I'm the one you quoted and I'm from Sweden, so not in my case.

No, 21 trillion with a continuing division of two decimal places.

keep the code the same but just start using milli-bits or micro-bits. 1 BTC is still 1BTC. 1BTC is 1000 mBTC (milli-bits). Denominate prices is milli-bits. When 1BTC is $100, 1 milli-bit will be $0.1 or 10 cent. When the time comes could switch to micro-bits.

MBTC    Mega-bit   1000000     1.00E+06
kBTC     Kilo-bit   1000             1.00E+03
BTC           Bitcoin   1             1.00E+00
mBTC    Milli-bit   0.001             1.00E-03
uBTC     Micro-bit   0.000001     1.00E-06
           Satoshi   0.00000001     1.00E-08

The recent drop in bitcoin prices was partly because of Dwolla but also partly because of the $30+ price.  Bitcoin really won't ever be able to get to $100, because to do so it needs more users and it can't get more users if the price is high.

What most of you don't realize is that most people cannot handle numbers smaller than one.  Even zero is a tricky concept for normal people.  SI prefixes don't work either.  You are all naive to think that some "nice" solution will work.  No, what we need is an elegant solution.  Just move that damn decimal point.  Mexico did it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_peso#Nuevo_peso

Could you sell 100Millis for $3 faster than you could sell 0.1Bitcoin for $3?

Perhaps the Bitcoin decimal problem could be alleviated by point out how MUCH a single Bitcoin can buy.  Most people don't take gold seriously because they don't realize how much it costs.  North Americans laugh at foreign currencies that have lots of zeroes for their smallest bill.

A bitcoin is BIG money.  To me, that makes it look serious.

Why can't they just put in a setting where you can show it however you want?

They don't want people to use Bitcoins any way other than the one they approve of. Spesmilo supports displaying things in various ways.

Bumping this to give people a chance to vote before it closes.

My favorite option isn't there ... UBC.

I explained the concept of bitcoin to my mother and she read a bit by herself on the net. She said, after that, that she would never buy a bitcoin more than 1€. 20€ is definitely too much.

I think that this kind of reaction or misperception are really common and that's why we should move the decimal place.

I think a shift of one would be great, then we would have that

1 BTC = $2.x
and
1 BTC = €1.x

which would fit nicely.

How would the shift affect scripts which use json calls to send coins? All current scrips would break, woudn't they?

I would just change the output in the bitcoin client. The data or machine readable outputs should not be changed at all.

Shouldn't.  The bitcoin client doesn't store the decimal at all.  50 BTC is stored as a 64 bit integer representing a value of 5,000,000,000.  The client only adds the decimal for human readability.  Any calls to the system should be using the protocol's representation of the value, not the GUI's.

Probably, yes.

Definetely agree with moving the decimal point all the way in the GUI.

Better sooner than later.

Is there an open feature request on Github?
Any specific client version this will go into?
Yes, it's a simple, psychological thing ... but it's important for Bitcoin's growth.

What are the devs position on this?

Switching the decimal in GUI might be desirable but I think that using bitcoin to mean microbitcoin is a bad idea.

On of the biggest appeal of bitcoin is the fact that there will never be more. You have a lot of legacy article and video that explain that there will never be more bitcoin in circulation. People have read that bitcoin will be limited to 21 millions. They expect the value of a bitcoin to go up constantly.

The last thing you want, for a currency that is designed to be inflation proof, is to create the illusion of deflation... even if it would only be an illusion.

Starting to use microbitcoin might be ok, but don't rebrand them as the new bitcoin.


These guys understood that stock splitting only make it more complex to identify real value
 http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=BRK-A+Basic+Chart&t=my   

this brings forth thoughts of hitch hikers guide to the galaxy:
"The exchange rate of 8 Ningys to one Galactic PU is simple enough. However, since a Ningy is a triangular rubber-coin ,6800 miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one PU. Besides which, if you did ever own enough, you would have a great deal of trouble exchanging them, as most banks refuse to deal in small change."

Remember, we are still very early in the life of Bitcoin, few people have actually heard about Bitcoin. We can't let "legacy article and video" stop us from making a change at this point if the change is for the better in the long run. It is possible to make this change now because there is not a lot of different clients, e-wallets etc. out there.


The important thing to explain is that the number of Bitcoins is limited. It would be confusing anyway to state that the supply is limited to 21 million BTC if the unit that people are used to is mBTC or μBTC.

My vote is to NOT change BTC, but get used to talking in micro-BTC (UBT,UBC,uDTC,whatever the concensus), but that's not clearly available in the vote!

I think it'd be suicide to revalue the BTC now, and it'll cause problems with people who don't upgrade old clients. Now that Bitcoin has been featured in Forbes and The Economist and people are trading at $20, this isn't very early days anymore.

This!

People use millilitters and milligrams, what's the problem using millibitcoins? Rename it if you want but we can't change BTC value

"micro" sounds too tiny when spoken aloud. I suggest a new name altogether. And it needs to be 2 syllables.

UBC is ok. But when spoken aloud, it should sound like "you-coins" (not "micro-bit-coins").

mBC is ok. But when spoken aloud, it should sound like "em-coins" (not "micro-bit-coins").

I wonder if mBC might be confused with "million". The m comes from micro, but obviously the real abbreviation for micro looks more like u.

So, let's go with UBC, pronounced "you-coins".

I'll send an "you-cent" to anyone who agrees with me ;)

I really liked the solution proposed in:

Solution: How to shift the decimal
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13495.0

Maybe replace uBTC with UBC for now ... eventually (when no one really uses BTC anymore because it's too annoying), we can switch over and make UBC the new BTC and the transition will be complete without anyone being confused. It just takes a little time and patience but it will fix the worst problem Bitcoin currently has (well, except for that it doesn't properly support subscriptions ;-) ).

I suspect that people will just say "milli" or "micro", just like we now say "cent" rather than "percent of a dollar".

And mBTC will never be confused for MBTC.  The context will always make it clear.

Agreed.
Any change in the definition of a bitcoin would be suicide.

Repeat after me: There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins. Ever.

I believe that we're mixing concepts here. "BTC" is the equivalent of "USD" or "EUR", an abbreviation of the currency. But there is no such thing as "cUSD" or "CUD" when talking about cents. What we do have is a dollar sign ($) and a cent sign (¢).

If we're not going to move the decimal point (which I still hope that we are), we should come up with a symbol for "millies" or whatever people want call them. In that case, my suggestion is that we use ß for this, since it is logical looking at the greek alphabet. B (similar enough to ฿) is uppercase Beta and ß is lowercase Beta. This could possibly also satisfy the ones who suggested ß as the main bitcoin symbol, as ß will probably be more widely used than ฿ if the value of Bitcoins continue to increase.

Think about it: 21 million Bitcoins for a global currency?

I might be repeating myself ... but: That might work for the currency of a little city - but for a global scale, it will be by far too little. Ok, they can be divided - but only geeks will work with 0.00001 Bitcoin amounts. Again: That'll work just fine for a niche currency (the currency that only mathematicians use) - but it won't work when Bitcoin scales up to where it will be really disruptive.

So I'd say: Let's switch it over as soon as possible. Let's do it in a way that doesn't scare people away (see link to other thread posted above - by doing it with a couple of steps over a longer period of time it should be easy enough; and that is "as soon as possible" - sooner would in fact very likely be a problem).

Then, we'll have 21 trillion Bitcoins. Sounds much more reasonable to me. That 21 million thing really is a bug (see a few pages above ;-) ).

Let's fix it :-)

My only problem with this is that most people don't know how to type ß.

I had to spend time searching on Google until I finally found this (http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/172).

Turns out, the way to do this on a Mac is option/alt+s. If you're on a Mac, try it. ßßß

Very bad idea to shift to 6 decimal places.
From a mathematical point of view it makes no difference.

But from a press point of view it will make it look like there is hyper inflation, not good.
You do not want the average person to start comparing the bitcoin to the zimbawen dollar.

It is much better to use the proper term, microbitcoin 1/1000000 or milibitcoin, for 1/1000 if the value of the bitcoin goes up, or simply just use decimals, after all most transactions are online.
 
Bitcoin it is a currency anti inflation, and it is best to reflect that fact.

No just make somme easy way to see diference 1.00000000
0.00000810
0.00100032
2.10000000
Lats make wallet background chang 

That's why I believe it is important to make that change as soon as possible. Currently, there's only around 60.000 people trading with Bitcoin at Mt.Gox. That's almost nothing compared to what it will very likely be in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. So, while such a change already is kind of painful, the longer we wait, the more painful it become.

Mathematically, it may not make a difference - but what matters is the difference in perception: No one wants to work with a currency where you have to do transactions like 0.0001 BTC sent over. That simply doesn't work. However, sending around 100 uBTC seems reasonable. The way I see it, Bitcoin is especially interesting for microtransactions - and for that specific use case, the current way the decimal is handled is just wrong.

Of course, that kind of change must be communicated wisely ...

No

There should be a change...
I dont exactly know when but there should be...
Maybe when the reward in coins get to 25BTC instead of 50BTC?

Maybe even now.

It doesn't make sense to make such a change before bitcoin reach a stable value above 100$.

I like the method proposed in another thread (step by step). We could implement it and decide later if there's a need to change or not. Speaking in uBTC would be as acceptable to me.

I think that bitcoin price growth is the only thing now that makes it attractive to most people and helps to promote it . When bitcoin becomes famous and known all over the world, then stabilization in price is reasonable and we can really talk about "bitcoin economy". So, it's a good idea to move the point as soon as possible and let people buy, buy, buy and become rich

On a related topic, the .01BTC transaction fee is killing me. I make lots of small transactions, so it's basically like paying a 50% tax. I think the transaction fee should be proportional to the amount you send.

on an un-related topic, if you go to Bitcoin.org and download the current client build you will find the tx fee is now lower...

and the notes from the version they adjusted this in can be found here; http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16553.0

Slightly relevant blog post on Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen) about how people adjust to nominal changes, e.g. in this blog post the change from old Turkish Lira to New Turkish Lira by knocking 6 zeros off the old Lira denomination, i.e. kind of the opposite of what is being suggested by many people in this post.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/07/how-quickly-do-people-adjust-to-nominal-changes.html (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/07/how-quickly-do-people-adjust-to-nominal-changes.html)

In this case it seems people adjusted quickly.
I guess people will just start using metric pre-fixes (milli, micro etc.) and it won't really be an issue.

Now that the price of Bitcoin has passed $1000 mark at least three times, shifting the decimal point is a necessity. A prerequisite for mass adoption by the ordinary critical mass.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/02/02/zimbabwe.dollars/
"Zimbabwe removes 12 zeros from currency"
Will Bitcoin have the same problem?

NO it's the opposite problem for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is deflating not inflating.

I agree...

Agreed.

I agree it gets confusing when you buy something for .0015 bitcoin.  But I like bitcoin being the standard denomination.  It's a unit of account and is a good barometer of its worth relative to other currencies and I think that is important to maintain.  For transactions it is not so good and smaller denominations make sense.  If bitcoin is only going to be used by technologically savvy people then millibits and centibits make sense.  If the goal is truly to make the average joe use bitcoin why not just make it as damn simple as possible and call a millibit a bitdollar or something.  Ya I know the anti fiat crowd will cringe, but if I told my dad that a bitdollar is worth about 70 cents he would get that.   Dollar is a common name for a currency above and beyond just US.  You can call them bitpounds or whatever.  Just make it simple.  I think millibits and microbits and satoshis are a stretch for average people who don't share the same passion for bitcoin but could instantly see its value as a replacement for transaction processors, if they could just have a decent frame of reference for what they have in their wallet.

We can shift the decimal whitherever we wish, but the subunits are still mBTC, µBTC, etc.

I still see so many amounts quoted in full BTC and try to shift the decimal three places to the right in my thinking: much easier. :)

Why are people still trolling this old thread, the voting finished in June of 2011.
The fact that this thread is more than 2 years old, and no changes have been made to shift the decimal point, should illustrate how unlikely the developers are to change the decimal point of Bitcoin.  Not going to happen!  Give it up guys.

The devs don't need to do anything. Bitcoin is a decentralised currency/protocol.

Most of the wallets of any repute (Android phone version of blockchain.info seeming to be a notable exception) allow the user to display balance in mBTC or even µBTC. I have taken advantage of this (mBTC) wherever possible and actually find it mildly annoying that certain software (including Coinbase and Bitpay paywalls) display amounts only in BTC and I have to shift the decimal myself. :)

Here is the title of the poll for this thread "Should the standard display of value in the bitcoin client be shifted 6 decimal places to the right?".
How various websites and 3rd party software choose to display Bitcoin is off topic.  This thread should be locked.

The flaw. If you move the decimal place 3 places. The maximum amount of Bitcoins created would then increase to 21 billion coins instead of the 21 million.

So changing the client to mBTC and then later uBTC  makes more sense.

No, very bad idea, will cause mass confusion. 21 million is part of the story. Do this you kill it.

Further using mB, uB and nB serves 3 purposes

1 causes people to realise how valuable a bit coin is and
2 how much is has evaluated, in easy comprehended numbers, 10, 000
3 leaves them free to use whatever scheme they want
4 the have to learn a little bit of SI
5 since micro soft most know "micro"
6 Milli is common eg mm
7 nano is fairly well know since nano tech

so defn do not do this its a sill idea

if you really want to you can use satoshis

I agree. With 1 USD currently worth about 1 mBTC or 100,000 satoshis and 1 oz of gold currently worth 0.8 BTC using satoshis as the unit is actually starting to make sense. This thread is from 2011. Let us wait a couple of years and see what happens first.

Edit: Using nBTC would require a hard fork, increase currency divisibility, since 1 satoshi is 10 nBTC. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist#Currency_changes (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist#Currency_changes)

MoonShadow it seems as if I finally found something I can agree with you on. This poll (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408254.0) shows that the majority of new members seem to prefer alternate cryptocurrency to Bitcoin. The comments suggest that they no longer see value in mining directly because it takes too long to obtain one Bitcoin. If the decimal moved that may change the outlook and bring people back into the fold.

Bitcoin is the premium cypto-currency with a premium price tag, why this constant messing around with it ? I hate mbtc and it seems to be cropping up everywhere. I like the fact it only takes less than 2btc to buy an oz of gold. If you want to have hundreds of thousands of something go pick up some devcoins.

When you call it mBTC or uBTC  you already are moving the decimal place! You are just marking it as such, so you won't forget that the decimal has been moved.

If someone doesn't understand how to use the basic metric system they need to go back to the 1st grade and learn it. Better they don't use BTC at all! They surely will get robbed blind. :D
  

yes it should be done turn 1 Bitcoin into 100,000,000 bitcoins otherwise it cannot compete with Doge etc

Nobody is proposing a substitution to the metric system. What's being proposed is to simplify the usage of the metric system. Simplification is also tought at school, I think you missed the class.

Good point QuaestionAuthority (BTW, love your nick  ;) )  The state of Bitcoin mining today is such that it has evolved into a completely antithetical activity than what was originally intended in Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper.

I think the mainstream Bitcoin community many of whom have been early adopters or at least been in the forum for a year more than the newcomers, has developed a bit of snobbish attitude -- a bit of ivory tower stance since Bitcoin has suddenly gone to the Moon.  But those of us who are still here on Earth recognise the importance of Bitcoin's mass adaptability among the ordinary folk, among the small businesses on the High street etc.  And those 0.000 are not helping.

Here's an interesting article about this problem http://bitcoinmagazine.com/8274/the-psychology-of-decimals/

I'm relatively new to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Came in in November. On the first day I even Tried mining (yeah right LOL). Then I read a LOT (I'm a researcher so that's just how I approach anything that's new), and soon I started developing my own reservations about Bitcoin's long term economic model and about this crypotocurency's flexibility, which I'm not going to list here.  Before I knew it I discovered the alt-coins, and - you know what? - Yes Bitcoin has the first mover advantage, but there are 1 or 2 coins out there that are WAAAAY better then Bitcoin. If Bitcoin's mainstream community and especially the developers, do not recognise the fact that Bitcoin is no longer the only one, and that there is a need to adapt and be agile in this world, and that not all altcoin are "scamcoins" or Pump-n-Dump coins, it might miss out eventually.  So IMHO the attitude needs rethinking, first of all.

Secondly, the way that Blockhain stores information is in terms of Satoshis, not Bitcoins.  Important to remember.  The fact that 1 Bitcoin is = 100,000,000 satoshis is just a convention.  And it is this convention that need to be rethought.

For the transitional period we can call the 100mln satosi Bitcoin  "the old Bitcoin", and the 100,000 satoshi Bitcoin just "Bitcoin". And once the community reaches consensus then it can be passed to Bitcoin Foundation (or whoever does the PR), and tell them to announce it to the world, so that the wallet apps and all other apps can shift their decimal points.

I think Bitcoin would make a lot more sense to an average Joe (in whichever country) if he could talk about Bitcoins in  integers, rather than "zero point zero zero zero two five six bitcoins".  Imagine you are in noisy pub buying beer and instead of the traditional "two fifty" the bartender shouts "zero point zero zero zero two five bitcoins".   THINK in terms of real world!

Also, if I work for the whole week, I want to see that my work has been rewarded with UNITS, not fractions of a unit!

I resurrected this 2011 thread for a good reason. To show that even back in 2011 people voted in favor of this change.  Back then Bitcoin unit was so cheap that there was no need to change anything.  But those voters probably were thinking about the future  and that's why they voted in favour of change even then.  Now in 2014 this kind of change is NECESSARY!   

Excellent article. Let's hope that the lack of perception of how the average public thinks doesn't kill BTC.

Thanks! That's pretty much how I see it. People judge everything in life by their perception of it. That's neither bad nor good, it's simply the way it is. People should look at the exchange rate calculators and see that they are earning $5 a day regardless of the naming convention or decimal location but it doesn't seem to be working that way. People want to say, I have a hundred dollars or I have a hundred Bitcoins. If they perceive that they aren't getting what they want - they'll leave and something that satisfies them will take over.

It would have been a great idea. Except for the fact that the 21 million limit would have to change by the same amount of decimal places. It isn't going to happen. You can't willy nilly Bitcoin like the US Dollar has been.

And for all the anxious to get rich crowd. If Bitcoin does what it did last year it will be worth $52,0000 thousand each by 2015.

If I were going to buy pizza or beer  I would probably use Bitcoin before ounces of gold.  I  would use Dollars first.  That's why fiat like the US Dollar are here to stay.  They are kept at a relatively stable price by the Federal Reserve.

Bravo, couldn't of said it better myself. Call it 25 satoshies, 25mBTC, or whatever, it's still a fractional amount of a whole value and ridiculous to deal with if you're intention is to make everyday purchases with. Which I thought was the whole idea behind bitcoin in the first place.

Bitcoin can still be split into 1000,000,000,000,000 units i totally see where OP is coming from, about removing all the decimal places.

Unless you fully Re-denominate. You have to identify how many decimal places have been removed. Either the metric system or the powers of 10 system. You can't reinvent the wheel with some system that doesn't actually exist.

I'm not proposing that ALL the decimal points should be removed!  I'm proposing that the decimal point shifts to the right by 3 decimal places.  In other words, if the current Bitcoin =100,000,000 satoshis, the new Bitcoin =100,000 satoshis.

I'm not proposing that there should be more Satoshis printed.  The supply of money would stay exactly the same!  

Those who have 10 BTC will now have 10,000BTC -- nobody wants to dilute your precious Bitcoins.

In effect, Bitcoin would still remain the same deflationary currency that it is. And all those who think that a deflationary currency is a good thing can still knock themselves out with Bitcoin purchases.

The price of a the new Bitcoin would become circa $1 (considering the current price of circa $1000) and it would make more sense to people around the world.  They would perceive it as more affordable and will buy them.

Look: the total supply of global M2money converted to USD is $21,000,000,000,000.  I don't think that it is a coincidence that Satoshi Nakamoto chose the figure of 21,000,000 BTC - not 22mln or 84mln etc.  The whole thing is designed so that these 2100,000,000,000,000 satoshis one day replaces the $21trillion that is the M2 money around the world.

But for that to be achieved, it must be user-friendly, accessible, UNDERSTANDABLE, convenient, intuitive, useful and sensible to the Average Joe.  Right now it is not.

PS: I think the old Bitcoins should be called "Preciouses"  ::) "My preciouses"

 

Having thought about this, I don't think it makes sense to change Bitcoin's denomination. That would be like changing the value of the dollar.

Instead, we should begin using mBTC as the standard Bitcoin unit. If mBTC ever hits $1000 then we can switch again to uBTC, and so on down to satoshi.

Its not changing the value of anything its the way Bitcoin's are represented, the other Crypto's look more favorable because instead of collecting 0.0001 coins at a time you can collect 20,000 its just a more tangible way of presenting the volume.

One of the persistent assumptions on this forum is that it would be desirable for Bitcoin to be adopted by "ordinary folk" (as you put it).  This assertion is fundamentally flawed and has been discussed at length some 4 years ago.  Satoshi Nakamoto has made it clear that the adoption of Bitcoin by the masses at this early stage would likely destroy us.
Quote: Dec. 5, 2010: 'No, don’t “bring it on” (Wikileaks). The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.'
It is important to understand that with the roll-out of Bitcoin there is a published schedule, and an unpublished schedule.  These proposals some people are making were discussed as far back as 2008 (that was 6 years ago).  It is simply not possible to publicly discuss critical aspects of Bitcoin, without putting at risk the future of Bitcoin.  Things will happen, when they are meant to happen.  Imagine a scenario where Bitcoin gets adopted by the "ordinary folk", in less than a week you would be hearing in the news that 50 million accounts have been emptied because most people have virus/trojan backdoors installed on their computers.  We have seen examples of this many times in the past, the "Storm" botnet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet) is a good example "At its height in September 2007, the Storm botnet was running on anywhere from 1 million to 50 million computer systems".  The mainstream press would have a field day, imagine how they would blame Bitcoin, when really it is because "ordinary folk" are not smart enough to use computers safely yet.  The priorities are security, stability and scalability for now. Functionality and usability can come later.
As for your remark about how "there are 1 or 2 coins out there that are WAAAAY better then Bitcoin".  This was intended to happen by Satoshi Nakamoto, by creating software and then releasing it as open source, and licensed in such a way as to allow others to create new coins, it is part of the plan.  Everything that has happened, has happened for a reason :)

You can't. Their is already  over 12 million Bitcoins that have been mined. Move the decimal 3 places and you have a total BTC of 12 Billion. You can't change the rules in the middle of the game. Only 21 million can be mined period. That's why it has to be called a mBTC.   ::)

How are you going to mark the coins so you know which BTC is old or new?

Why would it be confusing? The majority of the world uses kilometers/meters/millimeters/micrometers without a problem, but with bitcoins/millibitcoins/microbitcoins it would suddenly be confusing? I will go even further and claim if you ask anyone familiar with metric units that has absolutely no knowledge about bitcoin how many mbtc one btc is they would know.


Looking forward to the news titles like "Bitcoin crashes to 1$" and "Bitcoin company just created 20979 million new bitcoins".

It is the opposite, but Bitcoin is not deflating, it's inflating (at a minimum at a rate of 3600 bitcoins per day). Eventually it might become inflationary-neutral, but for now it's an inflationary currency... which means any day the price of BTC isn't going down, is a day in which BTC value is going up.

Actually one buys 100 million Bitcoin units for about $1000, so let's just invert the 'description' a little bit without changing anything:

For 1 dollar you get 100 thousand Bitcoin units.

Such as? (No really - I'm curious)


Except he wouldn't - barkeep would say "quarter millibitcoin". Message received.

Incidentally, I see what you did there - equating 'two fifty' (presumably $2.50 USD) with 0.00025 XBT - at a time when we are near rough parity of USD:mXBT. Was the deviation from 0.0025 XBT a gotcha? Assuming you meant roughly two and a half bux, barkeep's response would be 'two and a half millibitcions'. Again, clear as day. Or probably just 'two and a half'. If you couldn't assume order of magnitude, it is not the barkeep being dense.

Deflation is about value not supply.  The number of Bitcoins is completely irreverent.
Here is a quote from wikipedia "deflation increases the real value of money"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation
Time and time again we see Bitcoiners talking about economics like they are qualified and have a degree.

Perhaps an example will help you understand:
In Janurary 2013 a loaf of bread cost 1 USD
100 USD would buy you 100 loaves of bread
1 Bitcoin would buy you 13 loaves of bread

In Janurary 2014 a loaf of bread now costs 2 USD
100 USD will buy you 50 loaves of bread (you get less for your money - inflation)
1 Bitcoin will buy you 500 loaves of bread (you get more for you Bitcoin - deflation)

Hope this helps.

And yet people keep using fiat.

Out of convience and habit only.  When I can actually buy a loaf of bread with bitcoin at the grocery store, without a series of inconvient additional steps, it will be used muchmore often.

how much longer can it last with so many decimal places

http://s28.postimg.org/7zz39v8x9/doge2.png

That time is coming my friend.

1 bitcoins has always been and in the minds of the majority always will be 100,000,000 satoshis. If you want another unit you'll have to call it something else - like milibitcoin, which has been in use for a long time and also follows using metric prefixes that the majority of the world knows/uses.

I think this would all become very confusing, with new and old bitcoin. In any case, I'm 100% sure bitcoin will remain bitcoin in the official client, however there is no one stopping anyone from forking it and shifting the decimal 3 places to the right, then the majority will decide.

This pool is 3 years old. I'm sure the general opinion now is very different to what it was back then.

This would mean a hard fork in the protocol, something that should be avoided at all cost for a small change like that.

It would be confusing because the value of bitcoin would change 1000-times.

Moving the point to the right would make BTC increase its value in people's eyes and would help the general public become more familiar with the currency. It's undeniable that people love integers and hate decimals.

The point is moving to the right, every time a client or website (most of the serious wallets, Bitcoinity...) implements mBTC display option.

1000 mBTC = 1 BTC

Yes but this thread is about changes being made to the official "standard client" (as the OP MoonShadow put it).


Discussion about Bitcoinity and other clients/websites is off topic.