Bitcoin Forum

Ultimately this will be decided by cultural evolution, or maybe by the unwashed massed, but, fellow pioneers and entrepreneurs and visionaries , think about it:

I like the engineering notation: millibitcoin and microbitcoin. This balances nicely with thousands and millions on the other side of 1. See below for additional cultural names.

I do not like centibitcoin or bitcent. Why? A hundreth part feels inconsistent with billion, millon, thousand, a thousandth and a millionth. Also it is not so extendable. What about the next step? A ten-thousandth? In everyday life, it is not at all difficult to count to more than hundred. We have no problem grasping what a price of seven hundred and fifty is. Some even prefer to go beyond 1000, saying for instance twelve hundred dollars in stead of one thousand, two hundred dollars. Conclusion: centibitcoin or bitcent is not necessary, millibitcoin is satisfactory.

So far so good. What about the satoshi? It is a hundreth of a microbitcoin. I feel the dissonance. It was unlucky that it was not a trillionth or a nano. This is nailed, nothing can be done now. The satoshi is baked. But we can still use nanobitcoin as a unit, even if it is not possible to pay a nanobitcoin, currently. This is the situation in many countries, things are still priced in øre (centicrown), but it is impossible to pay such a small amount, the smallest coin is the crown. Sum a few items to 57 nanobitcoins, round to 60 (6 satoshis), pay.

Cultural names. In addition we need cultural names for millibitcoin, microbitcoin and nanobitcoin. Personally I wish that it was some historic money unit names. Not units that are still in use somewhere, and not units of mass (weight). Not names that hint to hundreths. Not names that refer to the money stuff.

Suggestions: shilling, penny farthing, drakma, scat, baug, mongol
Your suggestions here:

Yes I know we can not decide now. Users in the future will. Still, fun to think about.

Billion said I? We don't need no freakin billions.

This strongly reminds me of the debate in the mid-1990s about what people would call the following decade.

The time spent arguing about what would happened turned out to be completely out of proportion to the actual amount of attention people pay to the subject now.

I second the suggestion of calling a denomination of Bitcoin a scat.

We have discussed the fractions many times, I believe consensus has been fairly reached in different polls.

Yes but the marginal cost of my words is quite low.

Has consensus been reached on the centi contra milli question? I see people use bitcents from time to time.

I also like the idea of names,
so far we only have Bitcoins and Satoshis, everyone knows how much that is,
would be nice to have some more in between and not call them milli-, micro-, nano-Bitcoins, or maybe Mega and Giga-Satoshis later, which alone sounds awful.

Not sure that we'll ever reach consensus on those names though.

I intend to use the term bitcent whether other people like it or not. :)

I like the sound of bernanks, but..

Anyway, we have solved the long billion / short billion confusion, there are not billions.

It is well defined, and it is a free world, but i hope the hordes of millis will overwhelm you.

LOL

Lets be really geeky and use Dungeons and Dragons Monetary naming (I'm math impaired so please check my math below)



1 Platinum  =  1 bitcoin
1 Gold =       .1 Bitcoin
1 Silver =     .01 Bitcoins
1 Copper = .001 Bitcoins

So at $20 per bitcoin the USD value would be:

1 Platinum  =  $20.00
1 Gold =         $2.00
1 Silver =       20 cents
1 Copper =     2 cents

At $10 per bitcoin it would be

1 Platinum  =  $10.00
1 Gold =         $1.00
1 Silver =       10 cents
1 Copper =     1 cents


You know it actually kind of works for me :)

I was more of a cents type but increasingly I can see the merit in mBTC and µBTC, and indeed, mBTC (or BTM) is becoming increasingly standard in online gaming. 1 mBTC = about 1,8 US cents right now, but could be several dollars some time in the (distant?) future.

I am getting more and more used to dealing with mBTC/BTM but my desktop client is still set up to display amounts in BTC.

I like scat to. Possibly for the microbitcoin.

Wait.. are you people really not joking??

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scat


I would have expected this suggestion from the buttcoin guy :P

I think it's a shitty idea

I think there is gonna be a real concencus with this issue when it will be a real problem. Discuss it now is pointless

I would have given a scat for your comment, weren't it for the comparatively enormous fee necessary.

Maybe scot is better.

not this again  :-X

I do think that millibitcoin and microbitcoin will confuse all the non-nerds.

but but but, milligrams, millilitres, millimetres are really not hard at all to grasp and get a feel for.

every non-nerd in non-S.I-challenged countries knows how much these units represent.

You seriously overestimate the intelligence of the average person my friend.

I prefer this simple system.

1btc (bitcoin) = 1000btm (bitmill) = 100,000,000sat (satoshi)

Any amounts between 0.001btc (1btm) and 1btc are expressed in btm

0.01btc = 10btm
0.537504btc = 537.504btm

And amounts under 0.001btc (1btm) are expressed in sat (satoshi)

0.0005btc = 50,000sat or 50ksat
0.00002509btc = 2509sat

This is already in place on a few sites and while it's not perfect, it works.  If people insist on using bitcents (and some will of course) it's just important the rest of us can quickly call that 10btm and move on with our day.  Also - typing this out made me think about how silly/unimportant this discussion really is.  So FWIW that's my personal naming system.

I like it. I don't think there's a conflict between Bitcent and Millibits at all... we will just start using them as needed.

Then again, I think it's a waste of good karma to not even consider the term Gold Press Latinum... perhaps Cascasius should produce one  ;D

I agree.  The U.S. started with both cents and mils.  Mils died out, cents won.  This was probably because mils turned out to be of very low value.  Now cents are of such low value that they are in danger of dying out.

Bitcoin can start out with both cents and mils.  In the case of bitcoin, there's a good chance that bitmils will have a decent value, so the term may win out over bitcents.

But it may be after my lifetime. :)


Like!

You can use any standard prefix you want... that's why we have them.  If you tell me not to use bitcents, I will tell you to fuck off.

No telling to anyone. There obviously is no consensus in the matter, except maybe don't care.

I vote for scat too.... cause it isn't worth shit.  ;D  (well not yet at least haha)

Why not have a POLL of the possible contenders for bit fractions?....

It would be interesting to see the results of the masses... 

I also like the DnD monetary system (nostalgia for certain).. maybe with "bit" in front of the currency...

for example:  bitPLATINUM, bitGOLD, bitSILVER, bitCOPPER    haha.  :D


On a more serious note.  This makes sense to me: cbit (cee-bit),  mbit (em-bit), ubit (u-bit)   

The metric prefixes leave little room for error though...


TC's 2¢

One Bitcoin can be compared with one ounce gold coin, so we could use 1/2, 1/4, 1/10 BTC etc...

Below that, there are other weight unit, like carat (bitcarat) and grain (bitgrain)

I suggest that one carat bitcoin (bitcarat) = 1/1000 bitcoin, this sounds luxury enough ;D

And one grain bitcoin (bitgrain) = 100 satoshi = 1/1,000,000 bitcoin

facepalm

Yes, lets make up our own terms instead of using standard terminology used with every other form of measurement.  That way nobody will know what the fuck we are talking about!

haven't we already been through the carat phase?

oh wait no, that was carrots.

this is used in the bitcoin 3D game / casino dragons tales

i like many others are use to btm(bitmills) and sat(satoshi) already. so if it isn't broke, done fix it.

I don't like bitmills, sounds too French with it all backwards like that. It should be like mm and mg, with the milli before the bitcoin. So we have BTC as the base currency, and a millibit or mbt as the smaller denomination.

Yeah not sure where the BTM thinking came from but it seems like a solution in search of a problem "No SI is hard so instead of saying mBTC lets say BTM instead.  Yeah that is (somehow) less confusing".

mBTC.  

millimeter
milligram
milliliter
millisecond
milliBitcoin

Now stop an think a second.  When someone is measuring something and it is 13 mm most people just think of 13 mm as the units.  It is 13 of these units called mm.  Very rarely does someone go oh 13mm the SI prefix m means 1/1000th so this is 13/1000 meters = 0.013 of a meter and that somehow helps me.  No they just go 13 mm.  Yup the measurmement is 13 of these units called a mm and I know instinctively about how big a mm is (how much it is worth).

In time if Bitcoin grew to such a high exchange rate that people rarely ever transferred whole coins people would just use mBTC as the "base unit".  It doesn't matter that at one time people thought of the "full BTC" as the base unit any more than one needs to "know" that the mm mark on a ruler means 1/1000th of this larger unit called a meter.  If 1 mBTC was worth $0.10 and someone was selling you a Steam game for 50 mBTC you wouldn't do any mental conversion back to BTC and then try to figure out the exchange rate and then see if it was a good deal.  No you would just "know" either by history, or your mobile phone app the exchange rate today is around ~ 1 mBTC = $0.10 so 50 mBTC = ~$5.00 and it looks like this is a good deal.

I think this is less of any issue than people think.  Most people will never convert anything.  Today we use BTC because most items are more than a BTC or a large fraction of one.  If the exchange rate was >$200 most people would ONLY think of values in mBTC.  Nobody would say it is 208,000 uBTC it would be pointless like quoting the price of a car in pennies.  Likewise if/when the exchange rate grew so large that mBTC was no longer convenient people would start using uBTC.  Remember there is a 1000x magnitude between units.  It isn't like the value of BTC is going to make 10,000x swings on a monthly basis so people one day are thinking in mBTC and then the next day thinking in BTC, and then the next day thinking in uBTC.

I fully intend to pay for something with a few "mBTC cents" (spoken millibit-cents) some day.  

And just to throw a total monkey wrench in the works:  I propose we reassign BTC someday to be worth either 1 mBTC or 1 uBTC once the currency seems to stabilize.  

Cause nobody wants to own a thousandth or millionth of something.  That would be like constant exposure to the Total Perspective Vortex.

i would like to own a thousandth of Facebook or Apple.

1 bitcoin the full satoshi
1/2 bibicoin aka satoshilite
1/3 tribicoin aka triacoin
1/4 quadibcoin aka ciphercoin
1/5 pentabitcoin aka ????

I'll gladly take 1/1000th of a ton of gold.

0.01 BTC = 1 internet

I see a problem with cent: this is a word used for fiat currency and it can be argued that it's an attempt to create confusion with respect to government currency (Liberty Dollar style).  It's a stretch, but when push comes to shove they'll stretch it for all it's worth.

I see a problem with scat: the word means poop in a lot of languages including Greek, which makes it mean the same thing in contemporary medical terminology and in a lot of other contexts as well.

http://th03.deviantart.net/fs50/200H/f/2009/258/d/c/100_dollar___Scrat_by_Darky_11.jpg

I vote yes for Scrat. Everybody loves Scrat.

And internet can be shorten to tern.

http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/9C/9C61556D-A4A6-4372-AC05-D8CC7A98AE57/Presentation.Large/River-tern.jpg

Ain't she pretty! You can never go wrong putting animals on coinage.

http://www.talismancoins.com/catalog/Australia_2012_Celebrate_Australia_5-Coin_Set.jpg