Bitcoin Forum

I know first argument will be that it is divisible to a million trillion satoshi.
(but what is the fee to send 1 satoshi ?  ;) )

This debate has been around for ages.  I was wondering if there is a lists of essays/blogs/threads that eloquently sum up the situation?

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1. Satoshi designed Bitcoin to eventually become a deflationary currency.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Bitcoins-cap-set-at-circa-21-million-coins-and-not-more-or-less

 
 

More like why would you even consider doing a garbage transaction ?You will end up paying more fees than the actual transaction if you want your transaction to get confirmed,ever.

Not currently...I remember reading a similar discussion here https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Bitcoins-cap-set-at-circa-21-million-coins-and-not-more-or-less

Good point !

And i have had many times where i wanted to send small amounts but couldn't afford it..

Not everyone is rich spoiled greedy shitheads.  ::)

How about telling people that if they want to spend a quarter at a store it will cost them $5 ?
Like duh.. you NEED to be able to spend small amounts.. it's life.

And divisible is a poor excuse.
The dollar in Canada is divisible.. but then it's NOT a dollar anymore but "change"
Hell we even dropped the 1 cent penny way back.. we don't use them, shit is rounded off at store registers.
We were told it was starting to cost 1.6 cents to make a penny so Canada dropped it.

Bitcoin needs to be usable across the board and not just advantageous to guys looking for a cheap way to move a small fortune.

To me viewing Bitcoin as a Currency and seeing it at $600 that alone tells me there is not enough BTC coins.

This all makes me wonder if an Altcoin could fix these glaring issues.. with out centralization.

I think that the world's GDP is of the order of $ 100 trillion or so.   We have 20 million bitcoin at 100 million satoshi each, which brings us to 2000 trillion satoshi.    So if bitcoin were to handle the full world's GDP,  a satoshi would be of the order of 5 cents.

Now, having bank transfer costs of 5 cents when you want to transfer 5 cents wouldn't sound like ridiculous, wouldn't it ?

The discretisation of bitcoin units (in Satoshi) is not what is going to limit bitcoin's adoption.   The block chain and block size is, long before this becomes an issue.

ok lets take this one step at a time.
you say bitcoin becomes a global currency, so in that case the price should rise up a lot first because of the adoption (simply more demand > higher price)

first of all it will never be "global" nothing is ever global. so lets say the price goes up to $10,000 since so many users like this number then 1 cent is 0.000001BTC (0.000002BTC if it goes to $5000)

so it is safe to assume 1 satoshi is worth something eventually.

with that in mind there is not 21 million coins but there are 21e14 (2,100,000,000,000,000) coins available so there is enough coins to go around. (keep in mind there is nothing called decimal point in bitcoin code, for example right now what you see as 0.1BTC is what your GUI shows you in reality you should see 10000000 instead)


two things i got to say to this:
1) fees will change with price. and it has already changed a lot of times
2) it has been said before and i say it again if 1 satoshi has a value in fiat then bitcoin can be divided into a smaller amount (0.1, 0.01 satoshi)

RU that thick?  Do you ever see BTC hardforking:?  Please take a moment to stabs your self in the eyes.

OKAY
you buffoon!

2,100,000,000,000,000 coins available

yet...
I can not send 10 coins because the fee is 10,000 coins.

Get it .. yet?

so side chains fill the gap ... discus

http://www.fishdiscount.fr/pages/tarif_poisson/discus_fichiers/TROPIC3index.php_fichiers/pro10.JPG

I don't understand what's that principal of side chains. So basically we're sending bitcoins without using Bitcoin ?

Well i we can not send bitcoins for 1 Satoshi only, maybe you are right about your statement bitcoin has too few coins to function as global currency. But only bitcoins that has big amount of volume transaction and can be survive until right now. There are valuable into bitcoins than another coins.

durrh!


they can send value from A to Z less the fee of 10K satoshi.
even if your .. HOLY HOLY ... I only have faith in BTC ... yet ALTz still offer a cheaper route ...
the only need is to suspend your faith for a  few seconds.

Oh you cheaters ,,, ATONE!

against FIAT.
that's BTCs job.

but sending small units of value.
like the cost of a CPU hZ

it sucks at that :)

maybe in the future, if bitcoin already become global currency and the price already very high, then they can make development to fix this things, maybe they can set the transaction below 10 satoshi, the fee is 1 satoshi or maybe another regulations, but for now we dont need to think about this things because the price is still low

Bitcoin requires a complete redesign to be a global currency, they can't even agree on block size.  :P
Odds are they will hold their title as top coin for another year or two and then one of the Alts will take over as BTC begins its decline.
Many Alts were designed with Billions of coins, so they can be global and hold on to a micro-payment industry.
It may even be a tag team , LTC & Doge,
LTC handling the bigger values and Doge owning the micro-payment side, since the same miners can run both networks.
Funny that Together they may topple BTC.  :D


 8)

Reloadable bitpay bitcoin debit card is the best $9 I've spent.  And you can just ignore kiklo posts because everyone with two brain cells knows Bitcoin is almost infinitely granular.  All that matters is what percentage of the chain you own, not how you express those units.

people making points like this kinda goes to show how unworldly satoshi was when it comes to human psychology. if you're a computing genius then of course you're comfortable with strings of zeroes.

everyone else wants the zeroes moved to the back and wants to use whole units, not fractions. if bitcoin had been denominated in mbtc, bits, whatever from the offing I think it would be further along.

sure, there've been attempts to use those but nothing's stuck and it would've made far more sense to do it from the beginning. the longer whole units are used then the more entrenched it is.

this point of view often seems to get lots of objections but the people making it are already down the rabbit hole. it's the people who aren't who count and most of them ain't too switched on.

i don't really understand why you are insulting me, if you don't agree with my comment or if i am wrong you can correct me like a normal human being.

and yes i have seen bitcoin hard fork at least once in the past and it has had so many changes and so many forks if that is the only thing you could come up with.


make up your mind, is your main topic about right now or the future?
- yes right now you can not send 10 coins (10 satoshi) because of the current price and lots of other things and bitcoin is not a global currency right now.
it will be considered spam and in order to prevent spam there is a Dust threshold (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/primitives/transaction.h#L165) preventing it and this threshold has changed before and it can change again in the future.

- your topic (function as a global currency) is a thing of the future and if you read my previous comment you can see why i said 10 coins (10 satoshi) can be possible.
become globally adopted > more demand > more $$$ coming in > higher price > 10 satoshi will worth $1 for example and fee is not going to remain 10,000

When was the last time you went to buy some ice cream to eat with a bar of gold?

so what is your suggestion after all these?

use another coin with a massive number of coins?
go to coinmarketcap and sort their list by available supply and see how many of those coins are successful?
HINT: prices barely reach 0.00001000BTC

I think bitcoin would have died if the total number were higher than this.

Any sources to support that claim?

EDIT: OP, if Bitcoin reaches $5k or $10k its market cap will be equal to a small country's GDP. I think that's enough to call it success.

I suppose bitcoin can still scale the hurdle of transaction fees if something can be done about the size of its blockchain.

You can expect that transaction fees will adjust to the buying power of Bitcoin, because the activity of miners who receive the transaction fees depends on electricity prices. So if the buying power of Bitcoin increases, miners can buy a higher amount of electricity with their mining proceeds. In turn this means that miners will be profitable, even if transaction fees drop. Therefore they will be willing to include transaction that have a lower BTC fee. (For simplicity I left out block rewards here and assumed a more mature Bitcoin, when fees will be the primary income for miners.)

At the time when even a single Satoshi has meaningful buying power, you can expect an upgrade of the Bitcoin code that allows higher accuracy to express fractions of a Bitcoin.

ya.ya.yo!

If 1 satoshi = 1 dollar so 1 bitcoin = 100.000.000 dollars
Multiply for 21.000.000 bitcoins = 2.100.000.000.000.000 dollars

Yes, it can raise a lot and stay with a low fee(1sat-1usd) ;)

21M bitcoins are enough for a global currency,i guess.

Bitcoin will never be the ONLY global currency.It will be just  one of the global currencies.

Don`t rely on Quora answers.I ask questions there and only the spammers answer. ;D

OP you need to realise

the fee today is due to only 2million users. and the limited capacity of such.
but if we had 7billion users and the capacity was widened to allow it, then the fee would be lower.

EG lets imagine the fee was ~ 1cent and measured as sat
this would mean a 'bit' (100sat is $1)
2,100,000,000,000,000 sats
2,100,000,000,000,000 cents
21,000,000,000,000 dollars

yep 21 trillion dollars
where in the decades to achieve the utopian goal of one world currency (not gonna happen so relax)
peoples mindsets and buying decisions change.

EG $1 today buys 0.66% of a loaf of bread.

in future. 1bit = 10 loaves of bread. people dont rush to spend funds every day repeatedly. worrying when the next meal will come from..
instead they spend less often and stock up on weeks/months of groceries. knowing they still have extra funds to live happy worry free lives

21 million may not be enough if we consider price remain same till that time however it is for sure bitcoin price should be really high due to high marketcap to become global currency so that even 1 satoshi fee could be enough for miners to accept transaction. I don't think fee will be bigger issue in those days also.

I don't think that this is true. The number of unique BTC addresses currently is about 500k, so I'd say that not more than ~100-150k people are actually using Bitcoin.

Actually where we can see this data like total number of unique bitcoin address generated till now? Any source or tool? this could be very helpful

There you go: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses

alot of people have funds in third parties like exchanges which hold hundreds of thousands of peoples funds in only a couple addresses.(cold wallet reserves)
EG just a couple addresses can represent million users funds combined.

oh and by the way there are 250,000 MERCHANTS. before you even start counting users.

Maybe you're right, but the number of the BTC daily transactions never exceeded 300k. I am sure that millions of people know about Bitcoin, but I'm not sure if millions are using it.

I think bitcoin is prime currency in all altcoins. In future most of transactions will be done in alternative coins so capping of bitcoin with 22 billion bitcoin will be not an issue.

According current consideration price of bitcoin will climb so much higher in coming years.

it is not that relevant if 200,000 or 2 million or even 20 million people use it. the point was that if bitcoins user base grows significantly we can expect a price increase and we will be able to lower the fee. 

Another limitation is that there are many bitcoins that have been lost and can't be recovered. So there will never be 21 million bitcoin because of the lost ones and there will continue to be more that are lost. I think there will be other altcoins that will need to be used along with bitcoin because bitcoin will gradually become more rare and possible very expensive.

The point is, there will never be 21M bitcoins for people to use in every day trade. The +/- 1 000 000 bitcoin are already out of circulation.

Add to this the huge amount of coins that are currently hoarded in cold storage to keep them secure, and you are left with very little

coins in circulation. Further add to that, the fact that MANY of the coins still need to be mined.  ;)

i do not think so i think bitcoin has a perfect unit fraction which is 21million btc and every btc can be devided upto 0.00000001btc so its a huge huge container to keep everyone connected as not everyone will fall under btc

one million more or less will not change the outcome of this debate. either it is enough or not. if you think everybody will use it and only it, then bitcoin in its current form will not do. even with 210 million. but i do not think that everybody worldwide will only use bitcoin and surly not overnight. so if we were getting close to this point we would find a solution or switch to another coin.

I don't think that limited number of coins is anw obstscle for Bitcoin to be a global currency. People all around the world are now using Bitcoin, doesn't that make it global currency already? I know that Bitcoin has some limitations to become fuly equal to fiat currencies but I think that we don't have to worry that it isn't global.

For that I have a simple answer that is with the passing of time the fees of miners are reducing so I think the fees for transaction will also be reduced, If it is not happening then it would have to happen. and the other point is that if the value will increase much higher at the time when everyone will adopt bitcoin then the miners will be paid according to their work that will be lesser for a satoshi.

bitcoin cant be a global currency right now because of the small block size that is already full now with the current few users. it is now about the coins number.

With enough divisibility there would be no issue with "how much should I send as a fee" and it would be a non-argument. Assuming 1 Bitcoin is divisible to 12 places, you would be able to make every Bitcoin worth ~$100m and still have 1 satoshi be $0.01. iirc. Some numbers like that. Also effectively replaces the current value of the monetary system.

As for resources to use to learn more about this, I have no idea. I don't know how many exist.

...

There's plenty of Bitcoin (and will be for many, many years).  Just like there is plenty of gold.  They both share that and other traits they. 

When people say "There is not enough gold to back the US  dollar."

or

"There's not enough Bitcoin to function as a major currency."

they do not understand that there is always enough gold and BTC, at the right price.

There could be only one BTC and it would be enough. The average human would only get a tiny fraction of it, but it would be fine. Just like Earth. There's only one Earth, with the average guy only owning a few square meters.

there is always a debate in bitcoin about everything, even about what we should call hard fork or soft fork. what i had in mind was bip50

also a good read: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=702755.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=538491.0

If thats your lame reason, it only takes a single HF to increase the amount of coins

Totally the equaling btc into the small country's GDP is already enough for call bitcoin is a success? I don't think if that is can be an important measure the success bitcoin or not. ???

When I calculate correctly every person on this world could own 260000 staoshis in average, if all bitcoins were mined and the world population is about 8 billion people.
That does not sounds much at first, but of course a satoshi would be worth much more than today, lets say one dollar.
When a transaction has fees of 10000 satoshis, who would pay that?
Nobody I guess. That's why I say there are way too less satoshis to make bitcoin function as a global currency.

not everybody in the world is supposed to have bitcoin!
and this will never happen either. you have to always think based on some reality. and for the realistic number of people who will ever use bitcoin, I say it is more than enough coins.

and if needs be, this number can be increased if the lack of enough coins were felt.

the fees would go down in such a case. maybe even to 1 sat. but there are other problems.
if you assume 1 sat = $1 then we have a problem when buying products cheaper then $1. so lets say 1 sat = $0.01 = 1 cent. this would mean every person would have the equivalent of $2600. and obviously this is not enough, but this will not happen anyway.

There are literally millions of people who does not know how a $ bill looks like (and EURO/GBP/CNY/whatever for that matter), so I won't bother with such calculations. :)

There are literally millions of people who does not know how a bread/clean water/education/housing looks like, so I won't bother with such calculations.
check your privilege! bitcoin might not be able to be used by all, but you are way off here.

You are right! Lot of 3rd world country out there and doesnt know what is technology! Bitcoin might not able to be used by every one ! We should accept it! But the thing is if becomes famous then we are lucky! It is okay that it is not used by every one but as long as a high price! Then its good.

You don't say? :)


I did that long time ago. Bitcoin will never be used by all. My point was that such comparisons are unnecessary. Currently Bitcoin needs two things:

1. To survive.
2. To be better adopted.

your previous comment sounded a lot like: there are pore people and i do not care about them or want them to use bitcoin. they are not my problem.
bitcoin was not made to end world poverty, but saying you are at the longer end of the stick so you do not care is part of the problem.

No, my previous comment sounded like: Bitcoin will never be used by the world's entire population so why bothering doing such calculations?

I live in a country, which many people doesn't even know where it is located and moreover - a big part of the (hypocrite) world consider it as a 3rd world country.

I would never ever mock with poverty.

The supply of bitcoins is limited and it will never even become a global currency is there are millions of coins in supply. There are too many currencies to worry about the future of only bitcoins and since the price of bitcoins is never predictable and satoshi price depends on it, the transaction fee doesn't matter. Currently, 1 satoshi doesn't value even one cent just like $0.000001 USD has no value. If tomorrow the price of bitcoin is valued as high as a six figure amount, then we could see 1 satoshi also being valued else now it's no point to even send anyone such a small amount.

No, I do not get it.
Herbert2020's answer was correct. In fact the bitcoin system would work if there were only 1 coin. 21 million is an arbitrary number and bitcoin can be divided far beyond a Satoshi. Think of the pool of bitcoins as a pie cut into 21million slices. If more guests want pie then you cut ever smaller pieces.
As far as the Tx cost, well that changes with the price of bitcoin. I think I used to pay 0.1BTC to send money. Now that seems like a lot because the price is no longer $.75/coin. As the price went up the fee denominated in BTC has dropped and I'm paying less than 0.00063BTC now. If each Satoshi were worth $1 then you would likely be paying less than 0.000000001BTC

I don't want to suggest that but we have some services which allow us to send fee-less tranaction alredy - Xapo for example.

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We are far from reaching point where bitcoin could be even remotely considered as substitute to FIAT, being global currency is like a dream for Bitcoin.

Plus, it is not like we are stuck forever with current bitcoin code, protocol can be upgraded when needed. The current fee system will be sufficient for many, many years.

I think above this quote , it is clearly given details about how the transaction fees is changing according to the price. and i also accept that if wanted to use small amounts of bitcoin to send then better to use online web wallets like xapo , coinbase which are sending the coins without fees, but keeping high amount of bitcoins on this exchange is not recommended.

I was thinking that bitcoin is divisible and composes of 100M satoshi but it was already part of your question.  It is really hard to think now to answer your question.  I think if bitcoin become a global currency, the developer of bitcoin, the programmer Mr. Satoshi would do some additional bitcoin to meet the demand and needs of its million users.  The 21M btc surely cannot cover up if the whole world will use it.

i agree with this, there are no other bitcoin that would be as bitcoin. maybe other altcoins will follow the increasing of the price but the altcoin can not replace bitcoin.

i think bitcoin not really show the high potential so we don't know yet what is the full benefits of bitcoin so there are many people in the world that still afraid that they can get scammed by bitcoin.

I don't think that is important how much Bitcoins exist in the world.
In fact, it will be even better than we have less bitcoin available.
In such way, value of Bitcoin will increase and we will have profit from it :)
Bitcoin is already global currency and people from all over the world can buy, sell or keep Bitcoins in their wallets.
If demand for Bitcoin will be high, its price will also increase a lot, and this price will become to high for average users.
So, don't worry about it, free market will regulate everything.

Agreed, i am really agree with you, bitcoin is already global crypto currency, we can see within 7 years, all over the world is using the bitcoins, and the number of the people day to day is increasing and it is a proof that people like it and want to do investment in bitcoin, Even other more crypto currencies are here but people like it more than others. 

21 million is not actually a small amount and i think it can function as global currency as even even 1 satoshi can be cosidered or transafered in bitcoin so there will be 21x10⁸ million amount of satoshi enough to function as global currency.

Moreover if such situation exist we can keep bitcoin for high value transactions only and not for our day to day purchase

i think the number of coins is increasing day day, the minors are providing the bitcoin in the market on regular bases and i think it is really completing the requirements of the users.

still your is right at your place . but in my opinion the idea behind the 1 satoshi was a prediction that  the value of 1 btc will increase in that much amount which can attain atleast 0.1$=1 satoshi ( unfortunately it is not much used by whole world so the price is very low )

Why it is few coins for it's price? If 1 bitcoin would be 1 dollar, than yes, it would be impossible to use it worldwide but as you see, bitcoin's price is up to 600 dollar and there are total up to 15 900 000  bitcoins and also you can use globally, there is no limit of country if we don't mean any country's policy about using of bitcoin.

So I think that number of coins and it's price isn't too few tu use it worldwidely.

right now we have enough btc according to its user. but with time bitcoin user will increase and at that time we will use satoshi and to send 1 or 2 Satoshi we we'll have very less transaction fees. and at that time price of 1 bitcoin week also rise to $2000 . so you can think of the situation.

I do think that Bitcoin in the future is going to be much bigger and better because it is going to become more popular. Everyone in the world can make use of Bitcoin you only need internet to do so you can already see it as an global currency if you ask me.
But I also think that they then need to release more Bitcoin in the future if they want to have more users.

I like you assessment of the Bitcoin, my own concern is not the 21 million amount but the miners and the transaction fees, I read how the Rothchids  took over the bank of England and this kind of move is possible in future if care is not taken

How?

I think bitcoin would still function, with 21 million coins potentially would still work IMO, Even with the fees as 0,001 BTC you can send satoshi's, Also the fees are not static and I think the voluntary default fees might be lowered.

Bitcoin won't remain known as whole units - it will be units such as millibits and nanobits which become the norm

I also think that if Bitcoin wants to become bigger in the future they need to release more Bitcoin in to the world because otherwise people will not be able to make use f it.
Bitcoin will then stay on the same level and I think that it needs to become bigger.

You do realise that numbers are infinitely divisible.

1 bitcoin is enough for the world if you add enough digits after the decimal point.

21 million x 100,000,00 = 210,000,000,000,000
I think these much bitcoin is enough for all. we are not. going to build money building rather we will use it for transaction and that's a great number to function as global currency and not all people will use it.

I do think that bitcoin needs to have more bitcoin if they want want to act as an global currency because they will not make it with the amount that exist now.
I believe that if more bitcoin will appear that the value is also going to drop.

Well actually bitcoin can be further broken down if needed, there can be more than 8 places after the decimal if required, simple  ;D  sorted "next question" lol

Yes, as pointed out, its possible to add additional places past the decimal point if necessary in the future.

Each coin would be worth a lot of money for this to be needed,
but it may be necessary if BTC is still being used in ten or twenty years from now.

No bitcoin has 210000000000000 Satoshi which is more than enough for whole world. And each person could hold more than 100 Satoshi at a time. And when there will be crisis then obviously price will rise up and we will have a time when we will use Satoshi instead of bitcoin. So then there would be no crisis of bitcoin.

if the size of its blockchain  is solved ,i suppose bitcoin can still scale the hurdle of transaction fees

lol that is too many zeros in there to be too few to function as glbal currency 2 100 000 000 000 000.  That is how it look if we took the satoshi unit as 1 measurement.  Now thell me is it still too few?  I think no.  And the number is just fine to be use as global currency. It was planned ahead of time.

BTC has too many decimal houses to make it work as a global currency. 100.000.000 satoshis are 1 BTC. And each satoshi can values more in the future if Bitcoin price rises a lot. It's possible to introduce many people using Crypto-Currency and making many transactions at same time without problem. It was very well developed, don't worry about it.

yes it does have low amount of total coins but that is being pre fixed by satoshi . i think there must be either a reason or satoshi himself never imagined that bitcoin will became so much popular

We all know and believe that the future of bitcoin will reach a point that demand and supply will make the price, knowing that bitcoin has a limited supply i do believe the price will go up a lot, but the thing is when this will happen. I do believe bitcoin its ready and its already a global currency, the total coins into circulation are more then enought.

I agree with you. I think that the price will increase in thus BTC will become able to be global currency. About transaction fee OP was trying to say... I didn't think about it actually. I don't know: is 20 000 satoshi a fixed fee that can't be changed? If it isn't then 1 satoshi may become a new fee in the future.
I think there is a problem BTC will face on its way to becoming global: different states will try to make it their. And I am thus not sure if BTC would be able to stay independent.

Yup that is the point exactly I was talking about. 21,000,000 ain't enough too function as a glob currency not unless someone Quadrupled its quantity but doing that will decrease its value that I think it will be like  valued as a regular fiat money. Also I am satisfied on the development of Bitcoin they are currently in.

How is this still going? Check the link below and discover the infinite magic of decimals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark

You will see that 1BTC is infinitely divisible and more than enough to replace all the worlds currencies. If you are still unclear then consider whether 1.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 1 is a big enough number.
If not, I can add more zeros. As many as you like.

I think transaction fee will be not be a big issue as miners can process transaction with even few satoshi fee if bitcoin price become 1000x than it is right now.

It wasn't meant to be global.

Only the off shoots known as altcoins were supposed to be the global currency.

Similar to how gold is not a currency and the masses get the dirty paper.