Bitcoin Forum

would it make sense to come up with a better denomination system? atm. i think the 8 decimal places feels awkward.

i was wondering if the system could handle denominations that go by the hundreds, just like normal currency does. 100 cents to a dollar, 100 pennies to a pound etc.

i wanted to imitate the kilobyte, megabyte system, because well its computerish, as is bitcoin. problem is this system builds on denominations by the thousands. ~1000 bytes is a kilobyte, ~1000 kilobyte is a megabyte. but the names are good because people already know them and can relate to them easily.

so use the same names, but have them go by the 100's instead of 1000's because its more in line with a currency.

i made a spreadsheet where i put my current balance at the top, and then the spreadsheet worked out how many Kilobitcoin i had, how many Megabitcoin and so on. And i was pleased with the result. It turns out 1 BTC is exactly 1 Terabitcoin. Well the result was at least more pleasing than having 1,12345678 BTC in balance. Its probably too late to rework the currency...... but i dont think thats neccesary. With a little logic the backend could still work in the old way. Or have the raw balance. But up front it would be displayed in either kilobitcoin, megabitcoin or whatever depending on how many bitcoin you actually have. i think its a better system because its future proofed. i mean, we willl know today what the denominations will be down the line as the currency deflates. it will also be easier to price this way. instead of having prices of 0.000003 etc. you could just have 3 Kilobitcoin. I mean for short it could just be Kbc, or Kbc or whatever...

Even mining would feel more lucrative or what have you if the mining wallets etc. was displayed in another denomination than 0,000334 :) because it doesent feel rewarding to mine 0,00434. If however the denomination was changed, you might still only be mining 0,003434 but it would display 3434 Kbc instead which just changes the whole game imo. The currency itself would be more lovable, if you can say that about a currency...... the 0,0003434 denominations makes it look like a freak child. Even the proposed uBTC and mBTC dont feel right as they dont abide by any rule set really, and the amount of decimal places they represent will be harder to memorize/remember. With the Kilobitcoin/Megabitcoin denomination set you only have to remember they work the same way as with file sizes, but they increase by the 100's not the 1000's. you would always know that 1 Kilobitcoin is 100 bitcoin(which is currently called satoshis) and 1 Megabitcoin is 100 kilobitcoin. You could have various exhanges spring up. Ones that specialised in kilobitcoins, ones that specialised in Terabitcoins and so on. Not everyone can afford to trade a whole BTC so even today this system could make sense. There is alot more to it, to get it working in practice, but what do you think about the inital idea?

We have this already. E.g. a microbitcoin is 0.000001 BTC. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units)

again that chart is hard to memorize. names are awkard the denominations amount equally so. i think its important the denominations are as simple as possible and adhere to an easy to grasp rule set

That's the first thing I thought when I heard about BTC. Knowing there will only be about 20 million, I guess the original developers never thought they would reach $130 each! Back when it started, it would have been as awkward as now. Who's to say that they price will remain high to justify a change? :::prepare for flame:::

Any normal person has enough brain to be able to manage the decimals without problems.

Two problems:

1) You're trying to redefine kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, etc to mean values less than 1 - we already have prefixes for that (milli-, micro-, etc)
2) You're trying to define them as powers of 100 rather than 1000 - we also have prefixes for some of those and could build others more consistently (e.g. centi-, decimilli-, micro-)

I think it's OK to use the base-100 system for convenience, with familiar terms such as "cent" or "bitcent", but we should reserve the SI prefixes for their usual meanings, and use those alongside as necessary.  Also given that nobody knows how much bitcoins will be worth next month, don't get too attached to binding terminology to current fiat currency values (so don't try to call 0.01BTC a "bollar" or a "bit-dollar" or whatever, it will just be wrong again sometime in the future).

For colloquial, non-SI usage, most currencies end up using new words that are completely different to each other, as "penny" is to "pound", or "dime", "nickel", "dollar", or "farthing", "shilling", "crown", etc.

And for IT people 1024 meters is a kilometer....

Just wait for it ... will handle itself

You'll get used to it. Nothing can be as complicated as the old english money system.

We should start a BTC funded charity to inform metrically-challenged people.  ;)

So you are suggesting that we redesign the metric system?  No thanks.

Agree. I prefer 1 BTC = 12 satoshi.

blacksmith has had other equally FAIL threads about this same thing...


HUH?! Really dude?

100 BTC = 1 Kilo Bitcoin

100 Kilos = 1 Mega coin

100 Mega coins = 1 Giga coins????

OMG you are OFF.


EDIT: Do you know how much my cocaine habit is going to frustrate me now? 1 Kilo is 1,000 grams for 100 Kilobitcoins or rather 1 Megacoin... er screw it! I am going to the METH!

Those are satoshis.

I think that if you tell someone you're sending them ten megasatoshis instead of 1 btc they might look at you a little funny.

It does kind of sound cooler though.

just dont think bitcoin will really be used in its current form

I think it's being used quite alot already...  ;D

Instead of redefining the SI prefixes that have been used for centuries (milli-, micro-, kilo-, etc), why don't you just use "bitcent" to mean 1/100 of a Bitcoin? "Cent" comes from Latin meaning "hundred", after all.

And I don't understand how "1 BTC is exactly 1 Terabitcoin"...?? You're saying that 1 is the same as 1,000,000,000,000 (or would it be 1,00,00,00,00 in your new system)?

As far as "an easy to grasp rule set", we already have that with existing SI prefixes:


The first 3 will probably be used most often in the coming years.

All in all I think you're full of confusion.

centi bitcoin and deci bitcoin just sounds wrong. im talking about improving the feel of the currency, centi and deci bitcoin is not going to help here. even micro and mili bitcoin sounds wrong, we need names that empower the currency. you also have to keep in mind as the currency deflates we are going to use lesser and lesser amounts. do you really want to be trading in Microbitcoins and Milibitcoins in the future? i prefer kilobitcoin or anything that sounds more empowering instead

what needs to be done imo is do away with the comma and when doing this call the lowerst amount possible a bitcoin. we can then call the current BTC a satoshi. The current btc is just 100,000,000 units of the smallest amount anyway. Thats what people are trading on the exchanges. Its 100,000,000 units of the smallest amount atm. and the smallest amount should of course be called a bitcoin? makes most sense imo

In that case there would all of a sudden be up to about 2.1 quadrillion bitcoins in existence and noone will worry wether there will be enough for everybody anymore..

i mean, the system untill now has worked fine, with the amount of people involved and the type of people involved. But there are more and more people involved now, and its no longer geek only

So you want to swap the meanings of Bitcoin and satoshi? That won't be confusing at all. ::)

What's wrong with satoshi anyway? You can have 1 satoshi, 1 kilosatoshi (1000 satoshis), 1 megasatoshi (1 million satoshis), etc. How much does a soda cost? One megasatoshi! (That's $1.42 at the current exchange rate, by the way.)

I don't really see how tiny units of a currency makes it sound bad or not "empowering". What if I said a soda cost $0.00142 instead of $1.42? Or in other words, you can buy 1000 sodas for $1.42. To me, that would be more empowering because a dollar in that scenario is very valuable and can buy a lot. It sounds better (to me) than saying a soda costs $1420; a single dollar would be almost worthless.

you car cost 10 decadollars, and you soda cost 1milidollar. that is confusing and you need to learn which is worth more than the other. with kilo, mega, giga ALOT of people already know which is above the other. and the decimal places are not practical. how are you going to compare prices with that shit? imagine going to the grocery store and seeing prices all in those $0,00003 you would get tired very fast. the reason the smallest amount should be called bitcoin is because its more in line with the reality. i mean why do you want to call bitcoin satoshi all of a sudden? 1 megasatoshi? wtf? it should be megabitcoin

A couple of things...

Your way suggests the same as using 'cents' for everything... $1 = 100 cents $100 = 10,000 cents  Then I am supposed to come up with nifty names for all those cents... it just doesn't make sense.

Also with the comment about seeing prices like $0.00003 at the grocery store... You must not travel outside the USA. I go to South America and a few countries have currency that is $2,000.00 COP = $1.00 USD So when I got to buy a 2 liter bottle of soda I pay like $7,500.00 pesos, which they refer to as 7.5 mil (thousand) pesos.

A cheap car costs $16,000,000 pesos, or as they say, 16 million pesos.

To make it even worse they don't use the comma... they use the decimal so they will write it $16.000.000.000 and yes there's a 3rd zero at the end for some reason.

So it's not about just us Americans... even the rest of the world are already using a system you want to rearrange.

Really....?

One satoshi is the smallest divisible unit of a Bitcoin in the current protocol. It is 10^-8 Bitcoin. There are 100 million satoshis in one Bitcoin. It's not too hard to grasp.

What you're saying about kilo/mega/giga/etc doesn't really make sense. Do you really say that your car cost you 10 decadollars, or do you say that your car cost you 100 dollars? Do you say that a company made 5 megadollars last year, or do you say 5 million dollars?

I think the same will be done with Bitcoins. For example, when 1 Bitcoin is worth about $1000, most people will use "millibitcoins" or "bitmills" or "millies" (or some other variation) as the base denomination. So a soda will cost about 1 millie. A car will cost about 10 thousand millies. A stadium will cost one billion millies. Yes, you could instead say that a car costs 10 bitcoins and a stadium costs one megabitcoin, but using different unit prefixes like that does not happen like this with "real" currencies, so I don't see most people doing it with bitcoins either.

Haha that's a good one. Have a crumb. :-*

I agree, the sub-1btc names are terrible.

I like calling .00000001 a satoshi, so .99999999 would be 99 megasatoshi just as 99999999 bytes is 99.9 megabytes

So a transaction fee of 0.0005 BTC could be called 50KS or "kilosatoshi"

0.01 BTC is 1MS

etc

another idea:

0.00000099 = 99 bitcents

0.00000100 = 1 bitnote

0.90000000 = 900,000.00 ( nine hundred thousand bitnotes )

0.01 BTC = 10,000.00 ( ten thousand bitnotes )

i dont think you are getting the point. there is no need to reinvent the wheel and come up with (random?) denominations. we should use the kilo, mega, giga system because people can already easily relate to that

Anyone else here see the word "coincidence" and think "coin" first?

these damn bitcoins man...screwing with my mind

i dont think you are getting the point. there is no need to reinvent the wheel and come up with (random?) denominations. we should use the kilo, mega, giga system because people can already easily relate to that
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I don't know many people who would feel comfortable using kilo, mega, giga for coins... average people....

I didn't notice coin-cidence but that's great. ;p  I guess I'm not too deep into Bitcoin yet lol..

1.  Megasatoshi is just uber.
2.  I'm a couple weeks into dealing with BTC, and milli and microbitcoin etc. works for me.  Just visit some bitcoin faucets for a couple weeks.  You'll get used to mBTC and μBTC in no time.
3.  When you solve a block, you aren't awarded 2,500,000,000 satoshis (by name anyway), you get BTC25.  Seriously, the system is great the way it is.
4(20).  Bong-Bitcoin = ᵇTBC = BTC42.94967296  That is just full of win.

I might just be a nerd, but 8 decimal places fits well for me.  You can visually split it into two groups of 0000 easily.  I can look at .00005000 and think, hey that's a pretty good faucet just for clicking something.  Or, "Bitcoinfaucet.at just gave me .00036000 (or 360 μBTC)‽  No wai!" 

I've memorized a μBTC as having six 0's.  Then again I've been obsessing on Bitcoin ever since I got back into it for real this time.  mBTC is half that, three 0's.  Eight 0's, oddly enough, fits perfectly if BTC1 was $1,000,000.. or one megadollar.. >.>

If BTC1 was $1mil, you'd have the last two 0's as the USD cents.  So at that point, call it bitcents, or bitdust, or cents, or whatever the noosphere has settled upon as a name by then.

Millies sounds cool.  I'm gonna use it.  I like millibit and microbit too.  On the macro scale it conflicts with the current kilobit etc. BUT that won't ever be a problem since only the rich will have KBTC and MBTC.

Btw, the symbol for satoshi, ¤, is equally cool.  It looks like a shuriken. xD

maybe my eye's arent as good as they used to be, but I often can't tell the difference between .002 and .0002 at a glance....   I think when 1=BTC is $10,000 USD this will be more of a problem!

I think the purpose of the OP's idea is that you wouldn't need to if people adopt other names and based on seeing someone posting the symbol for Satoshis... there would be corresponding symbols for those names.

Instead of seeing .0002 you would see ¤20,000 or ¤20k

My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it! ~ Abe "Grampa" Simpson.

.00000001 BTC = 1 satoshi
.0000001 BTC = 10 satoshi
.000001 BTC = 1 uBTC (micro)
.00001 BTC = 10 uBTC
.0001 BTC = 100 uBTC
.001 BTC = 1 mBTC (milli)
.01 BTC = 10 mBTC
.1 BTC = 100 mBTC
1 BTC = 1 BTC
10 BTC = 10 BTC
100 BTC = 100 BTC
1.000 BTC = 1 kBTC (kilo)
10.000 BTC = 10 kBTC
100.000 BTC = 100 kBTC
1.000.000 BTC = 1 MBTC (mega)
10.000.000 BTC = 10 MBTC

Then why do you insist on reinventing the wheel? What is so hard to grasp about this system? People who aren't familiar with this system can easily learn it. And if they can't learn it, they can just use 'thousand' and 'million' like they do with other currency now.
Do you want to change the existing system of kilo, mega, giga system to go from 1000x to 100x and change the value of a bitcoin to become a satoshi, just because you think it sounds cooler? I don't think that will be very good for the coin itself. Especially when outsiders see that the new BTC that you're proposing is only worth 0,00000001 old BTC, it won't change anything for the people inside, but imagine how scary it looks from the outside.

I do believe that there should be some more commonly adopted 'cool' names for the uBTC and mBTC.

My votes are for:
mic or mike for uBTC
and
millie or mini for mBTC

Satoshi for the smallest denomination is pretty much in stone and for good reason.

Anything over 1 BTC is simply a BTC times thousands, millions, billions etc.

I think those cooler names will form with time as bitcoins become more commonplace. Same with the special names for the old Dutch 'gulden'. No need to force official names imho.

are you kidding? are you gonna slap that list in the average consmers face? he is going to run away screaming, he will never use bitcoin. Atm. no one really cares what the smallest amount is called, but in the future it is going to change. So sooner, rather than later, stop calling the smallest amount satoshi and just call it bitcoin. that was the idea, because it is easier to relate to. Its possible the smallest amount will just be called bitcoin because its more natural but time will tell once the smallest amount becomes worth anything.

so i hope you understand the reasons why im making this thread. for one i dont like the current look and feel of currency. 8 decimal places is just wrong. no successful currency has had 8 decimal places. 2 is maximum imo. thats why its important to move away from the BTC denomination because that is the cause for the 8 decimal places it seems. So instead of the smallest atomic amount being 0,00000001 BTC why not just have it be 1. Then build the new demoniations on that. Fair enough people for some reason agreed the smallest amount should be called satoshi, but i dont agree with this decision, fair enough people dont like change, lets keep it that way. However the "new" denominations should build on the smallest atomic amount. This means you would end up with Kilo,Giga,Mega version of it......... at least that seems to be the most rational, as its very easy for people to relate to.......... more so than mili, micro which also is going to sound wierd in the future when you buy a PC monitor for 10 mili bitcoin etc., due to the currencys deflationary nature.


In fact lets put some estimates on when we will be using the different denominations from your schema.

.00000001 BTC = 1 satoshi -------  2017/18
.000001 BTC = 1 uBTC (micro) ---2015
.001 BTC = 1 mBTC (milli) ----- 2013/2014
1 BTC = 1 BTC ------- 2012/13


So you see as time progress, and people take the currently proposed denominations into use due to the currency deflating, people will of a sudden be using mili bitcoins, then micro bitcoins.. then all of a sudden satoshis? cant you see a problem with this? Imagine your favorite webshop having prices in mBTC one day and then the other day they decide to begin using Satoshis.. it is going to be confusing for everyone.

So let me reitirate. The smallest amount should be called bitcoin, because we will eventually be using it. Larger amounts should then be called Kilo, Mega, Giga versions of that. It will allow for a much more natural or smooth progression through the currencys deflation.

here is a comparative chart for the denominations time use

Bitcoin ---- 2018
Kilobitcoin ---- 2016
Megabitcoin ---- 2013/14
Gigabitcoin ---- 2013

so as you see, if we adopted this we will be calling the currency bitcoin in the future, not milibitcoin or satoshis, and for example wont feel unsatisfied when spending money for example since kilobitcoin sounds better than Microbitcoin and megabitcoin sounds better than Milibitcoin etc. Just food for thought....

The names are completely nuts, we should only use

Bitcoin

Mili bitcoin 0.001btc or 100000 satoshi's

micro bitcoin 0.000001 or 100 satoshi's

satoshi.


Actually, someone check if my maths are right , please!

your post dont make much sense tbh.

you saying the smallest amount should be called satoshi? why?

Because it's been called that for years.

You're implying that the average consumer is numerically challenged.
This will work itself out eventually. If they want to use your 'new system' in the future, they'll just call it Satoshi -> kiloSatoshi -> MegaSatoshi -> GigaSatoshi. No need to change the existing names.