Bitcoin Forum

The deflation is becomming a problem due to the current nature of bitcoin. We were supposed to add decimal places, but this just doesent work. Its awkard and confusing, and there really is a need to act sooner rather than later, before the community adopts the proposed milibitcoin and microbitcoin proposals of denominations..

Im afraid there is a need to reschool us in the way we think about bitcoin. First of all, the saying there is 21 million bitcoins total is both true and false. Because these bitcoins can be divisible down to eight decimal places. This means, there is in fact 2.1 quadrillion bitcoins in total. Which is great. More than enough to go around. Or rather more than enough for a sensible pricing mechanism. More on that later.

If we want to help ourselves, and the adoption of bitcoin, we should no longer think that the smallest atomic amount is 0,00000001 but rather 1! On the other hand we should no longer be thinking than 1 BTC = 1 Bitcoin.......... It should be = 100,000,000 Bitcoin. Because that is going to change everything. First of all no currency needs 8 decimal places. It would make pricing, comparing prices and so on a pain. The more decimal places the more clutter there is going to be. Think 0,001 0,0000232 1,0000323 and so on.... Also in my opinion it does not make much sense, if one wants a currency to be widely adopted, to NOT imitate the currencies that are currently in use. These currencies that are currently in use today only have 2 decimal places. And it works great. I never said to myself, i wish the dollar had more decimal places.

we gotta convert more people to become a believer!

Actually dollars do have 3 decimal places - check out petrol prices and taxes.

Discussed for years
Short answer: no

I some what agree. I'm not too fussed at this moment though ^_^

1 BTC should be = 100.000.000 Bitcoin. What i mean by this, is we should start calling the smallest amount of bitcoin BITCOIN. Comparatively we dont call an atomic unit of gold, schwarzeniggel, we call it gold. No matter what quantity it is. However, if we have more gold, we denominate it in Kilos or whatever depending on which area of the world you are in.

Right. So the smallest atomic amount of bitcoin should be called bitcoin, just as the smallest atomic amount of gold is called gold and the smallest amount of silver is called silver. Right. So are we gonna have wallets displaying how many atomic amounts of bitcoin we have? YES, it is simple without being misleading. One problem arises tho, because even the poorest bitcoin owners will have millions of "atomic" bitcoin atm. So we need to start denominating it, just like we denominate gold..

BTC could still be the official unit being traded on the exchanges, however its probably going to change in the future as one BTC has the potential of being worth thousands of not hundreds of thousands of dollars. In that case it wont make much sense anymore for the exchanges to measure their prices in BTC as people would be trading 0,000003 and you end up with alot of clutter. So.. The new denominations could probably draw inspiration from the filesystem. The file system automatically cleans up the number when its displaying file sizes. This is the kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte system its quite easy to understand.

Bitcoin should adopt this. So if we already are thinking in bitcoin the proper way (The smallest amount of bitcoin should be called bitcoin!) then it would be easy to adopt a kilo, mega, giga denomination system. Lets say i am the owner of 1 BTC today. This is actually 100.000.000 atomic units of bitcoin. So in the kilo/mega system, that would be 100.000 Kilobitcoin or 100 Megabitcoin. Or even 0,1 Gigabitcoin. Hurray.

There's so much to be OCD about in Bitcoin, isn't there?

idk if theres anything OCD about it. I personally find it problematic that the smallest amount of bitcoin is called satoshi, and that we will eventually be using micro bitcoins and milibitcoins if we dont change the way we look at bitcoin.

Deflation isn't going to become a problem, it's actually the best feature Bitcoin has. If Bitcoin was inflationary by design, there would always be a risk that people would prefer a deflationary altcoin.

Please read the topic



The problem with that approach is bitcoin is deflationary in nature. This means one day, lets say 2018 we will be using Microbitcoin, and then as it deflates even more we will be using Satoshis. Each switch is going to confuse people and Microbitcoin sounds dull, so does milibitcoin. And satoshi just seems way to random. The right way to approach it would be to call the smallest atomic amount for bitcoin, and then have denominations that contain various amounts of those. For example the mega bitcoin, which has 1.000.000 atomic units of bitcoin

First of all
Converting to milibitcoin would make a mBTC 0.18 USD right now. The growth towards the hundreds is great publicity. When we come close to 1000USD, we can think about mBTC, because our goal will be 1 USD for an mBTC.

Second
Imagine we switch to mBTC, a price drop from 0.18 USD to 0.17 USD would seem less interesting, however, the effect it has on people their Bitcoin fortune will be devastating.

Third
We are just getting journalists to note Bitcoin, this is not the moment to change everything. Media have the obligation towards us to be correct, just as we have an obligation to keep it as simple as possible for them to be correct .

When everything is easing down again, we can make a fuss about the notation again. Doing everything at once on the internet has been tried before, just around the turn of the millennium, maybe you've heard of it.

Quiet down, give Bitcoin a chance. Names don't mean anything as long as the system works.

Noone can change everything anyway. It will be up to the individual wallet services, exchanges etc. to denominate in a better way then the rest of the market will follow.

Actually I think it's becoming our savior.

When the price stabilizes BTC will be used like currency. At the moment it's riding it's little rocket to the plateau. Don't worry, we can all pay our taxes and shop for groceries with milliBTC too. :-)

EDIT: you can work in milliBTC if you want to already. No one is stoping you. It's not like a protocol change is necessary to make a difference.

do people even bother to read posts anymore or they just read the title and reply?

i changed topic title now..

That's just plain wrong.
The fact that there are 2.1quadrillion smallest units doesn't change the fact that there's only 21million bitcoins.
Those 2.1quadrillion smallest units already have a name, we call them satoshis (which is not a random name), almost any Bitcoin-User (I guess more than 95%) is familiar with that, so there's no need to rename them.

And for the other centi-, milli-, micro-, whatever-bitcoins people will probably come up with a nice name too.

People don't seem to have a problem with pennies and nickels and dimes and bucks and benjamins and whatnot, why do you expect them to have such kind of problems when it comes to Bitcoin?

IMO you're trying to solve a problem while there is none (reminds me of some software companies, "It's working? We'll fix that.")

or maybe you have just misunderstood the post. there is in fact a problem. You know when people use to think the sun revolved around the earth? Astromony, and the mathematical equations got out of hand and everything just seemed like a mess. Then it was suggested that the earth revolves around the sun and VIOLA everything suddenly started to make sense, and the proper equations and what not could be resolved....

What does this have to do with bitcoin then? Well atm. the founder decided on a unit that seems very random, yet others built new denominations on top of that. But because bitcoin is deflationary the new denominatons had to be fractions of this original unit. Of course im talking about the BTC which is called Bitcoin atm. The equivalent of believing the sun revolves around the earth. But, the smallest atomic amount of bitcoin should be called bitcoin and not satoshi because it would change everything.

we would suddenly be able to come up with better denominations that does not involve crazy fractions with up to 8 decimal places that only really serves to clutter and confuse. So, if we started denominating wallets in atomic units of bitcoin AND in fact called this unit BITCOIN then the proper denominations would reveal themselves. A person having 100.000.000 atomic units of bitcoin would also have 100 Megabitcoin. Do you see how intuitive it is, compared to working down from BTC and having the denominations become fractions, calling them very bad names like milibitcoin and microbitcoin and even satoshi. The reason i believe they are bad names is because first of all milibitcoin and microbitcoin does not sound very empowering, and you have to remember that bitcoin is deflationary, so eventually most prices will be in microbitcoin or milibitcoin and this just doesent make sense imo. the worst thing is if the name on the atomic bitcoin is not changed, then most prices would eventually be in satoshis. Imagine buying soda, in the grocery store, that would be 3 satoshis lets say. Then you want to purchase a car and that will be 100 microbitcoin. It just doesent relate to each other. Thats why the smallest atomic amount of bitcoin should be called BITCOIN, and then the denominations should build on this, so that in the future small items will be priced in you gussed it, bitcoin, and larger more expensive items priced in Kilobitcoin (K฿), or even Megabitcoin(M฿) etc.

Sorry, you're right.

I have to agree with you that is is indeed somewhat awkward to ask 0.01 BTC for a cup of coffee, but we might be years away before the Bitcoin exchange rates have stabilized enough for people offering products priced in BTC on a wide scale. For now it's easier to use USD or EUR.

It should be? Says who?
And what would it change?

You say people can't handle milli- and micro- and the solution that you come up with is that they should use Kilo- and Mega- instead.

What's the difference?
That's not gonna change everything, it's the same thing turned upside-down.

omfg. did you read the rest of the post or just stop at that one sentence? i think i put some pretty good reasons why

a decimal of a dollar is not called a dollar.. it is called a cent
the decimal of a UK Pound is not called a pound its called a penny.

the decimal of a bitcoin is a bitcent. the decimal of that can be bitmills. the decimal of that can be microbitcoins. the decimals of that can be called satoshi's

this is alot easier then calling
0.01 a bitcoin
0.0001 a bitcoin
0.000001 a bitcoin
0.00000001 a bitcoin

so as alot of people that have been around for atleast a year call it this.
this is alot easier then calling
0.01 a bitcent
0.0001 a bitmill
0.000001 a microbitcoin
0.00000001 a satoshi

1 BTC is in fact 100.000.000 atomic units of bitcoin.

And i prefer to stick that way. It is a more intitutive way of denominating bitcoin, by calling the smallest atomic amount of it for bitcoin and then having wallets display how many atomic amounts of bitcoin you have. Of course shortening the numbers to make it easier to quickly understand and relate to. Shortening the numbers like the filesizes. ~1000 Bytes = 1Kilobyte ~1000Kilobyte = 1Megabyte

in bitcoins case that is
1000 atomic bitcoins = 1Kilobitcoin
1000 Kilobitcoin = 1Megabitcoin

So if you have 10 BTC atm. that is the same as 1000 Megabitcoin or 1 Gigabitcoin

franky1 just beat me to it. For nearly forty years I've somehow managed to function in a dollar economy despite the fact I'm handling pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters every single day. This satoshi naming issue is overblown. If people want to use it, they'll make an effort to figure it out. Of all the things in the Bitcoin universe, the decimal notation and naming is the least difficult to explain to a n00b.

If my wife can figure out the g/s/c conversion rate in World of Warcraft, she can figure out BTC when the time comes.

Cents are easy for people.  True.  Or at least recognizable.

0.000001

Will be a barrier to entry for the non-nerds out there.

explaining it is one thing, remembering it, and using every day is another. its not practical


Imagine if bitcoin was dollars for a second.

1 DTC = 100.000.000 Dollars

This is fine untill the Dollars get enough value, then you need new denominations that have less Dollars in them. But instead of basing the new denominations on the previous one, base it on what it actually represents, which is an amount of dollars. I guess its harder to explain than i thought. But basically there are about 2.1 quadriallion atomic units of bitcoin, in which about half have been found. Bitcoins denominations should represent the amount of atomic units of bitcoin they repsresent, not which fraction of BTC they are because then we end up with a confusing chart.

The atomicity of the satoshi is an accident of history, it comes from the current precision of the network.  It is not a constant fixed for all time, but bitcoin is.  When (or if) we switch to 128 bits, there will be a new atomic unit, but the bitcoin won't change.

I agree, the decimal places certainly may scare away newbies.

A bigger issue in my opinion is how volatile BTC is, I'd prefer to see them stable at any price than rising 5-10%/day, people are afraid and think it will inevitably fall.

if bitcoin cannot overcome the amount of decimal places, there is going to be another crypto to take its place

Gold is a material, not a unit of measure, just like water or oil or sand. You can't say that you have "2 golds of rice" or that you weigh "150 golds" or even "5 golds of gold". You measure gold, silver, etc in grams or ounces (or pounds or tons for much larger amounts). Likewise, a Bitcoin is a well-establish unit of measure of money. It is equal to 10^8 satoshis, where a satoshi is the smallest "atomic" unit of measure of the Bitcoin measurement system. You can have 5 Bitcoins of money, for example, but you cannot have 5 golds of money.

It will be misleading, IMO. How many Bitcoins do you have? Is that in the "old" or "new" Bitcoin unit of measure?

Imagine that someone tried to redefine the meter to be what is currently a millimeter because small units like centimeter and millimeter are too "confusing" for idiots. Then a new kilometer will be the same as one old meter. How far do you have to drive to work? 5000 kilometers? Wow, that's a long drive! That'll take you days of driving! Oh, you mean "new kilometer", not "old kilometer". That should be a 5-10 minute drive.

No filesystem I have ever used nor heard about does this (and I'm familiar with the filesystems on quite a few different operating systems spanning decades). Software like file browsers and directory listers (such as the dir or ls commands) display file sizes in kilobytes etc, but the filesystem always store file sizes in bytes or blocks or records.


What you're really suggesting is that everyone uses "new Bitcoin" (defined as the smallest atomic unit currently known as "satoshi") instead of using "old Bitcoin". You're also suggesting that this would somehow be less confusing to some imaginary users (frankly, I think you're the only user who is confused by this) than simply adopting other names like millibitcoin/bitmill/millie for the smaller Bitcoin denominations.

you bore me

Bitcoin price is booming because many people realized that bitcoin is very good not only for transfer but for investing also.
Let us say that bitcoin capitalization one day will arrive to a cap of 1% of the global currency reserve, which would be more than 400 billions of $ and wouldn't grow any more.
Even if this would be the case why would somebody withdraw it ? To put in a bank in Cyprus or Panama ?
When bitcoin will fill all the market gap where it is needed will not crash but will become stable and will grow in price(vs $) only 3-5% /year to compensate the inflation of the dollar.
The deflation will exist only until this balance is achieved.

Time to start talking in Satoshis?

The deflationary nature of bitcoin will be a problem hindering commerce denominated in bitcoin for the foreseeable future. However, bitcoin is not destined to be used directly in ordinary commerce. Think about how HTTP is built on top of TCP/IP. In the same way, we will build new, stable currencies on top of bitcoin. They will be pegged to dollars, gold, oil, and anything else your heart desires.

I wrote a paper about this future, and if you come to the bitcoin conference in San Jose in May, you can hear me talk about it and ask questions at the "Bitcoin in the Future" panel.

The take-away is that buying bitcoins now is the best way to bet that these "child currencies" will be successful. They depend on bitcoin, and if they are successful, bitcoin values will go up.

I don't understand the discussion at all.
As other people have said, if 0.0001 BTC is hard to talk about, just alias it?

Also, since Bitcoin is deflationary in nature, you have to get used to the volatility in any case. Which means that no software designer in the world can predict in what range "normal prices" lie in.

:D :D :D :D :D :D

... best comment ever ... it's like a mad autistics playground.

"there will only ever  be 2.1 quadrillion satoshis !" just doesn't have the same ring for the dumbells on CNBC

1 bitcoin = 100 MegaSatoshi

how hard can that be?

OP, you suggest to call half full glass half empty, nothing more. WTFD between counting money in millions or 1/millions?

OP, while your whole thread is quite funny to read, you should note and correct a fundamental misunderstanding in your argumentation.

Bitcoin has no atomic unit.
Bitcoin uses a symmetrical scale, like any serious scientific unit of measurement. It can scale up and down by arbitrary orders of magnitude.

What you propose is actually to introduce an absolute unit of measurement, which you want to call "BITCOIN". This would be a similarily retarded design, as using 1 cent as an absolute unit of measurement for currency amounts. Unfortunately the whole conventional finance industry is littered with retarded people with the firm believe that a number 1.10 is more "clean" than a number 3.141592....

Indeed 1.10 might feel more clean and easy to grasp, but that is a subjective psychological effect. Thus, at places where psychology is important, prices may well be represented in a grippy way. But this doesn't mean that the real stuff, the numbers and the units of measurement should be dictated by psychological considerations.