Bitcoin Forum

The high bitcoin price seems to be an obstacle for people who want to invest in it. Some may think, buying only a fraction of a bitcoin makes no sense. what should they do with less then 1 bitcoin?

Why not start listening and trading satoshis on exchanges? People who can not afford an whole bitcoin can buy thousands of satoshis. Of course, that has the same value and everything, but some folks it may help to feel better. I think this would help to become bitcoin more mainstream.

Google did something similar with their stocks. The primary google stock become to expensive, so they started a cheaper one.

what do you think, does this make sense?

it is just the common misunderstanding because of the interface that wallets and exchanges use. in fact at code base there is nothing called "bitcoin" there is only satoshis. you send 1,000,000 satoshi not 0.01 bitcoin.

but since everything is old and a long time ago it bitcoin was worth less than a dollar, i think that is why it has still stuck with us.

but other smaller units exist https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units and there are a lot of them. i also agree with using Satoshi. it is best and easiest to understand instead of mBTC, uBTC, Bits,...


since bitcoin is decentralized it would take time. i think at some point the wallets need to start using Satoshi in the interface as price goes higher. currently 1000 satoshi is about 4.6 US cents. and pretty soon 100 satoshi will be 1 US cent too. and that would be a start.

I think its better to start from satoshis first if we are new with trading because it is makes us to learn to analyze the market beside that, we can learn step by step. the most important is if we are lose, we are not lose in big amount and we still have another satoshis to buy other coins and not just trading bitcoin pair usdt.

What happens when you want to move your 1000 satoshi from one wallet to another? Don't you still have to pay 0.00100000 BTC transaction fee?

IMO the best unit is "bits", or microbitcoin, because 1 bitcoin = 1 million bits.

In theory if BTC was adopted as a mainstream currency (which I personally see as unlikely), and the price was 1 million dollars, one bit would be worth one dollar and you could have two decimal places (satoshi in reality) per bit.

Bits would also be effective if the price stays roughly as it is, because one bit will be worth one US cent when the BTC price is 10,000 dollars (and right now it's worth about half of a cent).

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Even though most of us know that "one Bitcoin" is completely irrelevant, it is sort of a mental barrier for people.

Absolutely, it's easier to understand how markets work in satoshi then invest more than 1 Btc.

Like other reply before, it's happening because wallet interface from the start and they would not change it until now. If this still continue, i'm afraid that people will not interest to invest bitcoin because they think it's impossible with this number unit to afford a bitcoin, even though we know we can buy bitcoin any amount as long it's still bigger than fee ;D I really hope the exchanger and wallet provider will hear about this situation.

The investors who think that investing in anything less than 1 Bitcoin makes no sense. Then they are better not investing in Bitcoin. If you are investing in something, you should understand it properly. If anybody before investing have done any research about Bitcoin, he would be aware of satoshis and bits and would have known buying 1BTC is not at all necessary.

Yes I agree with you. If i want to buy btc now, i guess i can not afford it for now. But I tried all the rewards from the campaign that I got, I always switched to btc for future savings and some of his btc to trade.

It is a feature of bitcoin. It gives opportunities to all who believe in him. Of course it is impossible to buy bitcoin if it is not Satoshi. For beginners it is generally the only way to try with bitcoin. A very wise decision to make 1 millionth part of a bitcoin.

It will always more advantageous if you have more Bitcoins to deal, but if it's your case and you don't have money use only satoshis... That is why the curency has 8 decimal houses, to let people use it in small amounts if necessary and cover the necessities of mass adoption in the future.

People wouldn't think it's worthless if they calculate the satoshis in relation to Dollar price...
I know there are people trading with low amounts of satoshis and they are having profit, not so much, but slowly they build their balance.

If some people really can't afford to buy a whole bitcoin then don't force themselves. What matter here is, they should acquire a portion of it and play with it by doing trades and taking advantage of the price fluctuations since the expected trend is always to go up.

Now that they are in the situation where they can't feel much the profits, they must set a goal that soon they will able to do large trades starting from a small amount. There are lots of person who already did that kind of way and now become a successful trader. It's up on the person on how they will pursue their goal in order to have a success.

Trading small amounts could get a higher profit in total rather than all-in trade. You won't know that the price of stock is still decreasing and you are losing opportunity to get a higher profit. If you ever do all-in you might regret your move if ever the stock price decreases consecutively.

I can understand where this naming convention may seem easy now. But if you start using bits or microbitcoins, you then have to learn that these are either abbreviated as bits or ubits, and not mbit, since that would mean a milibitcoin, or 1,000 bits. You see where I'm going here? I think it's actually harder for a newcomer to differentiate bits/microbitcoins/ubits from milibitcoins/mbits from... bitcoin. It's much easier to just use fractions, to learn that there are eight decimal points and that the smallest unit is a satoshi.

This is like how the Brits simplified farthings, ha-pennies, pennies, florins and crowns into just pounds and pence.

As you say also, bits are only effective if the value is stable... and it's not.

I don't see this as a challenge whatsoever because when the price was even at the $1000 a lot of people still trade with the fraction of it without any issue and now its happening that the price is increasing, you just trade on the basis of what you can afford which stays the same irrespective of what the relative value in dollars is saying out there.

This is what I tell people. You don't need to buy the freakin whole bitcoin. They still have a hard time wrapping their heads around a currency that goes all the way down to 8 decimal digits.

It's the same with trading. Since the value in fiat is becoming larger anyway, then it follows that you'll start trading in smaller units. Every time I trade, I look at the fiat exchange rate anyway.

As to me, it makes perfect sense

But we are just not there yet. As someone mentioned above, 1 bitcoin is equal 100M satoshi, so this unit is not very handy so far, though it is still a better choice than using intermediate units like milibitcoins or microbitcoins which are only confusing instead of making things easier to understand. We should wait till the prices hit 5 digits in the very least to make any sensible use of satoshis (say, when 1 dollar is worth less than 10k satoshi). But this may be a long journey till we get there

Buying/selling something with such numbers is also a nightmare. I don't want to count 0's if I want to buy a cinema ticket. If the price of bitcoins keep increasing, this will get even worse. Some applications and shops are already starting to use mBTC and other units, but it's different everywhere.

we need some standardization and a lot of education.

In bitcoin there is nothing superfluous. I'm amazed how the developers could foresee everything. I just don't know what will happen to the price of the transaction. As will increase the price of bitcoin will rise and the price of the transaction. This makes it impossible to trade. It will be cheaper to buy everything for Fiat.

That's because those values are tied to fiat. However you want to fix it, as long as value changes, you'll always have that "problem". But people just need to get used to it. And we can see people getting used to it in the real world.

You'd really find living in some countries a nightmare, with values also tied to a currency other than its own. A movie ticket in Southeast Asia costs about $2 (I'm estimating the cheapest ticket) and pretty sure it is slightly higher in some African countries I've been to. They already involve a lot of zeroes with national currencies that have experienced gradual inflation over the decades.

Just did a quick search for movie tickets:
40-80,400 Vietnamese dong
30-40,000 Indonesian Rupiah
480-660 Kenyan shillings
400-1000 Pakistani rupees

Yes, all these currencies actually have smaller denominations that have fallen out of real world use... I lived in one country with hyperinflation and the zeroes kept piling up, week after week.But actually, people got used to it.

I wholeheartedly  agree with you, didn't notice that this was a problem until I started trading, wanted to day trade with my OMG and instead of selling my OMG for 220k satoshi I accidently typed 2200k If I wanted to buy that would've been disastrous.

I know some websites are already using mbtc or would let you change the unit if you want to. To me it really does help people who only have a small amount of bitcoin because we only have to press 1 instead of putting 0.001 and on gambling sites I always hear a lot of accidents like what machanto said putting more or less zeroes.

Don't forget that fees would also start increasing if price keep on rising. You might want to think twice before spending it on anything.

Because all of the altcoin just use the satoshi to be the main trade, I mean there is no altcoin wroth equal with 1 bitcoin for each altcoin. That's why a lot of people are trading use satoshi as the main pegged rather than bitcoin.

It is always better to start with small amount in business if you are a newbie. The logic is about to make things learn and get experience. If you loss more in start how could you make investment again. Using Satoshi is better approach of work and make things run in a line. Minimizing risk must be the very first step for ensuring success with any business. So, instead of risking big amount in bitcoins, it is always recommended to start with small amounts.

Well first of all, not all of us are fortunar enough to even hold 1 btc. So most of the time, yeah i trade satoshis. Honestly i haven't tried or i haven't had the capability to trade bitcoins lol

yes of course if you see a very high bitcoin price certainly not everyone can invest by buying bitcoin directly, but can buy currency smaller than bitcoin like satoshi, or other coins, yes it makes more sense than you impose to buy bitcoin directly.

There is a huge disadvantage in trading in satoshis, it will take most of your time selling and buying in satoshi, unlike if you buy them in whole bitcoin.  Aside from that fee is the same anyway.  People can chose to buy part of bitcoin, your Idea is already been used in practice.  Most who cannot afford to buy a whole of bitcoin buy part of it.  there is no rule in exchange to buya whole of Bitcoin.