Bitcoin Forum

Why does everyone bitch and whine about moving it ?

I have NOT put much thought into it, but personally, who the f cares ?

Why would it help ? or hinder ?  or even matter?

I guess the guys with 10 BTC want to see 1000 BTC on their accounts.

It's my suspicion that having 'one' Bitcoin in the same range as the USD, esp. when it is 1.5 to 1 usd, it will be more approachable to the common man. Of course decimal placement doesn't matter mathematically, but we're talking about psychology here.

Now thats a good answer, and the only real reason I see for it..  or that remotely makes any sense

So its more about gain then ?  about  moving a decimal for existing coins on hand..  well that sounds greedy..

Hmmm

 ::)

The point is simply this: as the value of btc climbs, there is a psychological (not rational) barrier to buying at "high prices." It's purely an irrational thing, but my guess is that we all suffer from it a bit. Something called a bitcoin that costs $50 sounds expensive. Something called a bitcoin that costs $5 sounds less so. I suppose there is also a somewhat rational argument that "common goods and services" priced around $1-$10 USD should be purchasable with single units of bitcoins, as opposed to fractions which are awkward for people.

So those people who advocate for this decimal shift are simply trying to minimize the psychological barrier to entry and the validity of that can be argued back and forth. I think it will be reasonable to move the decimal at some stage, but now is not the time. Stability and confidence are important now - no need to move decimals around when most people still think such a thing is inflation (it's not).

the numbers underneath should never change.

the presentation can change as needed.  you might want your client to display as millibitcoins, for instance, if that is what you are more comfortable with.

but at the protocol level, when you send 275 millibitcoins, i'm still getting 0.275 BTC.

From a consumer psychology perspective the push to move the decimal confuses me.

People would much rather pay 0.017 for something than 1.70 even if the underlying value is the same.

Retailers go to great lengths to make prices appear small for a reason.

People in the market section of this forum seem to (even with ~15 USD/BTC) stick to "even" prices, like 2 BTC or 1.50 BTC, even though it would make more sense to sometimes charge 1.869 or 1.507 BTC. Because of this I would also support the move to millibitcoins as used currency (21 million "full" BTC is an absurdely low number anyways to begin with and nearly every FAQ states that BTC can and will be divided in the future!). The future is now, let's move forward and move to mBitcoins to make sure prices are more accurate again.


Some other examples:
Nintendo Points
Microsoft xBox Points
Linden"Dollars"
WoW Gold (not actually sold by Blizzard, but anyways...)
and a multitude of other "internet/online/virtual" currencies are all worth (far) less than 1 USD for exactly this reason. A lot of them are not even splittable and have to be spent in the 100s to get a game or buy some virtual something.

For most of it's time, bitcoin was the same (the 10.000 BTC pizza was overpaid at it's time!) now it's no longer for just 2-3 months. Time to move the decimal back 3 or even 6 places (there would still be 2 places left for µBTC-cents in the current spec then, probably exactly for this reason!) and call the total amount of Bitcoin 21 Billion or Trillion.

I quite agree Sukrim.

Personally, I think that no movement of the decimal makes Bitcoin look too expensive and a movement too far back makes it look ridiculous. This is very much psychology/perception that we are dealing with - and that is extremely important.

I believe, at this juncture, 3 decimal places makes the most sense. It suggests a very psychologically affordable buy-in for the average person. And it also reduces the angst for those who may feel threatened by a currency that has become "too powerful".

Bitcoin needs this time to breath and grow stronger. A three decimal place shift will facilitate more popular interest while (hopefully) dropping back down to a 'DEFCON 4 or 5' on the gubberments radar.


 

Yes, because the "common man" is American!

Of course! That's why aliens keep attacking the US and UFO's only crash in America.

Yeah, I feel so left out. I wanna get in on some of that probing action I hear all you Americans talking about.

Lol, I so want to make that my sig.. No probe for U!

On topic, why not this,
1 BitCoin = BTC = 1

1 Bitcent = BTc = .01  (to .99)

1 microBitCoin = mBTC = .0001 (to .0099)

1 microBitcent = mBTc = .000001 (to .000099)


Milli sounds so smalllll

Go right ahead :D

i have currently 26.05 BTC in 10 years i hope my btc balance looks like
26.049998761
:P

1 mBTC = 0.001 (1/1000th)

  lol, truely I know what a 1/1000th is.  But spanx you very much for making me think I went retarded for longer than I usually do whenever I attempt to think.  ;D
I went and edited my post only to remember there is a reason that I did it the way that I did.  I probably should have explained how I had come to those numbers but truely didn't think anyone would care to read it at the time.  My intention and the way I'd assume most people are used to spending their money is to where each divisible denomination has 100 of its lesser counterpart to make up a whole one. So we have 100 bitcents in a bitcoin, 100 microbitcoins in a bitcent and 100 microbitcents in a microbitcoin.  

  I know it seems corny now but when bitcoin does work and will have a much higher dollar value per bitcoin goods and services will be bought and sold for much smaller amounts of bitcoins. At which time it will be a much prettier format for a merchant to say they are selling some fuzzy, pink socks for 12mBTC instead of .0012 BTC.  At which time it is also safe to assume average Joe will not have to go to his client to type in or copy/paste some weird address and then type in .0012 either, since I know thats your next thought. He will likely have the payment address and amount from his shopping cart sent directly to his client for him to confirm. There the client will parse the decimals as well on the gui side to display 12mBTC or 12mBTC(.0012) for ease of Joe's processing it as accurate.  The exact formating of which could be played with I'm sure but I'll leave that to the marketing guys. While .0012 might not be too hard to comprehend and type into a client for every Joe I'd bet that as you had more 0's in between the decimal and the number it grows increasingly likely that some Joes would screw it up. Whereas Joe can definetly understand that 100 bitcents would make 1 whole bitcoin, etc etc.

Cheers

it's relative- value won't change and neither would anything other than where the dot is- this applies to any currency, any argument on where the dot should be is ignorance

Moving the decimal is just the same as a "stock split" in the stock market. Of course all people would own the same value but it would be represented differently. The idea being that psychologically it allows more agreeable pricing.

If you went back to early Microsoft days and counted the number of splits you would see that original shares would now be trading for huge sums, even far higher than Berkshire Hathaway does today. In the case of BitCoins the effect would be almost entirely irrational since there isn't the same 100 share block size that on the stock market limits small investor entry significantly.

(btw according to my quick check if no splits MSFT would be trading at $7747/share instead of $26.9 today - now say that wouldn't be a mental barrier to buying shares...)

When BitCoins end up trading at $1500 each I think people may prefer to trade in more round amounts than 0.00002143 BTC. for daily small trades. Moving the decimal reduces the friction to reaching such a trading price.

No ;)


BRK-A (Berkshire Series A) are around 115k USD per share now ;) Yes, 115050 was the last quote. Earnings per share were 6580 and change USD per year ;)

Psychologically this is insane, hard to trade etc.

A stock split actually has a practical effect.  Most people would not be able to purchase a share of Berkshire class-a.  But you can always purchase a fraction of a Bitcoin.

My mistake. I hadn't checked on that for many years and didn't realize they had hit such a price.

I think I mentioned this. And in the usual case you'd buy a block of 100 shares.

If we are to accept the "split share" analogy then bitcoin "shares" are already split as far as satoshis (10^-8)BTC, bitcoin being just the name for rather great amount of minuscule shares.

Also looking at MgGox trades, buying/selling of fractional amounts of bitcoins is rather common. 10.321BTC, 1.237BTC, and so on.

My question about the decimal move isn't whether it should happen (it should've been done months ago) but HOW will it happen. I've lived through currencies having to drop zeroes due to inflation, but there was always a central entity (the government) making that decision.

How would such a decision be made in the de-centralized world of Bitcoin? Would it be put to a vote? Would it be left up to the exchanges to start quoting prices and trades in milli-BTC instead of BTC? would it be the growing number of online stores? Who?

Whoever it is, this really needs to be done ASAP.

Its entirely plausible to have a modified version of the client that shifts the decimal place to the right X amount of spaces for the GUI, but remains compatible with the current protocol.

Of course the protocol itself could be modified such that the decimal for BTC are shifted X amount of spaces to the right, in which case the GUI would follow with larger numbers..

However all of this appears moot, I think those susceptible to this also buy things because they are $X.99c

Piper67, It is implemented into the protocol, essentially a vote would be done among the community and developers would implement the change(s). People would download the new client and a transition would take place. There is an solution in place to transition from an old protocol to new. I'm not specifically aware of all the details, but the blocks do know about which protocol version they are and how to relate.

Some clarification from a more insightful source into the specific details of protocol transitioning would be greatly appreciated :)

1++

Micro means one millionth, you need to use something else to avoid a huge confusion. What is wrong with milli anyway? For example, the Tunisian dinar is divided into 1000 millimes.

You could easily make it an option in the client to shift the decimals by whatever amount the user wants, and change the denomination to uBTC, mBTC, etc, or even offer a combobox when sending coins.

It doesn't have much priority for me, and I'm afraid it will only confuse people in the same way calorie/kilocalorie do...