Bitcoin Forum

The topic of bitcoin units seems to come up often around here - and particularly the perceived psychological impediment to dealing with fractions of a coin.

It occurs to me that in user interfaces, it might be handy to have some visual cues (eg in the form of coloured coin images) as to the sum involved in any particular transaction.
For example - any amount above 1BTC would be Gold (as per the common bitcoin coin logos)
An amount from 1 bitcent to less than 1BTC  - Silver
From 1 milli-bitcoin to less than 1 bitcent - Blue
from  1 micro-bitcoin to less than 1 milli-bitcoin Green  
0 to less than 1 micro-bitcoin  (ie satoshis)  Red

The pink and brown ones were just thrown in to make it clear how nano/pico fit in - perhaps for future use.
I liked the idea of 'pinkies' being a sub-satoshi unit (like the pinky finger)  and well..  brown for pico because it reminds me of those muddy coloured 1 and 2c pieces we used to have here in australia.

The colour scheme is primarily based on SI units milli,micro,nano..  except that bitcents and satoshis are interesting enough to warrant extra colour divides.
As a slight hint that silver(bitcents) and red(satoshis) are a little different - I've put the c & s on the right side of the corresponding coin image too.


Below is an outline of the scheme I had in mind.
I'm hoping something like this might be picked up as a standard across shopping carts, wallet software etc..
My apologies if something like this is already out there - I couldn't find it.
Feedback on whether my choice of colours is good/awful welcome.
Any GUI builders interested in incorporating this and helping evangelize it as a standard?

EDIT: to make this clearer, I'm not suggesting that a particular displayed amount would be shown multicoloured as it is in the image below.
That's just to show where the divisions lie and help people understand the units.

http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/units/chart.png

http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/bitcoin_colourchart_extended.png

EDIT: changed satoshis from red to black - because satoshi is surely some sort of ninja.
oh.. and because it might help red-green colourblind people, and because some people are averse to rainbows.

As far as the psychological impediment to dealing in fractions of a bitcoin - I'm hoping that if there was a widely understood naming and colour scheme - that things such as the blue millicoin or  green uBTC would feel like tradable units in their own right  more than just some number with a bunch of leading zeroes.
It should theoretically help reduce errors, especially for newcomers to bitcoin.


Feel free to throw me a few greenies if you like the idea ;)
svg version avail here: http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/units/chart.svg (http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/units/chart.svg)
Thanks to bitboy for the svg version of the gold bitcoin. ( from http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=1756.0 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=1756.0))

Cheers,
Julz
1BxNJBTXrZqFjdtAh6cdanALxDddm6jxZa

I Love It ! :)

Great Idea, I think some play needs to be done with the colors. 

Resistor color coding come to mind,

but I don't want to look at a rainbow, and might make BTC look gay and deter some users.

 

and don't forget about the numbers to the left of the decimal.

I'm color blind.  Can't see some of the colors...

lol, color blind people are effed.






green and red, ftl.

mm.. as I used to be into electronics - I don't know why this didn't occur to me!

I felt a little constrained in that whole BTC should be gold(yellow) and it really seems most logical for bitcents to be silver
(as far as I'm aware - this would be familiar to people from many nations as the colour of most higher value coins?)
Having those 2 colours fixed.. kind of rules out following the scheme used by resistors I guess.

I chose green as the microcoin just because green is widely associated with money - and I guess I was in an absurdly optimistic mood in thinking that when whole BTC become impractical as a general unit of trade - we'll all be doing our day to day transactions down in the green zone ;)



Well.. I don't really anticipate that rainbows would be displayed that much.
EDIT: As pointed out by others 0.00159265 would be Gold - as it's still in BTC units.
It may make sense for a confirmation dialog/notification panel to display it as 1.59265 mBTC Blue to give an indication of the scale.

The full 3.14159265 would normally be displayed as gold - it's just for explanatory purposes that the colour chart shows it rainbow-fashion.

 

It doesn't seem so useful to me to do anything colour related with large numbers of whole BTC.
I think everyone is familiar enough with commas/spaces as thousands separators etc and it wouldn't really assist. It's all gold up there!

I did think of colour blind people..  and even looked it up to see if it should affect my colour choice,
but in the end I found there were a few different types of colour blindness, and I didn't really see what I could do about it.
Just read the sub-bitcoin logos I guess!

Nicely done!

I love bitcoins.

But I don't see the average person adopting this color/name scheme for fractional bitcoins. A much simpler approach is needed. I don't know what the solution is. Obviously I could be wrong, but who, besides bitcoin enthusiasts, wants to remember seven different colors and names for amounts of bitcoins?

This is going to turn many people off bitcoins. It turns me off. This is way, way too geeky.

You know what it reminds me of? A resistor color code chart. Something only a geek or engineer would ever memorize. The average person is not an engineer. They don't want to think about bitcoins all the time. Bitcoins must be so easy to use, there is never a need to think about the process. Just click send! That's what the average person wants.

You association of units with current precious metals made me look into other non-commonly heard precious metals.
Here is the list from least abundant to the most abundant.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rhenium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rhodium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Iridium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ruthenium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tellurium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Osmium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gold
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Platinum
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bismuth
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Palladium
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Silver
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mercury_(element)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Indium

The idea was to use this for simplifying naming, however names don't seem that easy to learn or differentiate. Maybe you can get the colours from this metals.

Great idea. I suspect you're not in the USA.

The Satoshi is a stupid unit.  Make them all nano in that range. There's no need to break up the standard greek prefixes.

I think the idea is very good and very good realised.
And in my opinion, let's keep the satoshis :)

Seriously? Nobody gonna flame the homophobe?

http://pictures.funnyforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/you-are-gay.jpg

@ OP: Nice btw.

If bitcoin becomes so massively deflated that 0.001 buys a coffee, then we might commonly refer to them as millicoins or some such name. Though there is little precedent -- I've only rarely seen references to things like megadollars. Many bank notes distinguish denominations by color (shapes, pictures of royalty/presidents, bridges, and architecture), but upon what bitcoin medium are these graphics to be standardized?

I think this is analogous to proposing that feminine names are pink and masculine are blue.

Exactly. For this very reason there should be small differences on each symbol, so that people who are colorblind could differentiate.

the Satoshi (100000000 Satoshi's to the BTC) is the smallest unit available, so not sure what you would do with the piccoins if you had any...  You wouldn't be able to create any transactions with them, or render them in the bitcoin client...

Will

You could pay someone a single "satoshi" and then have them break them up outside of a transaction.

It is great work!
 Something has to come up like this in the future. The symbols are important. Some males are color blind but that is not a big issue.  Buying something in the future priced at 0.00345 is odd. People are comfortable with around 3 or 4 decimal places so 3.34 mills is a good label on a product. Your Idea is on the right track.

Looks great... Color code... a standardization that no one seems to think about until now.

Reminds me of Skittle

Colourblind here as well, about 10% of males have some colour vision defect.

What about an interface with buttons of the various divisions, you can click on the appropriate one for whatever you are buying enter the amount of the transaction in a short form without worrying if you got enough zeros. This should be easier for people in general to use with less mistakes, its not necessary today but in the future for sure. Not to toss the colour coded one out but have a couple of differing ways. A second thought is whats been done for totally blind people in the bitcoin arena.

Decided last night to learn how to code there just so much that can be done with bitcoins.

As bitcoins are currently divisible to 8DP - the smallest existing unit (satoshi) is actually 10nanocoins.
If it had been 9DP I might agree - but the satoshi seems somewhat entrenched in this regard.


I gave the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was gen-Y speak for 'lame'.  Yeah, the origin of using 'gay' that way is homophobic too... but it's probably a losing battle to fight the way young-uns speak. The fact they know it grates a bit on some people, and that they often just perceive people who complain about it as overly 'PC'..  will probably just make them want to use it more.

I don't know why the association between rainbows and 'gay'..  but I can see that too much colour can have a 90's geocities era crappy web feel!

I had in mind they might be used in certain applications such as games, or other systems not directly running bitcoin wallets where small costs might need to be allocated.  I probably could've  left off pico and stopped at the pinkies though.


I think gold and silver are pretty much a given for BTC and bitcents - very intuitive.
After that - it's only 3 more. Blue,green red.  (forget pink and brown - it's just illustrative and/or future use or special applications)

Nobody needs to 'remember' a bunch of colours before getting going.
The whole point is that the user interfaces would automatically display these along with other visual cues such as the word (millicoin,microcoin etc) and a different icon. Memory of colour associations would come with time just as people get familiar with the colours of their local currencies notes/coins.
I gather USD notes aren't very colourful..  this isn't the case for some other world currencies.

Yeah - my previous example of displaying 0.00159265 in blue was perhaps not the best -as that's really a fraction of the gold unit BTC.
A nicer user interface might be to flip it to millicoins and enter 1.59265
equivalent to flipping to microcoins and entering 1592.65
or even satoshis 159265
The colour should be just one cue along with the unit name and visually distinguishable icon.

It makes more sense to color the units or medium, not the number.

In China: 1 Yuan (元) = 10 Jiao (角) = 100 Fen (分)
In Britain (<1971): 1 pound (£) = 20 shillings = 240 pence
Spanish silver dollar (peso): 1 = 8 pieces of eight
Bitcoin: 1 btc = 1000000 µbtc

I essentially agree.  It doesn't come across well in my initial explanation - but that's the underlying idea.

Let's say your user interface is currently set to enter values in bitcents - it'd be silver..
But if you enter 242   - it might be nice for the interface to give a hint (perhaps in a confirmation dialog)
that the scale of the transaction is 'gold' because you've gone above the limits of silver.

If you enter 0.5 bitcents - the entry interface is silver - but the scale of the transaction displayed at confirmation is blue for 5 millicoins.

It's up to UI designers to make it all neat and intuitive (no trivial feat) - but at least if there was a general consensus on colours/names/recognisable icons..  this sort of thing could be a useful clarification aid and error checker.

I'm not sold on the colors. What problem are you trying to solve? Are you asserting that people can't handle decimals but they can handle large integers? If that is the case, then just deal in µbtc or satoshis exclusively. We as a society seem capable of discussing $100 trillion USD without the need for colors.

For the record, the most common kind of color blindness is red/green, so I think the complaint wasn't so much that you used colors to differentiate, but that you placed red and green RIGHT next to each other. Swap either one for another color so there's buffer between them and the chart should serve a much larger audience. You can't account for every kind of color blindness, but you can at least account for the single most common.

Yes.
That matches my experience with many people.
The fact that it's not just milli,micro,nano - but also 'bitcents' and 'satoshi' add significantly to the confusion when it comes to decimals.
I doubt we can avoid 'bitcents' because so many people are used to their primary unit of currency having a secondary unit being 100th of the main one.
Even if we meticulously avoided mentioning it - the public would end up thinking of the 14 in 3.14 BTC as some sort of 'cent'.
We can't really avoid the satoshi because the bitcoin divides down to 8DP instead of the 9DP we'd expect for the nano boundary.



Exclusively?  You mean pick just one and get the entire Bitcoin community to switch to it?
If everyone exclusively dealt with satoshi - then the numbers would be a little unwieldy for even a few thousand BTC.
Perhaps uBTC would be ok.


Sure - but are we as a society (including kids and grandparents) so adept at throwing around zeros and decimal points that when everyone is trying to pay with BTC on a mobile phone it'll be easy to do it without making a mistake?   
Throw in coloured/iconized units and my proposition is that the user interface will make it manageable.

It may be that sticking to the colours gold,silver and just one more colour/icon for micro would be a better scheme,
but I created colour boundaries at the SI milli,micro,nano points because it's hard to know where the value is headed - and what units might be practical.
Given the possibility of microtransactional systems based on bitcoin - such 'sub-coins' might make a lot of sense in various applications.
 
For me - the colours are a good cue - but they're only 1 third of the distinguishing aspect of any particular unit.
The name and the distinct icon are just as important.

Fair enough.. 
Perhaps replacing the red satoshi with black would be better. 

nah, sorry.  it's a loser.

learn to read a decimal point.  it's less ambiguous, has no medical (i.e., color-blindness) issues, doesn't depend on your monitor (there are still an awful lot of B&W displays in the world), and can be communicated easily and effectively:

"how much is it?"

"uhhh, 23 green, 14 yellow, 92 blue.  plus postage."  yeah.  that's gonna work...

I think this is a great idea.  I also agree with keeping the Satoshi unit, it's important to honor your roots.

For those complaining about the color issues, I think you missed the fact that there are differentiating icons as well.  If you can't see the colors, look for the difference in the icon.

That's not how I envisage it being used.
Pick a unit - and that's the colour/name/icon you're dealing with.
23.15 uBTC (green)    vs  0.00002315 BTC

It's not about avoiding decimal points altogether. It's picking a convenient unit for day to day transactions and having as many strong visual cues as possible as to the unit you're dealing with.

Tell the average person their wallet has 0.00417597 BTC  and it's going to cost them 0.00002315 BTC to click some link - and their eyes will glaze over trying to do the maths.
Tell them they have 4175.97 uBTC and the cost is 23.15 uBTC - and they'll have a better feel for what the relative cost is.

Accuse me of underestimating the intelligence of the public if you want..  (though I hear there's a famous quote about nobody going broke doing that)

what time is it?

http://home.earthlink.net/~drbarrall/RCCClock-sm.jpg

So you can use colours cryptically in a way only engineers might understand..
Can it really be a surprise to you that colour can also enhance and act as a mnemonic?

Which exchanges are on the up and which down?
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/markets/

( oh look.. red and green side by side too..)

If we want the fastest bitcoin adoption, we should stick to standardized (global) prefixes for divisions of coins.  Why make up new units of measurement?

A decicoin is 0.1 btc
A centicoin is 0.01 (aka bitcent)
A millicoin is 0.001

I'm not aware of the metric prefixes for 4,5,7 or 8 places.   

A nanocoin is actually the ninth position, not the eight.

another reason this would be a bad idea would be the fact that naughty people could switch the colours around when they are selling something.

Like what.. the satoshi?  Because it's part of Bitcoin history and because there are only 8DP in the current implementation.
I didn't make up any new units.



yes - the image shows bitcents and millicoins..  So you want to add 'decicoin'?
It's just 10 bitcents. 
I've already explained the reasoning for leaving cents and satoshis in along with the existing SI units. I really don't know why you'd want to add another. Does anyone talk of decicoins when dealing with US or AU currencies for example?


I don't see anyone claiming otherwise.

What..  like they couldn't just move the decimal point or add a zero?
Please explain your argument further - it currently makes no sense to me.

I've seen it mentioned several times on this forum.   In fact, in the first post of this thread, nano is used to describe the 7th and 8th position.  We can't go changing established meanings.

deci  0.1
centi 0.01
milli   0.001
micro 0.000001
nano  0.000000001
pico  0.000000000001

no names exits for 4,5,7 or 8 places

I think Satoshis is great. Using nano would create confusion if used in every day transaction, because minimal BTC unit allowed by protocol is 10 nano BTC. We assume that people would use it properly
20 nBTC
230 nBTC
650 nBTC
but in fact, after a while it would be common to drop the last digit because it would be always the same. And it would look like this
2 nBTC
23 nBTC
65 nBTC
Values like 60 would be source of confusion, is it 600 nBTC or 60 nBTC. It's not hard to believe that it would happen considering somewhat recent example of how 1GB became equal to 1000MB. Sadly, i anticipate that half of people on this forum don't know the right answer.

1 gigabit is equal to 1000 megabits.   The word you are looking for (I think) is Gibibit, which is exactly 1,073,741,824 bits.   Rather than forcing a new term on the public, the industry decided to use the term gigabit, since giga is widely known and accepted.

Satoshis is another example.  It is a unique word that can describe something exactly, rather than saying 10 nanocoins.  I'm not saying we shouldn't use it.  But the public already knows nano is very small - one less thing for them to learn to understand bitcoins. 

If you can buy something for 1$ and you get a 1000 pieces then you also can't buy a single piece in dollars, in Belgium gas prices are expressed in 0.XXX but you can only pay something like XX.XX

I would have thought if you're writing 0.00159265 BTC that you'd display it in gold, and only display it in blue if you're writing it as 1.59265 mBTC.

Too complicated.

Keep it simple, sir.

I agree with "keep it simple" and predict the following:

We know at a glance that $23k means $23,000.00, not $23.00.  So going the other way, 0.000023BTC will become known as $23μ (where "$" is substituted for whatever symbol ends up in common usage for BTC).  All this crazy decimal stuff might seem hard now because most people are not used to dealing with the mysterious world on the right hand side of the point -- I know I had to count the zeroes and then double-check -- embarrassing!  It will become easy though, as it comes into common usage and people get a "feel" for how much $1μ is worth.  People who grow up with bitcoin will have NO problem with this.


Yes: bitcoins will be worth that much, and people will still use "LOL" in the future.  When we all have hovercrafts.

Laughter will be prohibited in the future. So, no.

'LOL' hasn't had anything to do with actual laughing for a very long time.

Wait, I don't get it... why would cryptocurrency that appears to be attracted to cryptocurrencies of the same gender be less appealing? How does a cryptocurrency even had a gender? How many acid blotters from Silk Road are you on?

Not sure if this scheme will catch on, but those long bitcoin decimals would be a lot more readable if clients and exchanges used some sort of marker every 3 decimal places like a space, a comma or an apostrophe. Simple and unambiguous.

We'll just write 23μ as no other currency will be so deflated. n$23 will refer to "new dollars" which won't even buy you lint.

0.1 deci
0.01 centi
0.001 milli
0.000001 micro (since 1960)
0.000000001 nano (since 1960)
0.000000000001 pico (since 1960)
0.000000000000001 femto (since 1964)
0.000000000000000001 atto (since 1964)
0.000000000000000000001 zepto (since 1991)
0.000000000000000000000001 yocto (since 1991)

http://www.bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/19/4/

xenta, wekta, vendeka, udeka...

http://mrob.com/pub/math/ln-notes1-3.html

EDIT: yoCto

I don't like pink. Change the color of your Avatar. (boy, I hope I don't get grief over this post)

This has been a tongue-in-cheek announcement. Now back to the OP.

I like the color scheme idea, but the colors do need to be tweaked a tad.

According the source you pointed to, it seems you missed the 'c' in yocto.

I like this idea.  It allows designers the means to give users two signals when they're entering bitcoin amounts.  If it's accepted widely, it reduces the chances of data entry errors.

You know, there is a guy starting up a Bitcoin standards organization.  You should get in contact with him (can't remember the name but search the forums and you'll find him).

One tiny problem I foresee though is that some people seriously don't know the difference between:

$0.97
0.97 cents
97 cents

I've often seen people write 0.97 cents when they actually mean 97 cents (0.97 dollars).

http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html

Very funny.

100 cents = 97 cents / 0.97 dollars

( :) thanks for correcting my yocto :) )

I clarified my post. I didn't mean 'divided by'.

I think those prefixes should be harpo, zeppo and groucho. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers)

Yes. This is a step in the right direction.

Another possibility:

1.1 - - 1.1
0.001  - - b.1
0.000001 - - b.b.1
0.000000001 - - b.b.b.1
1.00001 = 1.b.10
0.100099 = b.100.99
0.230001 = b.23.b.1 b.230.1
0.001100999 = b.1.1.999 b.1.100.999
0.999000000099 = b.999.b.b.99
0.464928532585 = b.464.928.532.585

I hope I didnt leave any mistakes there! Its tricky to convert, but much easier to read. It is easier to think in this format than do a conversion. Gotta put a b function on all calculators & cash registers, or we learn to convert this in our heads when doing calculations. Wow this is a tough problem. A lot of possibilities for mistakes.

The Hindu-Arabic numeral system is dead! Long live Obfuscation!

You want to replace 1500 years of mathematical expressive excellence with what?

Correct. I commented before that this example was poor. My bad.

What I was thinking of there was a confirmation phase - where a UI might indicate that the scale of that number was mBTC by also displaying the equivalent 1.59265 mBTC blue as a popup or something.

Color coding is probably a disaster waiting to happen...


How long before someone recode a client to display the wrong color on purpose to con people out of their cash.

So, for example $1 will buy you 69 mBTC or 69 mBTC?

In any case, I definitely agree that 0.101 should be clearly distinguishable from 0101.  (Is 01 invalid?)  I think I would enjoy this color scheme.

Quiet! This is progress at work.  :D

Sort of.. It's not intended that a single number should be displayed multicoloured.. that's a bit complex and doesn't help so much I think.
It was more so that if someone is entering data - they have visual confirmation of what unit they are working in, and also an indication of the final scale of the transaction.  
It might also be of use in price lists where a merchant might prefer to specify all prices in something such as mBTC, but provide some display of equivalent BTC at the checkout point.


e.g if someone always likes entering in using the usual whole BTC
 

http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1BTC_32x32.pngData Entry		Scale Confirmation Panel
0.069 BTC		6.9 cBTC	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1cBTC_32x32.png
0.001592 BTC		1.592 mBTC	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1mBTC_32x32.png
0.0004 BTC		400 uBTC	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1uBTC_32x32.png
0.00000032 BTC		32 satoshi	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1satoshi_32x32.png

If the BTC has deflated somewhat and someone generally uses millis for day to day transactions,
they might set their standard data entry to be mBTC
 

http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1mBTC_32x32.pngData Entry		Scale Confirmation Panel
3141 mBTC		3.141 BTC	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1BTC_32x32.png
220 mBTC		22 cBTC	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1cBTC_32x32.png
0.1 mBTC		100 uBTC	http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1uBTC_32x32.png

Over time, people would get familiar with the colours and icons and it'd help give them a feel for the size of the transaction they're dealing with.

Look.. a lot if not most people currently here on the forums probably don't need this sort of assistance.
I think however that for bitcoin to become more generally used - graphical hints will help significantly, and if some common scheme isn't settled on, it'll just be confusing.  Now perhaps I shouldn't bother pushing the issue, as whichever piece of software becomes most popular may effectively decide the standards.
I'm just throwing this out for discussion as one way of handling this sort of thing.

It's not a bad idea to standardize distinct COLOR, SHAPE, and ICON of different Bitcoin unit 'logos' (milli, micro, nano, pico would need to be quite prominent). If client designers want to express number in those colors, I think that's at best secondary.

EDIT: As dictator for the day (who has suffered through a dozen such discussions over the year), I declare the 'cent' discussion closed and buried. SI units of three (10^n3) are the only reasonable way to go: giga, mega, kilo, milli, micro, nano, pico (no deka, deci, centi, nor hexisepticenti). Satoshis (10^-8) may survive as a charming oversight.

Yeah..  for some reasonably loose definition of 'standardize' that still gives artists reasonable freedom.
I'd say it's more of a 'guideline' and I'd only push for it as a standard in so far as saying 'please don't use green for millicoins if 99% of the planet is using green for microcoins'
Agreed - the colouring of the number itself is secondary.

I've followed a few discussions around this myself..  and while I've disagreed that bitcents should disappear, my argument has mainly been that I expect the general public will expect them to exist, and will use the concept anyway.

However..  in the interests of simplicity, why not give them a chance to die out and see what happens?
so.. If you check back in my edited original post, I've ditched the bitcents and produced a simplified chart.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. 
Perhaps this whole thread has been just yet more noise on the units topic and will be ignored anyway.. but one day something like this will stick and gain wider traction I hope.

Heh, sorry to make it even more confusing, but I think you should stick with silver as the colour that comes after gold (i.e. use silver for mBTC) :P

mm.. I know what you mean..  but I strongly suspect bitcents will be used by some people even if they're not 'official'.. and they'll probably want a silver logo.
It just seems to me that 'cents' in various currencies are silver. Making the mBTC silver might make it more likely that newcomers will confuse them as being 100th of a bitcoin.

I'll await further feedback.

Perhaps think of it as a metallic silvery blue if that helps? ;)

sorry if someone told you his already.

USE THE DAMN MU SIGN μμμμμμμμμμμμ

NOT uTORRENT μTORRENT notice the "stick" hanging off the u. μ≠u

To type this magic letter, hold alt and press 0181 on your keypad, if you do not have a keypad or use a mac, too bad.

sorry, I do sincerely apologize, this just is my pet peeve.

I think these days people call it YOO Torrent, not it's real name, Micro Torrent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_torrent), because of this mixup.

I guess you can't put µ in domain names either.

Well I deliberately didn't use it in the logo because when you shrink down to 16x16 for icon size - it looks too much like a p - which might be needed for picocoins.

I sympathize somewhat with the purist point of view..  but I'm guilty of certain bias towards practicality when it comes to technology.
"if you do not have a keypad or use a mac, too bad." just isn't good enough.  

In short.. yeah.. I get your peeve..   but like I've had to suck it up and tolerate American spelling and pronunciation such as 'aluminum' .. which after all - is a slow perversion of the English language ;)    maybe you'll just have to suck it up, grit your teeth and bear it?

Either that.. or lobby keyboard manufacturers to dedicate a key to it.
(Doesn't solve the fact that it'll be mistaken for p at small sizes though. Frankly I think μ is doomed as far as average joe on the internet is concerned)

I don't see it. (http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/9866930/1/%CE%BC?h=e442c2)

A picocoin will never be used.  That is 0.000000000001 (12 places) which is 4 more places than is currently used.  That would be the equivalent of ten thousand of the smallest unit available right now - and how many things sell for 0.00000001 btc? 

Of course, bitcoins will increase in value, and if one btc does become worth a million dollars or so, you may see the picocoin being used.  But by that time, the community will have moved the decimal point to the right because people don't buy one million dollar items very often.

No currency will ever need 12 significant digits. 

That's all very well if the prefix makes up the entire icon!
Try putting it as a prefix to the bitcoin B at that size.

I'm no graphic artist - so perhaps with the right font choice it could be made distinct.

why would we use a logo as a sign for currency? whats wrong with typing μBTC or μɃ0.69

Here's my attempt with a proper mu at 16x16

µB
http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/units/1uBTCpurist_16x16.png

vs

uB
http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/units/1uBTC_16x16.png

ok.. so arguably the µ is better

pB
http://precisium.com.au/images/bitcoin/units/1pBTCtest2_16x16.png

Well.. they all come out pretty bad at that scale - so perhaps my argument isn't valid..
but the p and µ do look confusable to my eye in the cruddy examples given.
An icon designer may well be able to make the distinction apparent.

I generally a big fan of color-coding schemes, but doesn't using colors for the 'chips' make bitcoin even more like a casino? :)

Both have their place. I find that a strange question. When I build a UI - there are times when only an icon will do.
I can see a use for 16x16 mBTC, μBTC etc icons. Perhaps some web developers will and some won't.

As modern web designs tend towards larger cleaner interfaces - the importance of the 16x16 icon might be less I guess.

I was thinking why start with 3 decimal places?  Most, if not all, currencies go to the 2nd decimal place, which represents 1/100th of the whole.  The idea of 1/1,000th is foreign to everyday people/cultures.

I propose the following schema, which takes care of the Satoshi breaking the pattern.

9.87654321

9 BTC
87 centibits
654 microbits
321 satoshibits

Colors will never work, or legally be accepted.  Too many people are colorblind, and you can't normalize something if you have two definitions (location AND color) of one significant digit.  In case of conflict, which one has priority - the color or the location of the digit?

You do have the proper breakdown though.  2 (space) 3 (space) 3

9.87 654 321

It wouldn't be hard to implement spaces into any GUI, and it easily identifies how significant (or insignificant) the numbers are.  (Notice I stayed away from any naming references.  :) )

I made one https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/9866930/1/%CE%BC?h=e442c2

and tbh i would still rather type it all out than paste that in every time.

But that doesn't work.
It's not 654 microbits
- it's 6 milli and 543 micro
or 6543 micro

If you're proposing that the 'micro' in your 'microbit' is not the standard SI micro..  then I don't think you'll get any agreement with that around here.

I really think we're going backwards here.
You've broken it up at 10^-2  10^-5 and 10^-8

10^-2 is bitcents (again)
10^-8 is satoshi
but now you have a new unit 10^-5   and no you cannot call it micro(something)

Look at the chart again.

The positions of milli, micro and nano after the decimal point are non-negotiable.
Not my rules - it's the way these prefixes operate on the whole planet and always will.

EDIT: fixed silly mistake - obviously should be 10^-x not 2^-x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix for the non metric people that refuse to convert.(aside from the millions)
other goodies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28data%29

Julz, I took a step back from the naming argument and proposed a simple way to identify the significance of digits.  Some people identify with words, others with images.  Splitting it up into 2/3/3 is a good idea because 1) we only have 8 digits, not 9 and 2) we are used to 2 digits after the decimal.

I agree with you that this spacing would conflict with the official names on the positions, but we don't need to call them by official names.  After all, no one says "That $9.99 book costs 9 dollars, 9 decidollars and 9 centidollars.  :)

We call the first two bitcents, which would be easily accepted.
We call the last three satoshi
We just need to create a name for the middle three.

Yeah.. I know I kind of ignored your statement "Notice I stayed away from any naming references."

Really.. I think the public will have enough trouble with 'satoshi' not being SI let alone adding another strange one in the mix.
Also - there's the possibility of division of BTC to further than 8 decimal places in future - at which point you'd have to create yet another non SI unit.

I guess it's a novel approach.. but I don't think it makes the maths any easier!

Actually - I guess this is the equivalent of what has been talked about in other threads.
Using the bitcent as the relative unit for subsequent ones.

What you propose is effectively
87 bitcents
654 millibitcents
321 microbitcents

I don't support using the bitcent as the unit to base other subunits on..   but I guess it's a possibility.

I like the rainbow and SI idea (I don't think rainbow has anything to do with sexual orientation, nor do I care). I also think we can use colors and make color blind friendly at the same time.

I forgot to mention this earlier, because it's not really that relevant.  However, the "rainbow" was attached to the lesbians a long time ago, by a lesbian group. Just as the pink triangle is attached to gay men.  At least it was when I first learned about it in college, from my gay roommate. (1993)

It is a relic from when "gays" were not in the public eye too much, and they formed a (not-so-) secret symbol to identify themselves to each other with.  You see a girl wearing a rainbow wrist band, or 5 gel braclets of the rainbow colors, then you knew you had a higher chance of talking to a fellow lesbian.

That doesn't mean they have a trademark on it. Rainbows and triangles are far more old than these movements. Even Nazis used triangles. On the other hand, the SA were gay, and the Nazis were pretty tolerant of lesbians. :P

Who isn't tolerant of lesbians???   ;)

this makes a gap lol, we like lesbians(tv/media type not stereotypical type) but not gays, generally. but this thread is about colored text not sapphism or the like.

Well it was meant to be about unit names and coloured visual hints to aid in identifying them at a glance and assisting in dealing with decimals... not specifically colored text.

isn't a written number, text? or do you mean the bitcoin and si symbol?

Yes a written number is text. I mean the bitcoin logo symbol thing and any other element of the user interface that might be appropriate and tickles the designers fancy. Maybe it's the background behind the text, or a coloured underline.
Some sort of reasonably-standardized colour association - along with standard names, and generally recognised shapes/icons.

Love the ideas here. I did wonder how we were going to trade the smaller bits.

We have to be correct:
0.01 BTC = 1 cBTC (don't thik that this is really nessesary
0.001 BTC = 1 mBTC
0.000'001 BTC = 1 μBTC
0.000'000'01 BTC = 1 Satoshi

like this, alle definitions are correct.


This example is unlogical because there misses 1 position before microbits. so the definition is wron and if a stupid mainstream person uses this he fails.
IMO the cBTC doesnt need a own colorcode.

I prefer:

9.87654321

9 BTC (Bitcoin)
87 cBTC (Centibit) (no color nessesary)
876 mBTC (Millibit)
543 μBTC (Microbit)
21 sBTC (Satoshi)

logical and simple made fore stupid users (and there are many ;-))

Glanced through this whole thread, and think you're onto something.

Observation: Isn't it funny how we all (at least in the US) can look at a $5 bill, three $1 bills, 5 quarters, 6 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies and quickly come up with $9.94? Imagine if someone on the boards here suggested that a 'gavin' is 0.25 btc, and a 'binary' is 0.05, he would get laughed off the boards.

I'm a little embarrassed - but I hadn't actually worked out what US dimes and nickles were until now. Thanks for prodding me to look up US coins and get to grips with how you do things over there. (I'd actually just assumed you pretty much dealt with dollars and cents and that quarter, nickle and dime were some sort of archaic term!)

I do think it underscores the point that *instantly recognizable* subunits are vital part of the maths of trade.
They also should be relative to the prime unit: i.e in the case of the USD - you have the quarter and the half dollar
Correspondingly for bitcoins - the subunits should be relative to the whole BTC (not some unit which is a fraction of a bitcent)

at least for me, i don't hold on to change, we get it by supplying bill to a cashier and getting metal in exchange from the difference of the face value and the total purchase amount. its something i use in experiments that require small bits a metal. its also used for pinewood derby cars for weight. other than that, only/mostly children mostly collect and exchange it as bank rolls once enough is collected.

What is confusing is using a decimal point at a level other than the BTC level. I suggest if anyone uses a decimal point, it is implied at the BTC level

4.12345678 BTC is equal to the sum of:

http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1BTC_32x32.png x 4
http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1mBTC_32x32.png x 123
http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1uBTC_32x32.png x 456
http://precisium.com/images/bitcoin/units/1satoshi_32x32.png x 78

It would be bad practice to say 4,123.45678 mBTC

That would confuse everyone even more.  If you see a blue number, and it only has two digits, you would thing it were 087mili. :-/

This is madness. You people is addressing a problem which is not here, but instead is being created for the sake of being solved.

I think the color system would be perfect to create something like good looking price tag that has not too many digits, but it wouldn't help to read a long row of digits. Maybe we could use already established standard.
so if someone input 4123.45678 [edit:BTC] it would be automatically displayed as   https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Hmhg13cjzmI/ThzC2CsI2zI/AAAAAAAAAf0/9jJ5R7POOhw/Untitled.png

Yes, he would be quite rightly laughed off the boards. Pennies and dimes are tangible goods. Decimal places are also named: for example hundreths, ones, tens, thousands, and millions. If you created physical bitcoin denominations, then they might be named, colored, and any other characteristics you are all yammering on about. Your $3.14 balance never reads three dollars, one dime and 4 pennies, whether on paper or computer screen.

Lest you've all forgotten, bitcoins are DIGITAL !

What people yammer about is - the old "when is the decimal point going to shift"  with regards to bitcoin.

I argue that with a decent UI and set of visual hints, it's not necessary for some general shift by everyone.
Just get the UI to display it in a different unit - and get people used to the look of each unit.

This whole thing is about being able to flip a user interface into a different unit to work with - and minimize errors.
(It's because I'm interested in microtransactions - whether or not they are truly practical with today's bitcoin network)


Irrelevant.
I only split it out in the chart for illustrative purposes.
I'm not saying a BTC 3.14 balance would be displayed as 3BTC and 140mBTC  but it might be displayed as 3140 mBTC if you flipped your UI that way.

For some system (e.g a multiplayer game) where very small transactions are the norm - everything might be denominated in µBTC or satoshi.

Oh, so the context seems to be relevant. How much do you weigh: 70 kg or grams? How far to the moon: 380000 mm? What's the global debt: 39 terradollars or micro? If we consistently stick with orders of three (10^n3), we'll be fine. And SI is appropriate for bits: kilo, mega, and thus milli, micro, nano, pico...

Yes.. different contexts is the right way to think about it.
If bitcoin were widespread and software available in mobile phones, the preferred unit in parts of rural Africa might easily already be in mBTC.

Agreed that SI is nicest.  Satoshi are an artifact of the 10^-8 divisibility of bitcoin which has a certain quaint appeal, but ideally it would just have been nano.

Hey,

After reading a thread on /r/litecoin and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27663.0  i decided to throw together some code for some of my sites to apply colour coding and unit formatting for cryptocurrencies.  It's a little rough around the edges for now but does the job.  I have setup colour schemes for bitcoin and litecoin, but it is written in a way that it can support any crypto currency. 

The source code is available on the project hompage: http://cryptoformat.com

I would love to hear feedback & suggestions.   Thanks.

Qualifications: I'm colour blind :P


I have also briefly looked at the sourcecode of bitcoin-qt to see if I can play around with some type of input mask or apply some type of formatting but there's not much qt resources on the web (and i'm new to qt).  If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be most grateful.

Thanks.