Bitcoin Forum

So, obviously these terms are going to come in to play in coming years. And I think there should be some sort of standard for what we call our money in a satoshi based economy, and I'm not a fan of how ethereum has done it. So my proposal is quite simple, just draw from the metric system. The base being of course: 1 satoshi.

0.00000001 = satoshi
0.00000010 = dekatoshi / dekasat
0.00000100 = hectoshi / hesat
0.00001000 = kiltoshi / kilosat
0.01000000 = megatoshi / megasat

Just an idea. Let me know what you guys think.

You try to make a unit name in bitcoin number, maybe for some people it still feels strange, but I also feel it becomes a bit complicated in calculation utterance, what is your purpose to make such a name?

Right now, if I want to buy a coffee with bitcoin, the charge would be around 0.0004 BTC. This is not an amount people can easily grasp, nor is it simple from an accounting standpoint. A much better approach would be to denominate in satoshis, which would render a price of around 40,000 kilosats for my coffee. Its easier to comprehend a whole number.

I don't think the first four are necessary. More terms equals more confusion, so it's best to stick to as few denominations as possible. Saying 1k sats is much simpler and less confusing than saying 1 kilosat, for example.

I could get behind megatoshi, but isn't cBTC (centi-BTC) already in (ableit rare and informal) use?

I agree that less is probably more. However, we need to keep in mind that the current ratio of BTC to USD is probably not going to be the same in a year. If bitcoin gets to $100,000 then 1 megatoshi will be too large of a denomination to work with. (also I hadn't heard of cBTC, but that seems tedious to say...)

I'm trying to think of this more as 1,5,10,20 dollar bills, which of course don't have a unique name for each denomination aside from the number. So under the premise that 1 satoshi ~ 1 penny, 100 satoshis seems like it should be the "base" whole amount? Unfortunately the hectoshi is probably my least favorite out of the bunch...

Maybe as penny is to cent we need a satoshi to....?

i like anything that is based on Satoshi because anything bigger would mean it will become obsolete as the price rises. you may think using uBTC is enough now but it will become huge pretty soon so it is best if we start from Satoshi now and let that grow on people.

but the problem with this is that you need to ask yourself whether the whole world can understand the "metric system". not the whole world uses it! i believe Americans suck at metric system since they are using Imperial System! so it may cause some problems.

Well 1 penny = 1 cent, so maybe dime/quarter is to cent is a more fitting way to describe what you're looking for? I do get where you're coming from though. As Bitcoin became pretty much unsuitable as a base unit, people started using mBTC, which currently cost around $10 each. It's also likely to become unsuitable itself in the future at which point uBTC is likely to be used next, but it's only 2 decimal places away from sats; do we really need something else between those?

I also get the merit of shifting to satoshi-centric units from BTC-centric units, but since hectoshis already exist as uBTC (which is much more well known) it could just add to the confusion.

This is a good idea but I think you should come up with a more simple terminologies. The proposed metric system is a bit complicated. Since some people try to read it on the value of ones, tens, hundreds up to thousand sats. Or some reads it backwards. maybe we could just pattern it to how USD it valued like 50cents, a quarter cents up until one usd. This would be a simpler terms to use.

we may not need the first 2 after 1 satoshi.
it is always easier to say 10 satoshi and 100 satoshi instead of deka and hecta satoshi in my opinion.
you can say the same thing for 1000 but kilo is a bit different, it is used more often and more people understand what "kilo" means than those who understand what deka and hecta mean.

Good idea that you send can be a market language / transaction that may be easier for some people but a little difficult if I think, some say easier with 100k satoshi for example because it has been applied from the first. Without being told anyone can figure it out easily.

That's a good point (metric vs. imperial). But US people understand the IT system, like byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc... so they already learned something from the metric system as well (I know it's the binary, but anyway), so it won't be too difficult for them to understand the new naming system of bitcoin...
I also think that something should be done with bitcoin amounts, because sometimes I feel myself lost in zeros, when it's about a smaller amount of bitcoin (satoshies).