Bitcoin Forum

As the price of one bitcoin approaches and hopefully surpasses $1000, many ordinary investors will feel that it's "too expensive" to buy in. Yet they would be happy to buy if the asset were denominated in millibitcoins (mBTC), because then it would "feel cheap" at ~$1 per unit.

This psychological resistance to the high price of one unit of an asset is the reason why most stocks do splits, to keep the price of one share under a few hundred bucks.

Also, we should keep in mind that bitcoin is still essentially like a penny stock or a pre-IPO security -- i.e. a risky early-stage investment -- and therefore in most people's eyes a price of nearly $1000 seems overpriced. I'm talking about the Average Joe here.

We need to bring the quoted price of the unit in line with the very early-stage nature of this investment opportunity. We don't need Average Joe comparing the price of one bitcoin to the price of one share of Google stock, because it is entirely inappropriate to compare bitcoin's current stage of development to the stock price of a well-established huge corporation. As long as people are inclined to make this comparison, due to the price, it will hold bitcoin back from widespread adoption.

I believe the bitcoin community should change over to a mBTC standard as soon as $1000/BTC is reached. Exchanges should report the exchange rate in mBTC, and bitcoiners should talk in terms of mBTC. This would reinforce the reality that we are still near the beginning of the process of bitcoin's growth.

i agree totally

If you want it to feel cheap, let's move all the way to uBtc

yes, if I didn't get burned on the recent rise from 200 to 800 I would have trouble justifying 800 for 1 btc. Now that I've seen what it can do and messed up the whole way up, I'm paper walleted and locked away O.O

I think this kind of talk is ridiculous. You want to switch to mBTC just so the perception of value changes to the point that the public will be ok with buying again?  The client will switch to BTC/mBTC/uBTC for personal convenience, not to fool people into a perception of lower valued units.

That would make it feel too cheap. It feels to me like the kind of stock you'd buy at around $1 per share. Hopefully uBTC will be needed in a few years.  ;D

Great post.  I would prefer to pay 1159 nBTC for something than to pay 0.0000001159 BTC.  So I like a renomination as a concept.  But it must be based on convenience - not the latest spasms of the market.

Perception matters. I've been telling some people I know about bitcoin, and the $800/unit price holds them back mentally. They are reluctant to buy, not because they don't like the idea of the technology or think it has potential, but only because of the high price per unit. They compare it in their minds to the prices of stocks they buy. Nobody wants to buy a fractional share of something. The average small investor might be happy to buy 250 mBTC of bitcoin, but would not bother to buy 0.25 BTC because it feels like a ridiculously small and meaningless amount.

Totally agree

I think the market at large will continue to quote prices in full BTC units.

This has the effect of demonstrating the confidence and security in the system. When a single BTC holds above $10,000 or $100,000 for a while, it will become harder and harder for the doubters to keep stating various FUD regarding security, etc.

Also, a single BTC will become something people strive to obtain, even if it takes years. You'll hear things like "I plan to buy 5 mBTC every month until I own a whole one" or "I should reach my retirement goal of 3 BTC in a few years".

Bitstamp or Mt. Gox should a/b test displaying prices in mBTC and see if affects buy/sell behavior.

I don't see this as a need.

Maybe start by giving people the option to toggle back and forth, with BTC still as the default for a while, and put out some press releases announcing a gradual transition to mBTC. Need to get people familiar and comfortable with the unit of millibitcoin, which is a process.

I have been using mBTC since $250

yeah just saying I have over 3000 mbit makes be feel richer :)

Agreed.

People don't want to manipulate values with lots of zeros. That's why the SI units where invented.

Its still a need.

A solution is needed.

Anyone who claims this isn't an issue has no non-BTC friends or family.

Anyone who has non BTC friends or family that aren't loaded, has heard someone say "I cant buy in now.  Its too late.  Its too expensive".

It's a non-issue. Most "regular people" who can't be bothered to take the time to figure out how things work aren't going to feel safe jumping on the bandwagon until corporate investors get involved.

Clearly those people don't care. (https://www.google.ca/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:BRK.A)

Fun times

I don't think we need such change.

Eventually something like this has to be done.

Freebird, your point is valid from a certain point of view, because perception matters indeed - but you need to realize that this talk has been going on sice we first broke $10. At $10, a lot of people said that "internet magic money" that costed $10 "felt too expensive", as we just hit a psychological barrier - so the denomination should change to allow further growth. Same thing happened at $100, just use the seatch function on this forum: you will find many many posts as yours written when we hit $100, and those posts said that $100 was definitely a psychological barrier and "nobody" was going to want to buy a virtual coin for 100 hard earned dollars.

Well.... What happened then?

While I think that the psychological factor has its importance, I'm pretty sure that you are overestimating that importance. Denomination really needs to be something based on convenience - people will naturally switch to mBTC because it will be much more convenient to price items in mBTC... But there's really no need for exchanges to list the price in mBTC, that "psychological barrier" is something that noobs feel when they bought in recently and saw how fast the price rised, so they think that the denomination need to change for the people to keep buying... And that's just a fallacy that has been refuted by history.

I agree.  My wife's aunt said the same thing today.  "I'll buy when it is back to $600".  I said people said that at 200, 100, 10 and 1. 

Maybe these people shouldn't be buying BTC? 

I agree.  With all the press, they ask though!  :-)

LOL

this has been said forever.

BTC went up SO quick since its inception, that it always has been "too expensive" for everybody that does not understand that it definitely has the potential to go to +$100k per coin.

In 2012 and early-Jan 2013, $12 was "too expensive" because its price was $2 a few months before

In Summer 2013, when the bubble popped, $100 was "too expensive" because the price was $12 just a few months before

Now, $800 is "too expensive" because the price was $130 a few weeks ago.

WAKE UP, the "problem" is how fast it grows, "expensive" is a RELATIVE and not an absolute term. Your family thinks its TOO EXPENSIVE because they know it went up many orders of magnitude very quickly, and thus they automatically assume now its "expensive". Switching to mBTC won't fix that. To fix that you need to educate them so they understand what BTC could mean in the future.

The price is irrelevant. But try telling that to normal people.

We could also just move the decimal point and create 21 billion bitcoins. It would not change the value of anyones holdings, but again, try telling that to people.

I disagree. While 10 or 100 bucks seemed expensive for "funny internet money", most people could still easily afford to buy 1 btc if they wanted to without qualms. 800-1000 $ for 1 btc is something altogether different. It's a solid chunk of most peoples savings or monthly salary, and these people will have a hard time psychologically justifying buying one unit of internet money they mostly don't understand at such a price.

If we want regular Joe to start using btc as internet currency we need to switch to mbtc as soon as possible.

Indeed, I tried to explain what's happening in this space a few weeks ago and what he took away from the conversation was "So you got in at the bottom. Good for you." The price has more than doubled again since then. Frustrating.

The psychology behind "expensive bitcoins" works the other way too: many people (especially already wealthy people) will want to own "one whole bitcoin"; however, since only be 21 million bitcoins will ever be available, what happens when 22 million people all want to achieve this same goal? 

One could argue that people discovering bitcoin over the next 12 months will stretch their purchases, striving to own at least 1 bitcoin.

One could also argue that vast majority of early adopters will *never* part with their last "whole bitcoin," thereby further increasing scarcity.

In another topic this discussion is on as well, but then about using uBTC which makes more sense! Link to topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=346356.0;topicseen (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=346356.0;topicseen)

If you are not sure what uBTC mBTC etc is:
http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/bitcoin-values-and-numbers/ (http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/bitcoin-values-and-numbers/)

Nonsense. Gold is "expensive" too, but still people buys it and use the denomination it best suits them.

I was one of the "we need exchanges to switch to mBTC" crew when I entered this game and I saw the rise from single digits to $266. Then I realized it's nonsense. People will naturally move to mBTC when it's convenient to price things in mBTC. The recurrent topic "we need to swith to mBTC" (really, search these forums: it's recurrent indeed) it's usually started by newcomers, and the only reasoning behind this demand is "because people will feel the coins are cheaper and they will buy more".

Having gone through that I can now say that it is a sentiment linked to having witnessed the price raising very quickly one or more orders of magnitude. We just cannot  accept that people will keep buying these "expensive" coins that grew in price so fast and so much...

But they will. Believe me.

I agree. And here is why.
This change should be done. Sooner is better because for people who understand Bitcoin it does not matter if it is BTC, mBTC uBTC or whatever. BUT for the average user it matters. Recently a lot of people jumped in, because it was affordable. But now when the price is approaching $1000 it looks too expensive for most of the people and they are really saying "no, it is too late, it is too expensive". Of course the growth will not stop but it will slow down. All I am saying is lets use the attention now, lets use the moment and change to mBTC.
This change will affect only the new comers. It will not affect the current BTC community it will not affect the big investors, but will increase the number of "normal" people willing to buy.

Why?
Lets say I have $200. I have never heard before about Bitcoin, but I am interested in it. So I am starting a research on the Internet and shortly after i discover bitstamp.net for example, where on the top of my screen is written 1 mBTC = $1 and 1 BTC = $1000 Next thing I will think is GREAT I can buy 200 mBTC for my $200. A lot of other people will buy and in short period of time the price will go to $2000 for BTC respectively $2 for mBTC then I have already $400 in Bitcoins. I will be very happy of my investment and I will tell this to all my friends. They will also buy different amounts of mBTC.

What do you think. Sounds close to reality?

Grandma understands gold, she does not understand bitcoin under any circumstances. My parents does not understand bitcoin, neither does the overwhelming majority of my friends age 25 to 35. Everybody understands gold, they are used to gold.

Now if we want bitcoin to be the digital equivalent to gold we can easily continue the current denominations with my blessings, no point in splitting it. If we want bitcoin to be a currency we must suit it so that people can understand it as something recognisable, and paying for a commodity or service with 0.002507 btc is wery far from recognisable. Neither is investing money in 0.3081 btc seen as attractive. They want recognisable and easy numbers, and they want to feel that they got good value for their bucks, and if so 1000 just seems better than 1, it's pure pricing psychology. I recognise as well as you that ultimately it is nonsense, but most of human nature is pure nonsense.

I can agree that it was premature to go to mbtc when the price was hovering around 100-150 $ though, but the price level where it's at now makes it a lot more difficult for the little guys to consider buying one btc, where he would possibly feel much better with him self if he gets 1000 mbtc for his 800 $. Even though it's nonsense.

I agree fully with the above post from Apraksin. Also anybody with a little knowledge of marketing would also agree. Bitcoin should be market now in the right way to succeed!
mBTC is also better from merchants point of view to setup prices fro products and services. People will start to buy more things with Bitcoins.

I know.  I said the same thing to her - people said it at $1, $5, $10, $50, $100, $266, $500, and now.  ;-) 

I read it here when they were saying it! 

This is a tactic many stocks adopt.

see you BRK.A and raise you BRK.B (https://www.google.ca/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:BRK.B)

Doesn't diminish my point though. Not using mBTC doesn't cause a liquidity problem, which is the main reason for a stock split. And professional investors won't be fooled by it.

There's no liquidity problem, but the general person thinking "hmmmm... lets some some bitcoins... WHAT 940 dollars each WTF???  I can't afford that".  On the other hand, they see it as 94 cents a millicoin, they'll maybe put in 100 bucks.  Would help spread bitcoins out more.

No one can dictate what all the exchanges and wallet software providers will do, so a variety of approaches will be tried.

This brings risk when a user accustomed to a particular decimal point location switches to another client.  A user in the habit of typing "100" for 0.1 BTC may accidentally overspend by a factor of 1000.

So we should advocate software that provides customizable transaction/fee size limits and warnings, regardless of whether there is a choice of btc/mBTC/uBTC preference.

We need warnings such as:  "You are asking to send 270 BITCOINS but you have requested alerts for payments over 2 BTC.  Previous payments to this payee have not exceeded .5 BTC (500 mBTC)."

And:  "You have not included any decimal point in the amount of this transaction.  Do you really intend to send 527 BITCOINS?"

And enforced limits such as:  "You have specified a 0.5 BITCOIN FEE for this transaction.  Your maximum fee setting of 0.5 millibits currently prohibits this."


(To limit such risks, one should of course keep higher balances separate in cold wallets.)

It would be useful, at least for the foreseeable future, to include a fiat amount akin to bitcoin wallet on android. I can enter the amount I want to spend in either and it fills out the approx. amount in the other field. If someone is buying a bar of soap and fills in 0.5btc and see's the gbp amount of £281 they are going to think twice before hitting send.

Yes indeed a disadvantage of Bitcoin: How much am I really spending?! Insane with these increasing rates, good idea tho to make a converter into the wallet with the exchange rates of some bigger parties (kraken/btc-e/gox etc.)

More (dis)advantages of Bitcoin:
Disadvantages: http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/disadvantages-of-bitcoin/ (http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/disadvantages-of-bitcoin/)
Advantages: http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/advantages-of-bitcoin/ (http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/advantages-of-bitcoin/)

This.

I think a 1000:1 split is inevitable, and probably happening within the next year once we stabilize well over $1000.

Yeah that is never going to happen.  You have been here six months and don't understand the concept of decentralized consensus. 

Are there any graphics of a small 'b' to indicate mBTC?

I'm not sure that changing everything to a mBTC standard would help anyone who doesn't know much about BTC. However, I can see where adding the option to buy in units of mBTC may have the effect you're looking for.

Something like this:

Buy 1 BTC = $1,000
Buy 1 mBTC = $1

or even buy 100 mBTC = $100

I believe the "100 mBTC" vs "0.1 BTC" may have a more positive effect on someone unsure of getting started.

Though, this all begs the question, does BTC need new support by people just flat out buying into the market?

Now that the price has reached 1,000 the time is ripe. Let's hope Mt. Gox is aware of this idea.

What is the right way for this to happen? Who is respectful enough to propose this? Bitcoin foundation? Maybe some kind of voting pool can be created and everybody owning Bitcoin will be able to vote?
Than exchanges can adopts this and other necessary step can be taken.

Here's my take.

People tend to like whole numbers.  Even with USD, people tend to think in whole numbers, not fractions.  If I have $3.28, I think "three dollars and twenty-eight cents", not "three point two eight dollars".

I think with Bitcoin breaking the $1000 barrier, and good and services currently costing fractions of bitcoins, changing up the denomination just makes it easier for most people to wrap their brain around.  Buying a song online for 1 mBTC that costs roughly $1 makes more sense then spending .001 BTC.

But this would have to be standardized across the board (wallets, exchanges, vendors) for it to work.  Otherwise you get the misplaced decimal point problems.

It will never happen.  It would require a hard fork and the existing fork will continue to operate.  There would be two mutually incompatible "Bitcoins" operating simultaneously.  Bitcoin is already perfectly divisible if you want simply switch your client to show mBTC.  1 BTC = 1,000 mBTC.  The current Bitcoin fork has 21 billion mBTC.  The exchange rate today is ~$1 per mBTC.

Unicode has some options.

If these are shown properly by your browser, the last two are lowercase:
 Ƀ ᴃ ฿ B⃦ B⃦ B⃫ ␢ Ƅ

(Also note the second character is a small-caps version of the first.)

I wouldn't recommend you associate any of them with a particular portion of a bitcoin, though.  In the future it could become cumbersome too.

For ease of use, how about just m฿ and u฿ or (properly) μ฿?

We may see the reverse become common worldwide for fiat currencies if they continue their devaluation.

That is, if it takes $3,200 to buy a mango, that'll be 3.2k dollars please.

I agree with OP. People hate math and do not understand decimals. The average person on the street has no clue that 0.2 is 1/5th. Whenever I tell someone about it, I ALWAYS mention that you can buy any fraction of it you want 1/10th, 1/100th etc.

I'm glad to see that my post started a good discussion.

I think the millibitcoin will serve us well for a long time as the typical unit for quoting the price of bitcoin and for commerce using bitcoin.

I also think the term millibit could catch on as a slang for mBTC. It has a nice ring to it.

Excited to see that one millibit is now worth approximately one dollar. It's the new internet dollar.  ;D

I think that switching to mBTC will raise A LOT of negative media. Reporters and bears stating that is part of the whole scheme or something.

I also think that is a great reason to do it. :)

This is why alt-coins are rising in popularity.  It is so much easier to sell $25 LTC than it is to sell $1000 BTC.  Unless the mBTC becomes the standard unit soon, expect the rise of BTC to stagger as alt-coins continue to attract new capital.

True

The exchanges should consider adding also option to buy sell mBTC. Easy to implement i think. It will be better for them because more trade and better for us because price will go up.

I think many people will have to get used to using mBTC since they are so used to using whole numbers.

I did this in the reverse just the other day.   Felt pretty bad as I did not want the person to think I was ripping them off during my purchase.   This hatchet cuts both ways.

Exactly, there's a lot of persons I know in everyday life who would never buy bitcoins because they are 'too expensive' but they would like buy several millibitcoins. Don't underestimate the power of the unconscious.

I also agree with the OP and most of the comments that a switch to mBTC is necessary for the broader adoption of BTC.

At the same time though, this high price of BTC gives chance to all the altcoins there for obvious reasons - they feel cheap :)

What I wanted to discuss is a bit different. It concerns the limited number of bitcoins in the protocol.

As I do not understand the protocol perfectly, I want to ask this: Is it possible for the Bitcoin Foundation to decide at some point that all balances in all addresses in the block chain should be multiplied by 100 and thereby implicitly increase the money supply?

I understand that "taking three zeros from the decimals" and starting to quote the price in mBTC partly solves the problem but imagine the time comes when we are out of zeros...

Thanks

They can not do such thing to multiply the balances. Also i think the zeros are enough. The smallest unit is one Satoshi which looks like this 0.0000001 Just imagine if we get there :) We are gonna be pretty well!

i wouldn't be surprised if we saw all the exchanges move to bitmills in early 2014

I hope they will move to millibits! Then more people will buy.

This is exactly why gold collapsed from its all time high to ~$1,200+ USD--it was too expensive.  ::) Somebody needs to head on over to them gold forums and learnt them folks that they can still get in via buying only half an ounce of gold, thus when gold doubles in value, they'll still be able to earn a 100% ROI.

I'm not sure if that's possible with Bitcoin since it's a new thingie, but imagine if--only if--some Bitcoin scientist was able to tweak the code just a tad so that anybody in the world will not be forced to purchase a full bitcoin as part of their investment portfolio.

Regardless of what the smaller denominations will be, or are called, a person would only buy what they can afford, say a 1/4 of a bitcoin, and when bitcoins double again within the next week or month (maybe a tad longer), those lucky investors will double their money just like them folks who bought only a half ounce of gold, full ounce, or exactly one bitcoin.

Boy, I remember the days when people were able to purchase an entire barn, but when the greedy farmers who own the barns realized the value in barn wood, the prices skyrocketed, and now people are only buying 1/4 or 1/2 a barn because it has gotten too expensive for them to enter the market. Luckily, for me, I'm still able to buy complete barns but, I'm afraid, those days are numbered, hence starting to invest in goat turds and acorns before people become the wiser and push me outta those markets as well.

~TMIBTCITW

This is definitely necessary

For Bitcoin to have any hope of becoming money for every day use by the common nontechnical person, it must use simple whole numbers for small transactions.  It will be very confusing for many people to pay 0.00365 btc for a coffee.  3.65 is much easier to grasp and less prone to error.

Otherwise, LTC or another altcoin will fill these very important need.

Traditionally gold was the money of the wealthy, while silver was the money of the common man.  This history will repeat if Bitcoin does not adjust.

This is about marketing.  At this stage, it is the marketing of Bitcoin that will make it succeed or fail.

Posted From bitcointalk.org Android App

1 bitcoin = 1 million bits

it was never important to me that new terms would be used for bitcoin sub-units. i had believed the world would take care of it itself. and it might just do it, creating many names for different bitcoin sub-units.
i was, and am a milli supporter, it makes sense, it comes from the metric system and it is near a 1 dollar point at the present.

BUT then i was running the word bit in my head for the past two days, and for me, milli, as straight forward and sensible as it is does not paint a coherent picture as the bitcoin = million bits.
it took me these couple of days to realize, it just makes perfect intuitive sense to me…
finally i realize why a bitcoin is called a bitcoin, it's a coin made of a million bits, it's also the name of the currency… (i know this is not the case right now, but it make such perfect sense that I would of believed it if i was told so). so a 100 satoshi make 1 bit, again, perfect sense here too… all we have done is move the decimal point as far as mainstream wants to move it.
i don't care what devisions are used in the meantime, and i don't care if a division will come much later then needed… but i do believe a bitcoin should be viewed as 1 million bits. it takes the whole system to a 2 decimal point system that is intuitive to people to use. satoshis are like cents and bits are like dollars.
in the future people might say '...why do we call it bitcoin? because that's how it works under the hood, bits are grouped into 1 million  and this is how they are denominated in the blockchain, it's more efficient to calculate them this way.'

Yeah It is all marketing now. The people which created and developed the currency are maybe geniuses, they did a great job, but now it is all marketing, so they should take note of this forum thread.

There is no "they".  Nobody controls Bitcoin.  It is a decentralized network.  It would be like saying you want to start calling the internet the intertubes.  Ok go ahead.  Nobody can stop you and likewise nobody can force anyone else to adopt that name.  Some naming system will develop organically, some people will start using it, it will catch on, more people will use it, more people will ask other people to use it, and eventually it will be universal.  As a case in point at the genesis block there was no name for the smallest Bitcoin unit.  Using satoshi as an honorific didn't start happening until much later.  Even today it isn't "official" in the sense that the Central Planning Committe for Bitcoin Units and Masures adopted resolution 2873 with a unanimous vote formally defining 1E-8 BTC as "one Satoshi" in the year of our lord two thousand and eleven.  People just starting using it and it caught on.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Well that would be a lie tough. :)  Under the hoot everything is in satoshis.  1 BTC is sent as a value of 100,000,000.

"Millibitcoin" is awful. No chance a normal person could say it, or understand it. "Satoshi" sounds much better, and it will serve for longer. In the ideal case that BTC replaces all the money in the world, one satoshi will be conveniently priced around 1 penny, I think that's how Satoshi choose total number of bitcoins - 21M.

It would never be Millibitcoin, but Millies or Millibits.

I understand what are you saying, but for example i don't have any control over what is happening with Bitcoin, apart of trying to populise little bit. You want to tell me that the Bitcoin developers does not have power over it? Or Bitcoin foundation? Or the administrators of bitcoin.org and this forum? Please come on. You are trying too fool us or you are fooling yourself. Which one?

They have control over what you call things?  Really?  If MtGox decided to NEVER switch their quotes from BTC to mBTC what exactly would the Bitcoin developers do?  What exactly would the foundation do?  Please give me a concrete example.   If I keep writing balances in BTC (or uBTC, or satoshis) are they going to have me arrested?  are they going to sue me? are they going to have someone kill me?  How exactly would they prevent a user from using a different valid denomination?

The protocol/blockchain/codebase doesn't even care about Bitcoins.  Everthing is recorded in integers as satoshis.  Everything else is just human concepts because humans don't work well with very large numbers.

Yes, nobody can force anybody to do anything. I know. But there is some kind of influence I think from certain entities. As you said humans can not work well with large numbers, also they can not work well with numbers like this 0.032434. That's why probably some solution should be proposed.
Here we are talking about the average users. We are OK with such numbers because we understand the nature of Bitcoin well enough, but the average user does not understand it quite good.
You see how many Crypto currencies appearing every single day like mushrooms after rain. This is big distraction. If we really want to see Bitcoin mainstream, we should concentrate the attention on one Crypto currency and make it easier to purchase. If somebody is thinking. "Hmm what to buy with my $100, 4 Litecoins, 20  PPC, 14 NMC or 100 mBTC" I think he will choose to buy the BTC. Just because it looks like all the others are just worthless copies and the real thing is BTC. But if it is 0.1 BTC then is different.

I just dont like the other crypto currencies because they are copies and their creators are just trying to get rich fast from them. I also don't mind to make some money from Bitcoin, but I like also the idea behind it and I want Bitcoin to be successful and to take full attention from the public in order to go really mainstream.
Now is the time for some good PR and marketing. Maybe some official campaign created by the community like YouTube videos, e-books, webinars to educate the people about Bitcoin, how to buy it. What to do with it. Because now we have some media attention but it is too random and there is some ridiculous statements from influential people all over the world and people are listening to those so called "experts" and following their opinions. Somebody can say "See, Bitcoin is a good but.... blah blah blah" and distract the people's attention from what Bitcoin really is. You know what I mean? There should be official materials about Bitcoin written in understandable language and those materials will be shared all over the internet and quoted by the media, if the materials are made in the right way. Set of Videos, an e-book written in understandable language (not the Satoshi paper, which is great, but give to 100 people to read it. How many of them will understand it?) also some tutorials how to purchase them and how to send them. Those things will then go viral.

Georgio

I personally don't like mBTC or uBTC and prefer to see exactly how much it costs like .001 BTC. When you use 1 mBTC people have no idea what that means or have to add it up in their head. People that are new definitely aren't going to understand.

Yes , at least people should know they can buy fractions .
i am pushing mBTC in Chinese BTC community now .

http://p2pbucks.com/?p=9519 and http://weibo.com/p2pbucks

Hope exchanges like BTCC and okcoin will accept this idea !

The people on this thread arguing that we shouldn't change over have the same delusion as mainstream economists. They think people are perfectly rational. That is, people act as perfectly rational economic actors that realize 1 BTC = 1000 mBTC and hence a change like that won't matter.

If you study behavioral economics at all, however, you know that people are not perfectly rational. In fact, they're very often irrational. This is why people complain about how expensive bitcoin is. This is why altcoins have been going up relative to bitcoins as more investors come in. .03 BTC sounds like a miniscule amount. 30 mBTC does not and a lot of people make economic decisions based on how something "sounds" than how something IS.

That is why we need this change to mBTC. The whole argument that there is no need for a silver to bitcoin's gold comes from divisibility. It's a largely useless divisibility with BTC because people don't transact in numbers that small. Rationally, .003 BTC is the same as 3 mBTC and both buy about a cup of coffee. The former is simply too difficult to relate to while the latter is easy. It's not easy to grasp the difference between .0003 BTC (30 cents) and .003 (3 dollars). That sort of distinction is obviously huge for commerce as that sort of denomination is much easier to scale relatively.

Yes, eventually, we'll have to get to uBTC and possibly even Satoshis. But changing over the pricing structure isn't a bad thing. It's meant to HELP people to relate prices better. This is why it's important and this is why every exchange and store needs to rethink how they label bitcoin prices.

+1

Perception is everything, and right now the average newcomer thinks Bitcoin is "too expensive". It's stupid, it doesn't make any sense, but there it is.

Bitcoinity is working on making mBTC the default display unit, but what about other large services like Mt. Gox or Bitstamp? Does anyone know if they have a stance on the issue?

I hope representatives from the biggest exchanges will see what we are talking here and take measures.

Exactly NOW is the time for this when the price is approximately $1000 for BTC and 1 mBTC will be $1.

I just remembered that when I first got into mining back in April, that I too was turned-off from mining BTC because of this psychological factor of only showing a balance of 0.03 or something like that. It was only ASICs that got me to switch from Litecoins to Bitcoins. Although I'm doing both now, it does kinda prove the bad mojo of whole bitcoins for some people.

Indeed it is possible that such a simple and meaningless distinction can actually be a competitive threat for Bitcoin. It's a real issue. Our services are ready for the mBTC switch at any time, however we are looking at the big services to take the lead. The risk of added confusion is big if major services don't support mBTC and we make a complete switch.

What I'm thinking is that there could be a grace period where both units are used together. We might do this. It's not as clean, but it will lead to less confusion.

Yes, for example on your site where it is written the 1 BTC = 1054 USD below it you can write 1mBTC = $1.054 and link to article on the homepage that people can buy also mBTC which is 1:1000 from a bTC and the big exchanges can also put next to the BTC price also mBTC and explanation about what is mBTC this will be a good start.

I guarantee, if mBTC were to become the standard unit, people worldwide would flock to mBTC at $1 a piece so much so that within weeks one single mBTC would be between $5-10, which makes the original 1 BTC worth $5000-10000.

i think you may be overestimating its impact.. i'm not saying it wouldn't make a difference, but to imply that it would drive the price of BTC up 5x-10x is a bit crazy.

!!! Bitcoinity switched to mBTC !!!
Along with a warning: Don't panic!  :D

Oh noes the value of my Bitcoins declined 99.9% overnight.  Jumps out first floor window.

Mine went up 100x.  Weird.

'milicoin'

i like it

the funny thing is that they might have been serious with that "don't panic" disclaimer.. since everybody is bound to panic when something like this happens. so many of us are irrational  :D

I am quite skeptical. For BTCs to be worth $10K, the market cap has to be increased from $ 12 b USD to $120 b USD. That is a huge task, and might require millions of new buyers.

or maybe thousands of "extremely rich" wallstreeters/bankers.

it just requires transaction fees to be lowered, it could initially have a negative affect

cause im sure people reaping the transactions will try to cause a price crash effect

mbtc = the quickest way to make everything priced in it look really expensive - its a crappo idea not sure who's pushing this, if your wondering why buying a Bitcoin is costing a bunch dollars it's due to the fact there being printed to infinity, in a few years time you'll be able to spot exactly where the nearest btc ATM is by the queue of wheel barrows.

what? i don't quite understand your logic. you actually think that having BTC set at $1,100 has a more welcoming psychological effect than $1.10?

I think the switch to mBTC is a good move.

From my own experience, people unaware of Bitcoin are absolutely shocked looking at a BTC price of :o $1000 :o .
Instead, a unit price of $1 is far more accessible.

And from a consumer perspective, mBTC can also be more attractive.
Why? Because prices are more easy to compare, at least to $ and €.

Imagine someone is going to buy an iPhone.
He will see that he has to pay $850 for it on the Apple store.
At the current BTC price, he would pay either 740 mBTC or 0.74 BTC.

Paying 740 mBTC instead of $1150 is obviously more tempting.

And what happens if the average Joe finds out that next month,
the same iPhone costs 450 mBTC, while the price in $ is still the same $1150?

Right - he will definitely consider buying Bitcoin!

I can see a slogan here: "With Bitcoin, even Apple prices are falling."  8)

There is a motive on Reddit to call this new unit an "Embee", or mB(tc). I actually like that way better than "millibitcoin" or similar.

Satoshis  .00000001,  Embee's .0001

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1s1gx0/bitcoinity_switches_to_mbtc/

Remember, public perception is the thing we can fix with this, it needs a nice, simple name that can be remembered and not sound too technical. Embee is also in line with traditional fiats in being no more than two syllables so it is easy to say in conversation. "Mil li bit coin" is chunky, "em bee" is smooth, like pen-ny, dol-lar, nic-kle etc.

A suggestion, but we need to call it something nice sounding that doesn't create an additional public problem of sounding strange.

I know a lot of people that had no idea 1 BTC can be bought in fractions. Buying "whole" coin is also just more satisfying, and don't deny it you would rather have 1 BTC and not .38435345 of one. This is a way to subtly shift Bitcoin into a smaller "whole" unit that is much more palatable.

Many thanks to Bitcoinity for taking the lead on this! Hopefully the other charting sites will follow.

Eventually people will become very comfortable with mBTC, and usage will gradually shift to just calling it BTC again.

Excellent idea, but my vote goes to uBTC thinking future in mind. (if at all BTC hits $1M)
mBTC is also a good idea. Its like splitting of shares and may produce wonders in no time. Who knows, If switched, mBTC value may hit $1000 :D as fast as it can be!

1. Hope we don't EVER fall too far below 1k.
2. Hope nobody mistakes mBTC with an altcoin.

It is happening!

Bitcoinity (http://"http://bitcoinity.org/markets)

And you can measure in mBTC on Blockchain (http://"http://blockchain.info")

I'll take it seriously when Coinbase and Bitstamp make mBTC their base unit. The adoption by Bitcoinity is a small, but important step.

Bitcoinaverage is on board too:

 https://bitcoinaverage.com/ (https://bitcoinaverage.com/)

They had to put a huge warning to prevent people from panicking  ;D

I was slightly confused for a half second and the warning actually scared me until I read it.

Because of this inertia, BTC is already losing ground to LTC in China.

LTC ticker price seems much more "affordable" than 1k per BTC.

in result, 180 million in USD equivalent volumes of LTC trades, vs 60 million in USD equivalent trades for BTC.

I am not sure switching to mBTC will fix this.

Great article but a good example of how stupid mbtc is


http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/12/08/bitcoin-china-meaning/?angle=silicon

I think its a little early to switch to mbtc. I mean it took a drop and we now have to deal with prices like 0.745$
Doesn't look well. I think we should go to mbtc when btc hits 10k

it was a programmed crash, kinda like when they split QQQ (Nasdaq 100 tracking stock) on March 24, 2000.

When it is programmed for the next government to announce that bitcoin is a commodity but not a currency?

I am a newbie and want to get some quality coins as a long term investment. With so many coins to choose from its hard for me to choose a quality coin. Quality is very importend to me so i am looking at BitBar and Novacoin as they seem to be very good compered to some others.
Its Novacoin a good choice?  

BitBar 87.32 BTB
Novacoin 19.15 NVC
Megacoin 1.08 MEC
Datacoin  0.88 DTC
Bitcoin 0.87 mXBT
Terracoin 076 TRC
CraftCoin 0.71CRC
Feathercoin 0.53 FTC

Hahaha!

Nah, I prfer btc values. Anyway, btc is still under 1000!

I think there should be an option in all the desktop clients, online wallets and exchanges to display the coins in either BTC, mBTC or uBTC - mBTC could perhaps be the default?

Can't wait to have the same discussion about the need to switch to Satoshi soon ! :P

I agree let's move bitcoin to kilocoin and make bitcoin $1.

Too early for that. You may have to wait a few more decades for that. BTW... what is your age?

Kilocoin (I guess you mean kilobitcoin) would be something like 1000000$  :-[

I think he means we should call the current normal Bitcoin a kilocoin and change the current mBTC to a normal BTC.

That way, a normal BTC would cost about $1. Way too many changes IMO. Just start using mBTC when you can and everything's fine.

I am pushing hard to get everyone to switch to nBTC.  This is so I can be a nBTC trillionaire !!

Also you can buy one million nBTC for less than a dollar - now that is a huge bargain for sure.

Another plus:  the minimum purchase amount is 10 nBTC so no more single digit accounts or transfers!

Should probably switch for it in advance, 2 years don't the road you would buy 1 nBTC for one filthy dollar.

For anyone who wants to feel cheap why you not buy a Dogecoin for $ 0.00093 or better still a devcon for $ 0.00067