Bitcoin Forum

Can a coin have let's say 1 Decillion? Would this affect the coins stability in any way?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

You need to choose a representation in the blockchain that can handle whatever number range you want to use...

-MarkM-

What you want (if you want a coin to have mass appeal) is an initial value of a penny to a few cents up to a few dollars. People don't want to pay a million coins for a loaf of bread. They also don't want to pay .0000233 for a pack of gum.

I don't know how they pulled it off, but the Goldcoin (GLD) developers seem to have found the sweet spot in terms of per coin value.

The 64 bit integers used in Bitcoin's blockchain, combined with the way numbers are represented in umpteen common scripting languages people are likely to try to use, pretty much forced Satoshi into using the range that he did. There is not much lee-way between the limits of a sixty four bit integer on the one hand and the limits of the universal number representation in a bunch of modern script languages on the other.

-MarkM-

People prefer the large numbers, and nobody buys bread with alts.

A coin can't have too big an amount because the market should just adjust to the conditions of the coin.

I'd say keeping it under a trillion is sensible because it is difficult to make sense of numbers when the number of digits go beyond a certain point.

Just make sure you adjust the total number of digits, before and after the decimal, to keep it in the range that programming langiages / script languages don't go crazy on, otherwise you will break all kind of third party apps people might want to use such as payment processors or wallets or whatever.

You can put more digits before the decimal by using less after it, for example, if you don't want to do the whole blockchain differently e.g. using 128 bit integers instead of 64 bit integers...

-MarkM-

How bout that infinitecoin?

There are supposed to be infinity of those I think.

Sounds like a good investment.  ::)

Actually IFC is capped @ 90 billion most of which have been mined already

ask CENT

That makes no sense. I'm flabbergasted.

In theory the amount of coins limitless, but if you try to raise the limit too high, you'll encounter some issues (like integer overflows at various point in the codebase) that bitcoin/litecoin devs have not anticipated.

Basically, with current codebase, about 92 billion is the maximal safe amount of coins. If you want more, you'll have to fix/workaround the code (like using 128bit integers, or having the coin less divisible than 1 coin = 100 million satoshis) or be prepared for trouble - some of the flaws may be just wrong numbers, some of them may cause mayhem and kill the coin :)

the 'infinite' part refers to the gullibility of the infinitecoin community. 

lol