Bitcoin Forum

As of this moment, 0.01 USD is about 15 satoshis.

So I beg this question, once we are beyond the 1 Sat = 1 Cent how will bitcoin be further denominated?

Will current wallet software automatically be able to adjust for this or will this need to be programmed in? Or is there nothing that needs to be done?

Could we end up with even smaller denominations of bitcoin?

I would imagine that this does not involve the protocol in any way so nothing would need to be changed software-wise, correct?

edit: I am beginning to realize there is no need for further denominations. Considering price has literally nothing to do with bitcoin denominations.
We will only ever need 1 sat.

$0.01 is close to worthless, so I don't think it would matter if 1 satoshi became worth more than $0.01.

It wouldn't really affect wallet software unless there is a change to the protocol that allowed sub-satoshi transactions.

Can you really think of anything that is worth 1 cent which you want to pay for it with bitcoin?

It would require a hard fork (every client has to upgrade), otherwise a soft-fork would be a very dirty change.

Keep in mind we already have the second layer solution (such as Lightning Network) and we can be flexible there as much as we want with very small complications.

I can think of many things: VPN per minute ($0.00012) or VOIP calls per minute ($0.005). Or movie streaming per minute. Or maybe a Tor browser integrated captcha solving service, or in-game micropayments.
But paying sub-statoshi amounts on-chain makes no sense as long as the minimum fee is 111 sat. I see many possibilities for LN though.

Maybe the dust amount value of thousands of satoshi for on-chain transactions is also something to be taken into account.
So while satoshi subunits are OK for LN, they aren't practical yet for on-chain, hence there's no rush yet.


The current 0.01$ is... just for now. If we think that a bull run increases the price about 20x and we tend to have 4-year cycles, in 4-8 years this may become a problem to be seriously discussed and maybe handled too.
And maybe the fact LN uses such subunits will make this problem get properly into attention even earlier.

Why do you think  about USD only? On planet Earth there are hundreds of currencies.
For example: 1 BTC = 7.5 mln Japanse yen, 1 satoshi is less than yen.
So what? Nothing.

We can always use other bitcoin denominations like millisatoshi (msat) that is often used in Lightning Network.
1 sat is equal to 1000 msat
1 msat is currently worth around $0.00007

One more possible solution other than using LN and msat is using some second layer or sidechain solution that could have even smaller denominations.
It looks crazy for us today, but 1 sat could be worth much more in future if (or when) big hyperinflations happens, and that is not so hard to imagine with non-stop working money printing machine and corrupt politicians in power.

I wouldn't manually do it, but if it's an automated payment system I can see myself using pay per minute services.

The question is how many of these 1 penny or 1 yen or whatever things are actually bought as just one unit?
And do to tx cost would they even be an on chain transaction?
Even if we had infinite block size and as cheap a fee as possible as said above it would still cost more in tx fees then the item(s)

Lightning or something else would probably be the way to go.

-Dave

If the asset is significantly appreciated, then we may have to increase the decimals, but I think we're far from this appreciation.

But none of those are paid in cash. If you used your VPN for 1,000 minutes, you'd pay $0.12. If you used it another minute, you wouldn't pay another $0.00012 as there isn't such subunit for the dollar. The smallest one is $0.01. Anything lower than that requires trust between the participants or in other words, it's an IOU.

Not to mention that you'd never pay in cash for any of the given examples, but by using an intermediary.

I actually can get pretty close to paying for just one minute, but unfortunately I have to use an altcoin for it. I've had high hopes for LN taking over those small transactions for years now, but unfortunately altcoins are still more mainstream than LN.

Based on what I have seen so far they aren't getting paid in the altcoin which is why it may look like that altcoins are "more mainstream". In all the cases I've seen, the payment goes through a centralized service (payment processor) and when user pays the shitcoin that service converts it to something else such as fiat or bitcoin and pays the receiver in that currency instead. I don't need to point out the absurdity of this whole centralized middle man thing here... which if removed altcoin payments die right away.

I've seen several non-standard implementations, which makes me think they accept crypto payments directly without middle man. One of them is a hoster that just disappeared, the other is Mullvad VPN. I'm pretty sure they run their own nodes.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ#But_if_no_more_coins_are_generated.2C_what_happens_when_Bitcoins_are_lost.3F_Won.27t_that_be_a_problem.3F