Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has a 21 total of 21million coins that could ever be produced.

I think that in itself hinders Bitcoin immensely, I mean there are over 6billion people on Earth, 300million+ just in America, Billion+ in China, etc etc.

Most people, including myself are turned off by the fact that you have to divide bitcoin into ridiculous decimal places. Most people also don't care about having to do the math behind it to figure how much bitoin is worth this object etc etc. It would of been much better if there were different types of bitcoin, like bitcoin=1bitcoin, macrobitcoin=.5bitcoin, microbitcoin= .25 bitcoin etc etc.

This also leads me to believe, that bitcoin was created as a fun Project by Satoshi, if Bitcoin was meant to be serious, then I'm sure it would of had a more realistic number than 21million total coin supply for long term use, this means bitcoin wasn't meant to serious and regarded as it is today by Satoshi..

From first look with the perspective on someone who never seen or heard about bitcoin before, If I saw that Bitcoin had a total coin supply of 21million coins, or that 21million were the max amount of coins that would ever exist and the ridiculous decimal places and math required for bitcoin..I would bypass Bitcoin easily..This is what most people think when they see or hear of bitcoin...

Well there are names for the smaller 'types' millibitcoin etc. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MilliBit See the units at the bottom.

the obvious solution is bytecoin.  worth 8 times as much  :o

If you are complaining about how the idea of having a currency that is scare to be your store of value then you do not understand the basics of why people desire a currency system like bitcoin.

That's 2,100,000,000,000,000 Satoshis (BTC0.00000001).

If that ever becomes an issue then a soft fork can add more digits.

This is a non-issue.

It is a major issue to morons who flunked math class.  All others don't seem to struggle with this nonissue.

Logic fail. The prefix 'micro' means one millionth. Period. Always has, always will.

There are already 1,000,000 microBTC (uBTC) in a bitcoin. There are 100 satoshis in a uBTC. There are 1,000 uBTC in a millibitcoin (mBTC). There are 1,000 mBTC in a BTC.

I fail to see a problem.

You don't know that. You are just assuming that everyone is like you and that people can't adapt.

Also, people have used small fractions in the past. You probably don't realize that the dollar is worth much less than it used to be, and people routinely dealt with small fractions of a dollar when it was worth much more. You could buy a lot of stuff with a half penny. Did you know that that a farthing is 1/960th of a pound sterling?

Its true though. If there are 21 million bitcoins, and they currently at about 500$, that means there can be about 10.5 billion dollars worth of bitcoin that is avaliable. That is a massive amount of money, but not enough to hold a lot of money for people like governments, or rich people like bill gates. Satoshi or even less might be the base notation, instead of bitcoin, cause theres like 21 trilion or quadrillion denominations and if they are worth 1000$ each (I wish) thats 21 thousand quadrillion (whatever that number is)

People have adapted...to two decimal places.  The OP has a fair point, from the perspective of the general public.  People don't like to deal in fractions of things.  People like whole things.  Many people still can't even count back change.  It's just a reality of society.  

Bitcoin may prove to be useful as a store of value and that's where I think it should put it's focus.  It should stop trying to also be a currency.  It's just not useful.  It's not likely to be widely distributed enough to disrupt major world currencies, because there simply are not enough for everyone to have plenty for use.

Cryptocurrencies that are launching with billions of coins, are on the right track as transactional currencies.  It may be simply a mental thing, but perception is reality.

I've read somewhere that in a few millions years, the sun is going to die, and we will all die. But I don't care, just like I don't care about the 21 million limit. It shouldn't mean anything to anyone.

Indeed, half cents existed in the U.S. (for the better part of a cenutry) and elsewhere in the past. Also 3, 5, 10, 15, 25 and 50 cent notes.

Best post in thread.

If you have 10btc today, you don't actually have 10 units of wealth. You have 10,000,000 units of wealth. Call them whatever you want.

When the day comes that 1 Satoshi >= 1 dollar, you will understand why that distinction is important.

Exactly this^^

Problem is exactly what you said..mainstream society, which is Most of Society is turned off by all these "microbits" and "satoshi", it's too irregular. I have friends who don't care about Bitcoin but know the basics about it, wanna know why they dont care? Because bitcoin is offputting with all it's math, and the 21million total limit makes it seem as if the currency itself wasn't designed to be thought of seriously.

Okay so we covered how "there's only ever going to be 21 million of them!" is a non-issue, now I see we have moved on to "but people find it hard to deal with more than two decimal places!"

Can we agree that if Bitcoin is ever to be wildly successful, we are still a very very long way, if ever, from Bitcoin being the primary currency of any society? And in fact that may never happen and isn't even something that needs to happen for Bitcoin to be considered a success by some people's metrics?

If we are working from that assumption then it also follows that in stores and on web sites, goods and services are going to continue to be denominated in the primary currency of the region. So let's say $ for the purposes of discussion.

In which case it is going to be down to the Bitcoin user's software to perform a meaningful conversion between $ price and BTC price. And many of them already do this in exactly the following way.

So, for example, something today on sale in a store in the US for $123.45 might be purchased for BTC0.27310739. Instead of the Bitcoin app just showing:


it would make sense for it to instead say something like:


Also in a world with much greater adoption of Bitcoin we would assume that the fiat to bitcoin exchange rate will not be so volatile so people will be used to knowing that "one $ is worth about mBTC300" and not see that swing massively on a daily basis.

The use of mBTC here is just an example and in reality it will settle down to whatever denomination makes the most sense.

That's already how Android Wallet presents sums, and I find that pretty intuitive.

So again, I do not see the presence of more than two decimal places to be a major issue.

I don't see the problem with people getting used to the denominations.  Everyone does it when they switch from currency to currency. You don't even have to do any calculations when paying, anyway, because it is all digital.

It would be more convenient if Bitcoin were to evolve so that 1 unit (say BTC 0.0000001 or whatever) became synonymous with, and had a nominally accepted value of an everyday object such as an apple or a brick or something.

"Bitcoin? That'll do nicely! Your bill, Sir, comes to 4 bricks and 78 pins"


Martin.

The point is,
if governments, or rich people like bill gates would want to buy all those 21 million (or rather ~12.5 million that are mined so far) coins,
they would fail badly.
They'd probably have to pay way more than 10.5 billion dollars to get even half the coins (if there is that much for sale at all).

The math isn't that complicated.  Sounds like the problem is with the public education system, not Bitcoin.  Instead of dumbing down Bitcoin, perhaps the sheeple need to wisen up.

And, unlike the Sun, the bitcoin software can easily be modified to remove the 21 million coin limit.

Big LOL at the notion that Bitcoins are "scarce".  One Satoshi isn't even the minimum divisible amount and there will be 21 trillion of them when that limit is hit.  Scarce my ass.

If you know this you would not even ask the question in the first place http://www.bitnote.co - knowledge is power!

This has been done already,
it's called an altcoin.

are you stupid, or just trolling?

The best part about bitcoin is that dumb people fail at understanding it and will be the last to adopt. Its a wealth transfer from the dumb to the smart.

I have been saying this for 2 years. Nobody listens.

The topic has never, ever been discussed before, congrats OP.
Some people will think mBit is a solution.
Others are happy with earning 0.0005 BTC

This "problem" gives hope and purpose to at least a few alt coins which will thrive in the future.

This is why we have Machine Coin - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=552633.0

alts like Dimecoin?  ;D ;D ;D I couldn't resist.

This ^

Look ^ bagholders with riches struck eyes, too bad they will be paupers soon with btc tanking

I see. What coin does the Indian cryptocurrency scene use then?

This is like complaining there are only so many $1000 bills in the world...absolutely stupid.

Machine Coin - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=552633.0

Actually you have 1,000,000,000. But who's counting?

This seems to be limited to 84 million coins, so if there is a problem with 21, won't there be a problem with 84 as well?

If bitcoin's had to be traded in whole coins, than yes this would be a huge problem.  But of course this is not the case.  Perhaps the conventional unit should be made the mBTC which would make a unit worth about .45 based on today's prices, but the number of coins is not a problem.

Friend and I put together a piece for a Bitnote unit of currency.  Kind of like mBTC.  Either way, think perception is an issue that could be improved.   http://bitnote.co (http://bitnote.co)

As others have pointed out, it's a non-issue with the numbers.

I think the bigger problem is their lack of distribution, and if there will be a "Bitcoin 1%" forever. But that's another topic for another day.

I completely agree on above. If it "just need a soft fork" then the Great Dalmutians out there, rumored to have 6 dots on this forum ;-) , should start implementing it.
People is dumb. This is an universal truth that sooner or later everyone realizes. Let there be satoshis, in the digital age theres a need for micro mili payments, for ad viewing, etc. But the monetary psichology of losing a 1 to be remained with 0.02 is too strong.
If i were satoshi, i should have proposed a 10,000,000,000 units coin. To moreless cover the future earth population, assuming a slowing of breeding. And still use satoshis. That will be an awesome way to track how many coins you have compared to other people... "Hey i have the bitcoins of an entire Malasian family! yay!" Dumb stuff like that. But, mind you, the population is dumb. Yep.

 ::)

Every MAC consists of 100.000.000 pieces.  Therefore we have maximum 84.000.000 * 100.000.000 = 8.400.000.000.000.000 units.  

Accordingly to studies we'll have 10.000.000.000 people on earth in 2050.  To be able to substitute a classical currency we must have enough units for everybody so lets calculate 8.400.000.000.000.000 / 10.000.000.000 = 840.000 units or 0.0084 MAC. Bitcoin will be worse

Amazing how many people are keen to apportion work to others.

If you think it is that necessary, start drafting the BIP, or switch to a coin that has your desired 11 decimal places (wtf?) to begin with.

Myself I'd rather developers worked on things that are more immediately useful.

FTFY

This is not a change that's needed now, or any time in the next 10 years.

A classical currency here means Euro/Dollar etc

There should be exactly as many BTC as there are humans on earth.

In this way 99.999% of the global population would be reminded of how fuck they are every time they look at their account balance and it may result in them doing something about it.  (The symbol I'd use for 'peoplecoin' would closely resemble a pitch-fork.)

Yes, but you don't really mean "A classical currency", you mean "All classical currencies".  You're expecting Bitcoin to have enough to go around for 10 billion people.  Neither the USD nor the Euro currently have enough units for that. Not by a long shot.

Every BTC consists of 100,000,000 satoshis. So as I say, your Machine Coin supply is only 4 times as much.

Really not getting why this is a killer feature of Machine Coin.

Only by a factor of 4 which doesn't seem significant.

Given that it isn't that hard to increase the number of decimal places in Bitcoin if that is ever needed, an altcoin that merely provides 4 times as much supply to begin with does not seem like it will compete with bitcoin's existing momentum.

Honestly I'd have given more weight to your arguments if you'd said Dogecoin was better because it has constant coin creation. I still wouldn't have agreed with your position! But at least it would have been logically consistent. Right now you just look like someone desperate to pump an altcoin regardless, sorry.

I think 21 million is indeed a small amount, but it just makes wealth more concentrated. NUmber of coins not too important. Perhaps 84 million ( 4x supply) would be better, but hey, too late to change. Good thing BTC are divisible!

there are bigger problems than this, this is not problem at all in reality
adoption is key, simplicity is key
too complicated for general aundience for now

I am not here to pump anything, i dont have the hash power, nor the btc to buy lots of MAC right now. Its the thought and elegancy the dev puts into the project is why i chose it over btc, btc looks way too overrated

When I buy goods in the uk that cost less than a pound, I don't think to myself how irritating, that's like 0.18 pounds, I think to myself oh, that's 18 pence, because there's one hundred pence in a pound.

And this is someone that everyone in every country has become accustomed too. The OP is arguing that most people can't distinguish something that they already do distinguish with existing fiat currencies!

Do we really need to manufacture stuff to worry about? Eventually there will be standard denominations of BTC much like other currency. How will a million dollars ever be real if we don't have million dollar bills circulating?

Its for psychological reasons like this that we really should consider changing the default unit to a millibit.  I have all my wallets switched to show in millibits.  Perhaps then people will be like "oh shit son, I have like 3,500 bitcoins", and bitcoin will be 50 cents like the old days!

I think more people would jump into the game in the order of millibits at this point, as well.  From an outside view, people don't see that perspective of being able to split one coin seamlessly almost a million times over.  Even Jr. Members with 50 some-odd posts don't get it either, so I don't expect joe-consumer to ever get it.

But of course, I can see the headlines now "BITCOIN CRASHES TO FIFTY CENTS!"

*facepalm

Yes humans are capable of evolving and adapting. if you go look at the amazing  things sceinces and doing, we willl be a have to be adapting to the new technology. 

ROFL! 

Why do you insist on speaking for "most of mainstream society"?

+1

:)

what a stupid post.
buy some tix or doge or flappy then if bitcoin is too expensive or complicated for you ... gosh!

Seriously though, thank you. In my opinion BTC will hopefully bring about changes in the way people think about their government issued fiat currencies, and realize that they don't have to be dependent of that. But it is not for everybody. Seriously people, decimal places are Not that hard to understand...  Why should we dumb down our system just to accommodate the ignorant masses?

You seem to amaze to almost anything, as this was a mere comment in a small thread on an internet forum. Im not running for President and this is not my religion, so just relax.


Your apparently perma-state of amazingness prevents you from reading correctly. I proposed 10K million UNITS. Not decimal places. If you want to Wow-Such-Amaze yourself even more, realize that im proposing here :

10,000,000,000.00000000

Omg. Very numbers. much headache.

"Ignorant masses"  LOL.  Without mass adoption BTC or anything else for that matters will become extinct

Wait, counting in base ten is confusing? Decimals are too hard?

Please explain how you learned this extremely complex system:

$1.00 =  100% of 1 dollar
$0.25 =  25% of 1 dollar
$0.10 =  10% of 1 dollar
$0.01 =  1% of 1 dollar

BTC1 = 100% of one BTC
etc
etc
etc

and so on and so forth. BTC is far more divisible and the fact that there will only be 21M is simply an argument to strengthen the thought that Satoshis may very well end up the major unit of usage for the general public.

I'm just glad that we don't have to worry about inflation and words like decabitcoin and the like.

The OPs point I believe.  Is that dividing the coins down to 8 decimal places is cumbersome.  Has nothing to do with math and everything to do with pragmatics

Then just use miliBTC or nanoBTC

Why didn't Satoshi just set total BTC amount to 21 Trillion?  Its just an arbitrary number.  Ever thought of that? 

21,000,000 BTC
or
21,000,000,000 mBTC
or
21,000,000,000,000 uBTC
or
2,100,000,000,000,000 sats

People just need to think like cents instead of dollars, like in the early 1800s

Enough people have already adopted Bitcoin to make it viable.  There are more people now using Bitcoin than there are using many of the currencies of the countries on this list (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2215rank.html).  "Mass adoption" might be nice, but isn't necessary for Bitcoin to continue to succeed.

Actually it is one of the plus points of the BTC. It gives the BTC advantage over fiat, as inflation will not be applicable to it.

Correct, it's just an arbitrary number.  It doesn't matter how many pieces you initially decide to cut the pie into.  What matters is that you are able to keep cutting each piece into smaller pieces.

Exactly. Coin supply is irrelevant.  This is one thing that many don't seem to grasp on coinmarketcap. I'm thinking of creating trillion-trillion coin and being number 1 on the list  :D

Hals post to Satoshi on sourceforge the first week of bitcoin was speculating each coins worth to eventually be $10 million. That is just insane and ridiculous. It will never get there just for the fact that Satoshis coins are dormant and most likely belong to him/them. Giving them astronomical wealth. That to me is what most likely could doom bitcoin. 1 man has too much for nothing.  And every person who wasn't there today and every day since will not adopt because the are disadvantaged.


Edit link to Hals and Satoshis correspondence:
http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/21312757/

Question?

Might be a stupid question, a naive question, or a good question - don't know yet, still learning - but it is a legit question to better understand the concept going on with the division part.

I get the whole btc and the division into units in per centages part, though I am still shaky on what they'd be called per se. What I'm asking is that the units that are created in the division, are they also able to increase in value according to the valuation of the whole bitcoin at any given time? I'm trying to understand if this applies or not.

Like 1btc is the equivalent of (or "worth") $100 usd, and .50btc is worth half that, or $50, and on down the line. If, I have .25 btc (whatever it's called), and the "whole" btc triples value to $300, what's the value then of the .25? Does it increase to .75 or is it a hard devaluation and it's always worth .25 no matter the overall value of the whole?

What is a satoshi "worth" or how much of the whole is it - how does that work?

Don't throw shit, this is confusing and new  ;D

You need to understand that in the protocol the unit is the satoshi and the value is just the number of those. Having 8 decimal places in Bitcoin is just the wallet's way of displaying that; it's not doing floating point maths in the protocol. As a consequence it really doesn't matter where you put the decimal point as these are just abstract numbers.

So the maximum possible number of units for Bitcoin is 2,100,000,000,000,000, and you are proposing an altcoin with a maximum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - only around 476 times more.

Hopefully you can see that if the supply limit is a problem then a coin with a supply 476 times higher probably isn't going to be enough. Also I hope you can see that it's rather pointless worrying about this non-issue now when it would be a lot more productive to see at what level usage settles at and soft fork if necessary.

You must admit that if you created an altcoin right now with the properties you describe, it would almost certainly be a flop as it would get no traction compared to bitcoin, which probably explains why the only people seriously discussing this are the ones who don't understand and are inventing work for hypothetical other people to carry out.

I think you're American so right now you are used to the common names of some denominations of US coinage - cent, nickel, dime, quarter. You know that they go:

• cent - one hundredth of a dollar
• nickel - five hundredths of a dollar
• dime - ten hundredths (tenth) of a dollar
• quarter - twenty five hundredths of a dollar

This is so obvious to you that you probably never even really think about it that way.

Similarly there are one thousand millibits (mBTC) in a BTC, or one million microbits (uBTC). The absolute smallest amount of bitcoin that can be represented in the protocol right now is called a satoshi and it is BTC0.00000001.

A mBTC is always going to be one thousandth of a BTC in the same way that a ¢ is always going to be one hundredth of a $.

So whatever value one BTC has, a mBTC always has one thousandth of that value. For example, BTC1 is currently worth about $422 so mBTC1 is currently worth about $0.42.

The only reason why this seems hard is because you aren't familiar with it.

I believe that once the price of Bitcoin levels out in relation to common fiat currencies then we will settle on working in one denomination, whether that be the whole bitcoin, millibitcoin or microbitcoin.

The extra digits will be there but at the level chosen they will be so small as to not really be worth considering, like when you do a currency conversion to US dollar and end up with something like $123.527548262 - The $123.52 is the interesting part.

The protocol name is Bitcoin, thanks. Not SatoshiCoin. The unit is Bitcoin and the decimals are called unnoficially satoshis. Cmon... O_O

#BecauseIsaySo O_O Actually yes, i think its going to be enough, thats why i proposed that in first place.
I have explained myself sufficiently. One BTC for every person in the planet. With enough fractional power to be ultra manageable. Yes, i do care about the last person in Haiti. Because ultimately, this is a push of the technology to reshape the current financial conditions of everyone, at least is what i think.

I agree with you on one thing, though.This conversation is pointless but hey, we are just hanging out here in the forum :-)

Okay, on the one hand we have your "because I say so", on the other hand here is some maths.

You desire for Bitcoin to have enough supply for everyone in the world to have a whole one. You want to achieve this by multiplying the supply a factor of 476. For sake of differentiation let's call your Bitcoin modification a Paulcoin.

If a Paulcoin has 476 times the supply of Bitcoin and everything else being equal then

1 paulcoin = 0.00210084 bitcoin

Meaning that if we never did investigate this Paulcoin, the inhabitant of this hypothetical future world that you envision will have a bitcoin that they can only divide 210 thousand times in comparison to your ideal of 100 million times.

My point is that a minimum unit 210 thousand times smaller than the whole is not practically any different to a minimum unit 100 million times smaller than the whole and that even if we assume a limited supply is a problem, what you have suggested is not significantly different than the status quo.

No one is going to be worrying that they can only divide it 210 thousand times, not 100 million times. No one is going to be limited by that.

It would be like someone saying that the US cent is unwieldy and they wished they had something worth 0.00000476 cents instead. The difference being that if it actually somehow did become unwieldy then it could be fixed in software anyway!

Again I have to say, if your argument is that a limited supply is a real issue, simply multiplying that limit by 40 or 476 as we have seen in this topic so far is not going to make too much of a difference. I would think you'd need to consider a coin with a continual yearly supply.

The point has been made that we would be better off if the currency units had a distinct name from the network and technology (Bitcoin).
I like Fin and Fins as suggested as a tribute to Hal Finney.

We could have 1 fin = 0.001 BTC so that the money supply limit would be 21 Billion fins, a number that is more acceptable by the lay person.

Shit, if you can't handle all those zeros, decimal places and precision just use scientific notation.

1 Satoshi: 1.00e-8
21 million: 0.21e+8

21million does not hinder anything apart from the day bitcoin is as widely acceptable as gold. bare with me:

in comparison gold, there is only 171,000 tonnes of gold. yes everyone would love to own a tonne of gold each, but they cant. so instead they buy bars, ounces, grams, etc. even then people would love to afford to own not a whole "tonne", but atleast a whole "bar", because they know that telling their friends they own a "bar" is a nice thing to say. and so there are ingots, ounces and grams for the divisions of gold

bitcoin is divisible by 8 decimals. so like gold people will buy divisions of bitcoin, all will funny names that get developed in the future, EG (maybe: Bitmills, Ksats)

the better part of bitcoin is storage, transmission and also the fact that it cant be faked by having a thin layer of bitcoin molded around a cheap altcoin, and trying to be sold as a real authentic bitcoin.

in the future people will compare the term:
"100 grams of gold" to "100sat of bitcoin"
"gold bars" to "bitmills"
"gold ounces" to "microbitcoins"
etc etc, whatever the terms may be

now lets get back to the point:
so lets continue using the gold vs bitcoin
the rarity 171k gold tonnes vs 21m bitcoins

on the bases of rarity (ignoring price) 1 tonne is as rare as 122.8bitcoin. now lets price that up
1 Tonne of gold is worth £26,684,500 (based on a spot price of £830 per ounce, multiplied by 32,500 ounces to give you the tonne figure)

if we divide that £26.6845 million price valuation by the equivalent rarity amount 122.8btc, then we get a bitcoin rarity value of £217,288.07(~$300k for you yanks) per bitcoin, (when bitcoin gets as popular as gold and demand requires it)

simply put, on a rarity scale compared to gold. 1 bitcoin is the equivalent to roughly £200k/$300k (rounded numbers so don't knit-pick)

which is more then enough, because this allows for each person of all 7 billion to only need to invest £651.86 (to own 0.000031btc) where £1(~$1.50) is 4 or 5 satoshi

which makes it harder to transmit under 20p (30c). so i agree "Bitcoin's 21million total coin supply hinders it immensely"
but here is the kicker.....

when £1 ($1.50) is worth 5sat due to being as widely or more accepted than gold, we would be talking about decades not weeks. and at that time 1 loaf of bread, 2 litres of milk will cost in fiat terms over £$10 due to government fit printing (inflation), making under 20p/30c fiat amounts useless where nothing can be bought that cheap.

so the kicker is scale-ability of bitcoin will work, and 21million does not hinder anything, unless 7 billion people invested 3 weeks wages into bitcoin right now, before governments have finished fucking up the fiat printing inflation.

I think this topic is irrelevant. Have you ever used Yen currency ? Bitcoin numbers will be something like that just opposite. Right now 1 ¥ = 0.009642$

Doesn't that valuation mean 1 satoshi is worth £2*10^5 / 1*10^8 = £2*10^-3, or £0.002 or 0.2p ? I think you missed a factor of 100.

If it becomes a problem, a soft-fork can add more precision. (There are 12 spare bits due to the 21 million BTC limit being smaller than what will fit in a 64-bit integer, and we can add more bits if we have to.)

Inflation of fiat is irrelevant here. If a loaf of bread cost 2 satoshi, that would be a problem for Bitcoin even if 2 satoshi happened to be £500.

It seems to me that this discussion is similar to the official one where it was proposed that micro-BTC be the default unit https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3862

No matter the total supply every Bitcoin will always inevitable be worth more than 1USD, only an American would be egocentric enough to expect 1USD=1BTC (because BTC is only in the U.S. right?)

WordCoin!

or jump right ahead to QuadCoin!

the solution is putting x number of satoshis into a wallet, and encrypting the Private Key in a CAST-5 hash where Px is the xth prime number

Fear.

Yet another sign we are near the bottom of this bubble collapse cycle. As for me, I am going to stuff some more fiat bills into my local Robocoin ATM today.

Lucky  :D

This why gold never caught on. There is only something like 150,000 tons of gold. So only 150,000 people can use gold. No wonder it's worthless.

Well said. Here is the proof
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/31/wave-retirements-hitting-hoover-dam-workforce-as-government-scrambles-to-fill/

How do you call a fraction of a dogecoin? A puppycoin?

Thanks - and  :o You're right, American...

So provided I did comprehend the above like I thought I just did - it would go up in value but not denomination, like 25c is 25c even when the value of the dollar rises and falls. I get that much but I wasn't sure that this principle applied to the virtual currency or bitcoin per se.

Is there a calculator that makes it easier to make the exchanges with? I know the exchange site I went to calculated it but it was coinbase and the way that was set up was it wanted me to enter a btc amount and then it calculated it to usd amount for what I'd pay.

Is there one that does the opposite first - I can put in $10 or my own amount and it tells me the btc number and I can enter that in the coinbase?

While here, do yall recommend coinbase for a first purchase or is there one that's better to start with? I'm ready to do it but still need to bone up on the process part and the keys, where to do all that stuff.

Thanks again

Bitcoin is probably not meant to be used by the innumerate.

These days if you can count makes you one of the "elite".

Ah, come on...That's overstating it a bit.  Being able to do long division with a paper and pencil however...

(One might detect that I am an aging USian...)

IMHO the only major problem that would eventually arrive would be lost coins.

In all other types of currency, there's a rough track record of i.e cash in various denominations still "alive" and there's no limit for resupplying them when needed.

With Bitcoin, we only know the total number of actual (still accessible) coins can't reach 21 Million anymore due to all the coins already lost (how high that number may be, nobody knows for sure).

Since Bitcoins can "vanish" or become inaccessible for various reasons of the digital world (forgotten/non-recoverable passwords, lost paper wallets, hardware failure etc.), over time it will just keep shrinking in numbers.
I assume the most coins got lost already in the early days (i.e. people mined a relatively large number of coins but forgot about them due to low valuation and "no action" at that time or just lost them / no backup etc...)

Majority of people are morons

We need to make their life easy so they swap their fiat for bitcoins

Definitely, a 1:100 or 1:1000 split would help a lot

:/ and the morons are where the money's at (See mobile in app purchases)
Maybe we should just explain that there are how many satoshis will be created when explaining to them.

This argument always gets derailed by people who, ironically, don't understand that it has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with human psychology and spending habits.

IT wont hinder it as long as we have exchanges for bitcoin, since you can trade it for other coins that will become vauable as bitcoin.   

so, if the uBTC as a unit,  1 Satoshi = 0.01 uBTC, I think it is fit for financially. so, we suggest Bitcoin may change its unit to uBTC.

"Bitcoin is doomed because people are too dumb for decimals."  ::)

Where did you get info that Bitcoin has a 21 total of 21million coins that could ever be produced?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bitcoin+supply&l=1

Simple mathematics.

The block subsidy started at 50 BTC.

Every 210,000 blocks, the block subsidy is cut in half and rounded down to the nearest 0.000000001 BTC.

210,000 blocks X 50 BTC per block = 10,500,000 BTC.  Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
210,000 blocks X 25 BTC per block = 5,250,000 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
210,000 blocks X 12.5 BTC per block = 2,625,000 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
210,000 blocks X 6.25 BTC per block = 1,312,500 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.

If we keep up this process, eventually we reach the point where:

210,000 blocks X 0.00000002 BTC = 0.0042 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
210,000 blocks X 0.00000001 BTC = 0.0021 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
210,000 blocks X 0.00000000 BTC = 0.0 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
210,000 blocks X 0.00000000 BTC = 0.0 BTC. Then the block subsidy is cut in half.
etc.

Adding up all the totals:

10,500,000 + 5,250,000 + 2,625,000 + . . . + 0.0042 BTC + 0.0021 BTC + 0.0 BTC = 20,999,999.9769

Since 20,999,999.9769 is less than 21,000,000 we can say "There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins".

You lost me at "Mathematics"  ;D

Where is the rock that you crawled out of located?

I don't think so, have you taken a look at bitnote.co for better ways to understand the decimals. On another note, the Bitcoin Foundation can certainly ask the community the best methods to implement a feature such as the miners can invalidate transactions from stolen bitcoins and new ones can be created to make sure that 21 Millions limit is always there with no BTC lost in the process. Of course it's tricky to implement such features; however the benefit is obvious because for example if Mt Gox is proven guilty for stealing customers' funds then those coins can never be used whatsoever while the new ones can be created to keep that 21M intact. We can discuss the politics and the best ways to determine how to deal with this; however I think we are smart enough to figure out the best course of actions when it's needed.

McDonald's cash registers have little rows of LEDs that tell how many quarters, dimes etc to give back in change. Wendy's registers have made the change themselves for years. Simple math is a dying science in the US. What surprises me is how many seem PROUD of the fact that they can't do basic math.

Every website that deals in Bitcoins has an easy to use Bitcoin to USD or other altcoins and vice-versa, conversion calculator, so why is this an issue for you ?

Re math and ancient skills...

True story. When my son was about 13 I bought him a pair of hiking boots. He never wore them even though he was at the store and picked them out, tried them on unlaced and walked around. When I asked why, he laughed and said he doesn't know how to tie the laces right. I thought he was joking but nope, he wasn't. It might sound like parental fail but it's not...I bought him velcro style shoes from the first time I put him in real shoes (not baby shoes) and he just kept getting those kind every time we went shoe shopping. I know tying shoe laces is just a given for everyone it never occurred to me he didn't know how....but when I stopped and reflected, there was never any opportunity we'd needed to teach him. All his shoes had velcro straps for his entire life.

Mind blown. He could tie ties and rope and all but shoe laces were an unknown. Fortunately it only took a few minutes to show him but still...it's kind of awkward to know my own child couldn't tie his own shoelaces til he was a tween and never said a word... :o

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tie+show+laces

That is why there have been calls to swith to mBTC and the such, so there are many more units to be bough. I would rather pay $10 for 1 mBTC than get 0.01 BTC for my $10...

You'd rather pay $10 for 1 mBTC than pay $10 for 10 mBTC?

The going rate for 1 mBTC is currently about $0.414, but if you're into paying ten times as much then I have some to sell you at $4.14 per mBTC.

Totally agree!

it does NOT hinder it.  it is just like gold.  a finite supply on earth, and we can't create any more (it's only created in supernovae).  21,000,000 is figurative for the amount of gold on the earth that we will ever see

2 ^ 8 times as much?

 :D