Bitcoin Forum

Just noticed a new Article was posted by Coinbase, they are adding an optional "more user-friendly" display of BTC Unit



Source: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/89405189782/its-bits

I wonder if they will impose this as the default Unit for new Accounts and if this will be a default Unit for Purchasing on a merchants page who uses Coinbase.

Smart, something many of us have been advocating for a long time now.

There's a huge barrier to understanding bitcoin, in that, you need not possess a whole "1" bitcoin to actually have bitcoin.

By forcing people to bits it totally empowers bitcoin down to the 8th decimal.

I agree with you, the cost of purchasing 1 BTC deterred me for such a very long time, because of this I never did test/ or start too understand this technology and I regret it. When I read anything about Bitcoin or saw stuff about it in IRC, I always thought you could only purchase Coins in whole Units, this stopped me from buying any BTC because they were at 150+ dollars and that was a big investment for me too lose at the time. It was not until a friend got me to mine some Primecoin and a mess of other alts did I start to begin understanding the possibility of the Bitcoin protocol.

I don't think they will impose this as the default unless the price per BTC gets really high.   When I purchase coins, I have always purchased whole coins...so I think when buying, it is much easier in whole numbers.  I'm sure others feel differently though...

https://apicoin.io has had this option for a while, as well as being the first api and currently only api that returns bits, mbits, and btcs.

So, would 100 bitcoins be considered a Byte?

I don't mind having bits as the recognized unit of measurement
The question is how many people will recognize it as a unit of measurement
That said it is an alright for me since they said it is optional.

A rich dude used to have 1000 coins, one day, a rich guy will have thousands bits. boy. ami i dreaming?

Well remember, coinbase is doing this for competition purposes. Bitpay announced it was using bits, and this is just coinbase's way of saying, we see you bitpay.

Problem is for the average persons first taste of Bitcoins, they probably don't want to spend over $600.

I like this move, but I probably won't use it.

Are they competing or working together ? They have a lot of common investors ....AFAIK.

I'm all for anything that helps people understand and use bitcoins better. 

Early on for me all the decimals were a bit annoying along with the associated notation, e.g. bitcents, mBTC, µBTC, etc.  Now I just think in satoshi and life is much easier. 

So long term I don't see this being an issue, it may even confuse people if they don't fully understand what is being done.  Now that I am familiar with bitcoin, I would never opt to display my holdings in "bits" but no reason not to let people who want to, do so.

This seems a common misconception. I was talking to  a friend of my sister about buying some bitcoin and she said "I can't afford to spend £400 on a bitcoin!"

I wonder how many have turned away from Bitcoin because of this.

Despite the frequent and repeated opposition by a vocal minority, this was bound to happen sooner or later (and needed to in order to simplify things for new users).  If people are adamant they don't like the name, feel free to call it something else, but then most people won't be able to tell what you're talking about.  Bits are almost certainly becoming a new standard that the majority will use.

Awesome, thanks for sharing.

I think this will just add to confusion as to how much exactly someone is paying or receiving. By having things priced in uBTC or mBTC will make the conversion to these units to BTC (and thus into fiat) very difficult as the conversation rate is not available without some level of research.

Conversion of uBTC or mBTC to BTC is not hard. It's trivial. That's why we're using the metric standards instead of charging in 1/16,384 BTC increments.
Converting into fiat does take a little research or knowledge, but using m/uBTC doesn't make this any harder.

It is not hard if you know the conversation rate, but you cannot tell the conversation rate from uBTC to mBTC to BTC without some level of research. It is not the same as converting cm to mm to meters

The only thing you have to know is the metric system.

With "bits" you have to research whether they mean 1BTC, 1µBTC or 10nBTC by calling them up and asking them to quote an unambiguous  unit.

I like the principle of naming the uXBT but I don't agree with the name chosen.

There have been many discussions about this.

Yes, but exactly because bits has become some kind of meme and very clever propaganda. Many polls were rigged to make believe having 'any' name for uXBT is the same as naming it a 'bit'. These polls and discussion topics were rigged to make bit seem more popular than they were.

By rigging the poll and faking popularity, many people believed in this popularity, making it a self fulfilling prophecy. However there are better options than naming it bit.

Also, there's still many people in support of the metric system, which is in my opinion still the best option. A nickname derived from the metric system would in my opinion be the absolute best and least confusing to newcomers.

This is already a standard practice in other currencies around the world.

Cents: derived from centi (just like percent) meaning 1/100th
Mills: (less used obviously, but used in financial markets and at fuel stations) derived from milli (meaning 1/1000th)
Mikes: (not used yet because no currency supports such small denominations) derived from micro, meaning 1/millionth)

You could even expand it to nanos, picos, femtos etc.

I would not be surprised if in 10 years or so mills and mikes will be as common use in language as cents and dimes.

Yup APIcoin have been way ahead of the game with this.  My agency is really happy to be working with them :)