Bitcoin Forum

Is Bitcent the official term for a hundrendth of a Bitcoin? Soon the value of Bitcoins will be so high that it would be more practical to use Bitcents or even Bitmills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)) (or Bitmilles). I think that the Bitcoin value will rise faster also. People are more interested buying 100 Bitcents or 1000 Bitmills for $3 than 1 Bitcoin for $ 3, right?

1.02 - One bitcoin and two bitcents
0.001 - One millibitcoin (nickname "one Millie")
0.000001 - One microbitcoin (nickname "one Mike")
0.00000001 - The bitcoin base unit (nickname "one Satoshi")

Nothing is official.

I don't think so. Google stock sells just fine for hundreds of dollars. You could try an experiment over at #bitcoin-otc if you like.

4.00 - 1 nybble 
8.00 - 1 Byte coin
 :D

It's all about psychology, 100 Bitcents sounds more even though it's exactly the same amount as 1 Bitcoin, so unconsciously you think that you make a better deal even though you're not.

By that line of reasoning, why say 100 Bitcents when you can say 100000000 Satoshis instead?

Speaking for myself, I've been saying "point zero five bitcoins" for 0.05 btc. It's the only thing everyone understands, and it will make the transition to saying "point zero zero five" require less explanation. Most people in the West are terribly confused by sub-cent amounts of money and will screw up the terminology (see the Verizon incident (http://consumerist.com/2006/12/transcript-verizon-doesnt-know-how-to-count.html) if you don't believe me), so avoiding it altogether is probably safest.

It would be nice if the decimal place were a few more units to the right so that we don't have to eventually be saying "point zero zero zero one nine" all the time, but honestly no one knows how much a bitcoin will eventually be worth, so it's hard to say exactly where it should have been. (My preference is that there should have been no decimal point at all so that I could be a billionaire the first time I generate a block, but I'm kind of a geek and my preference shouldn't be taken as an actual good idea.)

Makes it seem cheap.

Exactly, too many zeros makes them seem to be worthless.

One share of BRK:A == $121,709

Someone tries to manipulate me by playing number games like that, I'm likely to distrust them.

if you're talking about the Verizon incident it was just basic math. They probably thought he was gaming them. or they understood the mistake and didn't want accept liability. just my 0.02 cents  :P

I think he meant 100 bitcents vs. 1 bitcoin.

Here's my question: Should Bitcoin be capitalized when you are referring to the unit? "I have 10 bitcoins." "I have 10 Bitcoins." Following English rules, I'm thinking no, but I see it both ways. Frequently.

Myself, I think the use of the "bitcent" terminology should be discouraged.  I've laid out my rationale in other threads, but I'll do it again:

Human beings are not particularly adept at dealing with large numbers and/or great variations in orders of magnitude.  Nevertheless, in the West people have been educated to group orders of magnitude into threes: thousands, millions, billions, etc.  Now, Bitcoin currently has 8 decimal cases.  This means that further subunits will be demanded even if the term "bitcent" becomes widely used.  These may be called millicents, microcents, or whatever.  And herein lies a huge potential source of confusion, since we would have a system which would mix two different groupings for orders of magnitude: a two-order grouping (1BTC = 100 bitcent) and a three-order grouping (1 Bitcent = 1000 millicent).

If you still don't see this as a problem, try to answer instinctively (and correctly!) to the following question: "How many Bitcoins in a million millicents?".  Do you understand now why mixing different order of magnitude groupings within the same system is a recipe for disaster?

Hence, I propose that instead of talking in bitcents we encourage the use of millicoins, microcoins, and nanocoins.  That way the entire system relies on a single three-order grouping.

+1

+1 this is a very important factor, especially for newcomers. also after a split stocks often rise for no apparent reason.


+1 good name. 1 Satoshi = 1 mBTC = 0.001 BTC

Because 1000 is substantial and 100000000 is scary.

Cents are tiny and worthless, use millies imo. Very much looking forward to shipping 3 mikes for a tasty beverage.

As soon as the minimum fee-free transaction size drops to a millie, I think this unit will become widely used. And the minimum fee-free size does need to drop, if only so that the Bitcoin Faucet won't run dry so easily.

Well, the term millicoins is fine with me too, I wasn't really pushing the term "bitcent" at all, I was only pointing out that a person is much more likely to pay $1000 for 1000 millicoins (or 100 bitcents whichever catches on), instead of paying the same amount for 1 bitcoin even though it's the exact same amount he's getting. Thats how the human mind works, and it would be good if there was an official term so it would be used consistently by everyone. Why not have a poll about what term should be official?

About your question "How many Bitcoins in a million millicents?". The thing is that your mixing terms with "millicent". It has neither the word "bit" or "coin" in it, because is just a prefix and a suffix and nothing else. "Millicent" could just as well refer to american cents because the term has no connection to bitcoins. So only either prefixes or suffixes should be used but never combined. So the use of either 0.01 bitcents or 100 microcoins are acceptable to me, but never 10 millicents.

+1

Furthermore, as many people argued in the discussion against using the thai baht symbol for Bitcoin because it implied some association with an existing currency or country, using cents would bring about the same effect regarding it's use in a selection of existing currencies. Use of the SI prefixes will provide the advantage that most people are already familiar with it, either through schooling and/or exposure to everyday technology. And SI is somewhat open source, is it not?   8)

"Cent" is a standard metric prefix---it's short for "centi-bitcoin" and no one will have a hard time understanding it. But I agree that adopting cents as a common unit of account is a bad idea, since a mil will have enough value to serve that purpose very soon.

If I were deciding the convention, I would say we should:

• Use "bitcoins" for amounts greater than or equal to ฿1, even given sub-bitcoin precision. Example: ฿499.95 is "four hundred ninety nine point nine five bitcoins".
• Use "mils" for amounts greater than or equal to ฿0.001 but less than ฿1. Example: ฿0.23 is "two hundred thirty mils".
• Use "mics" for amounts greater than ฿0.000001 but less than ฿0.001. Example: ฿0.0001 is "one hundred mics".
• If you regularly need to worry about amounts less than ฿0.000001, consider creating a new currency.
  

But this is just one more proposal, and I'll probably accept whatever convention we settle on.

Extremely new here, but this topic is something I've been thinking about for a few days now.  

It would seem to me to be best described as a precision indicator to determine the scale on which you are transacting.

1 BTC  = 1 Bitcoin
1 BC2 = .01 Bitcoin
1 BC3 = .001 Bitcoin
1 BC4 = .0001 Bitcoin
......
1 BC8 = .00000001 Bitcoin

If i'm buying something that costs 30 BC4, that would easily be understood to be the same as 1 BC3 or otherwise  .003 Bitcoins.

I like BCx nomenclature as it's easy to see on the screen, not too hard to say, at least in English and could be quite easily displayed in numbers that people understand.

This may have been suggested before and completely torn apart, but thought I'd put it out there.

I support this, I think it makes the most sense and will be very easy to adopt. The abbreviations would naturally be mBTC, uBTC, and nBTC.

How about s/mills/mits/g ? As a contraction of milli-bit. Does seem to be used for anything.

For the sake of completeness partiality I'll mention another proposal, Millie for milli-bitcoin and Mike for micro-bitcoin

>Hence, I propose that instead of talking in bitcents we encourage the use of millicoins, microcoins, and nanocoins.  That way the entire system relies on a single three-order grouping.

+1


this is a very important discussion --

the root concept of 'bitcoin' is 'coin' - the monetary element, not bit - the generic data element --- using prefixes around 'coin' makes the most sense.

thankfully the international systems (SI) of units specifies twenty prefixes that go +/- 10 places --- so if 'bit' is the root coin value, you can express the following:


bitcoin = bcoin = 1                    = a whole bitcoin

decicoin = dcoin = 0.1                = a tenth of a bitcoin
centicoin = ccoin = 0.01         = a hundredth of a bitcoin
millicoin = mcoin =  0.001         = a Thousandth of a bitcoin
microcoin = μcoin = 0.000001      = a Millionth of a bitcoin
nanocoin = ncoin  = 0.000000001 = a Billionth of a bitcoin

now take that in the other direction and you can talk about equating bitcoins at higher scales as well - handy for summing up countries national debt for example:

decacoin =    dacoin = 10 bitcoin = Ten bitcoins
hectocoin = hcoin    = 100 bitcoin = 1 Hundred bitcoins
kilocoin =    kcoin   = 1,000 bitcoin = 1 Thousand bitcoins
megacoin = Mcoin = 1,000,000 bitcoin = 1 Million bitcoins
gigacoin =    Gcoin   = 1,000,000,000   bitcoin = 1 Billion bitcoins

standard calculators could be adapted like http://www.bit-calculator.com/ to make all these conversons effortless---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
The International System of Units specifies twenty SI prefixes:
SI prefixes
Prefix   Symbol   1000m   10n   Decimal   Short scale   Long scale   Since[n 1]
yotta   Y   10008   1024   1000000000000000000000000   Septillion   Quadrillion   1991
zetta   Z   10007   1021   1000000000000000000000   Sextillion   Trilliard   1991
exa   E   10006   1018   1000000000000000000   Quintillion   Trillion   1975
peta   P   10005   1015   1000000000000000   Quadrillion   Billiard   1975
tera   T   10004   1012   1000000000000   Trillion   Billion   1960
giga   G   10003   109   1000000000   Billion   Milliard   1960
mega   M   10002   106   1000000   Million   1960
kilo   k   10001   103   1000   Thousand   1795
hecto   h   10002/3   102   100   Hundred   1795
deca   da   10001/3   101   10   Ten   1795
10000   100   1   One   –
deci   d   1000−1/3   10−1   0.1   Tenth   1795
centi   c   1000−2/3   10−2   0.01   Hundredth   1795
milli   m   1000−1   10−3   0.001   Thousandth   1795
micro   μ   1000−2   10−6   0.000001   Millionth   1960
nano   n   1000−3   10−9   0.000000001   Billionth   Milliardth   1960
pico   p   1000−4   10−12   0.000000000001   Trillionth   Billionth   1960
femto   f   1000−5   10−15   0.000000000000001   Quadrillionth   Billiardth   1964
atto   a   1000−6   10−18   0.000000000000000001   Quintillionth   Trillionth   1964
zepto   z   1000−7   10−21   0.000000000000000000001   Sextillionth   Trilliardth   1991
yocto   y   1000−8   10−24   0.000000000000000000000001   Septillionth   Quadrillionth   1991
^ The metric system was introduced in 1795 with six prefixes. The other dates relate to recognition by a resolution of the CGPM.

My problem with this is it makes you think to do the conversion.  I know more than one American that thinks milli means millionth not thousandth.

That is partially why I think the BCx nomenclature makes sense as it specifically states how many decimals of a full bitcoin you are using.

1 BC9 is a little easier to envision than 1 nanocoin and likewise a BC3 is easier to visualize the fraction than millicoin... at least for me.

Keep in mind that the base unit (1 shatoshi or 0.00000001 BTC) is 10 nanocoins. It makes no sense to talk about 1 nanobitcoin. Talking about 10-990 nanobitcoins would be engineering notation.

> Keep in mind that the base unit (1 shatoshi or 0.00000001 BTC) is 10 nanocoins. It makes no sense to talk about 1 nanobitcoin. Talking about 10-990 nanobitcoins would be engineering notation.

oh - thats right. actually there's no such thing as a gigacoin either because at most the entire economy will consist at 2030 or whatever, from what i understand, of only 21 megacoins.

>My problem with this is it makes you think to do the conversion.  I know more than one American that thinks milli means millionth not thousandth. That is partially why I think the BCx nomenclature makes sense as it specifically states how many decimals of a full bitcoin you are using. 1 BC9 is a little easier to envision than 1 nanocoin and likewise a BC3 is easier to visualize the fraction than millicoin... at least for me.

i agree that 1 BC3 is rather elegant notation... i think that more then one notation will exist ----- 'let me give you 3 BC9s for that' doesn't exactly roll off thing tongue... it does sounds very futuristic though... its kind of hard to think where the currency will go but perhaps there would be spans of decades where people are just working with one denomination for most transactions...

lets say that in bitcoin's next rally it triples in value again... then

b-coins could even out around US$100
d-coins would then be around US$10
c-coins would be US$1
m-coins would be US$0.10
μ-coin would then be US$0.01

no need to talk about n-coins yet.

then in maybe... i have no idea --- a year or 5 years or ... a month - i dont know -- there's another huge rally and...

b-coins could even out around US$1000
d-coins would then be around US$100
c-coins would be US$10
m-coins would be US$1
μ-coin would then be US$0.10
n-coin would then be US$0.01

--- wait that doesn make sense --- someone smarter than me will figure this out. .. i'm tired. good discussion here though!! i'm going to go search for the illusive 22nd megacoin..

no need to talk about n-coins yet.

Here are my 2 cents (no pun intended) on the subject of bitcoin in smaller denominations.

Although being an engineer myself, I dont favor scienfific denominations like decicoin, centicoin, milicoin, and so on. This is nice and clear for techies, but for day to day use, its simply too much overhead. We should come up with informal simple namings.

People dont say centidollars, they say cent. They dont say kilodollar, they say grand. A short label is much more convenient when you have to use that label hundreds of times a day.  And yes, probabbly the average person processes money prices more than a hundred times a day, even unconsiously. For example, When you buy a single soda you probably process price numbers 3 to 20 times:

1-3. You see how much the product costs, and compare the price to you own stored reference value. Also you might see the price of similar products on the shelf, before making your decision.
4-10. You estimate or count how much cash you carry (processing the unit for each bill or coin)
11. You pay
12. You count the change.
13. You evaluate if you have still enough cash in your pocket, or if you need to worry about going to an ATM.

So, as every good programmer knows well, suboptimal code adds up a lot of wasted processing power in the long run. Thinking in terms of "miliocoins" simply wont work. People will spontaneouly end up using something shorter, it dosent matter if it is not scientific or coherent with the whole naming system.

Here is my proposal for 0.01 and 0.001 BTC. It borrows words from another language.

I remember that scientists borrowed the word "sol" from spanish "sun" to name the lenght of the day in Mars (which is slightly longer than the 24.0 hrs day in the Earth). So following this idea, my proposal borrows the words hundred (=cien) and thousand (= mil) from spanish. The beauty of the words is that they are extremely short, and at the same time they already mean something.

0.01 BTC
written "cien" or cBTC
pronounced "seean"


0.001 BTC
written "mil" or mBTC
pronounced "meel"

Example. How much for the ipod? 70 cien. And how much for the batteries? 55 mil.

Short, concise, simple. What do you think?

As Bitcoins apreciate, and this values become too big for most transactions, we begin to think of new words for smaller denominations.

We do not need to "over-specify" everything today. As time comes, we will see a natural evolution.

So I do not have any recommendation. But I have a prediction for a natural evolution:

• BTC: Today, people use BTC as the common unit
• BT¢ / Bc: Soon, people will want to use Bitcents, because they are used to 100-th division from their own currencies in most countries. Currency symbol will naturally turn out as BT¢, or Bc for use with normal characters ("BTc" would be too easily confused with BTC, so omission of the "T" will be preferred).
  Note that "cBTC" would technically be the correct notation in SI system (like centimeter=cm, centiliter=cl), but unlikely to be adopted by the masses.
• mBTC: Soon later, people will also start introduction of mBTC in common use. So "mBTC" and "BT¢/Bc" will co-exist, and people will become used to both.
• As BTC further deflates, "mBTC" will become more and more the standard as opposed to "BT¢/Bc". Finally, "mBTC" will take the role that the "BTC" unit has today.
• mBT¢ / mBc: Soon after, with further deflation, the whole thing will start all over again, but now with the starting point being mBTC instead of BTC. Hence, we will see a "mBT¢" / "mBc" popping up..., followed by
• µBTC / uBTC.
• µBT¢ / uBT¢ / µBc / uBc: Finally, the last unit will be used, too.
• The nicknames will be bitcoins, (bit)cents, millies/mills, millicents, micros/mikes, microcents

Since the evolution above will not occur over night, no adoption problems are to be expected, because people have enough time to become gradually accustomed to each new unit (just like people have become gradually accustomed to HDD-capacities like MB -> GB -> Tera-Byte (and soon, "Peta-Byte" will be in every day's language)).

PS: "฿" is already used - it is the Thailand Baht (THB), so it shouldn't be used for Bitcoin. We just stay with "BTC".

Guys... did you read that Verizon phone call transcript?  Do you not realize what world we live in?  Regular people will NEVER understand mBTC and all of that nonsense.  Metric prefixes, decimal points, etc... is far beyond the ken of the common man.  I had been an advocate of moving the decimal place 2-3 places (though place would be kind of cool right now, dropping it right between the dollar and euro) but now I think that we need to move it 8 places or whatever it is to get it so that 1 BTC = 1 satoshi.  There would not be decimal points or subunits or whatever.  Just "how many bitcoins can you get for a dollar?"

Moving the decimal point will cause so much confusion it isn't worth it. Using decimal places makes more sense than byte-tesla-columbs, especially if Js/m^2 needs to be multiplied by bytes for some reason. SI prefixes are confusing to the average person. Don't bother doing any units, price things in 0.0003 coins, 0.000004 coins, or even in some other name unlike coins. Just quit the units.

how about we write out BC1.2345

that way everyone can understand it, and not have to learn new and useless stuff. why make up a whole bunch of stuff, that people joining bitcoin then have to learn.

I stand to make things less complicated and more standardized, and using bitcents and other stuff is not it. after all we dont use cash anymore, we dont say a dollar and 53 cents often, we simply say a dollar 53. sometimes we don't even say units, like 16 29, so why this.