Bitcoin Forum

New here...  awesome thing you guys have going on here.

i have a ?
With the way the market is for these coins.  what happens when the price hits, say, 1000 usd per coin.(even at 20$ each this is somewhat a problem?)

how do we send a part of a coin for a cup of coffee if you can only transfer a single whole coin?


As i understand it, one can only transfer a full coin so the software can recognize it as being transferred. Does the system have the capability to recognize a part of a coin in its "puzzle" of checking the block chain?


and if it doesn't have that capability how do we govern how .01 coin is distributed.  the only way i see this happening long term is a semi-centralized agency that holds tons of coins so that coins can be partially distributed without breaking the code. 

basically if i hold .1 coin i don't actually have the coin.  i own .1 of someone else's full coin.
or another way i see it,  if we only had $1000 bills how do i spend 1$ worth of that 1000?

There are no actual bitcoins.  It is just an arbitrary unit of accounting.  Currently, we are capable of dealing with transactions down to 0.00000001 BTC, and can expand lower if necessary.

i understand the bitcoin... its digital not phsyical
its basically a digital piece of cash.  and in real life i can't cut up a 1000$ bill and distribute it in pieces.

 as i understand it,  the software, that back checks the entire transaction history, only understands a full single bitcoin.






when i transfer bitcoins into my e-wallet... the smallest amount i can transfer is 1 full bitcoin.  if that coin is worth 1000$ and i buy 1000 small things for $1 each,  how does the system know how to distribute the original 1 full bitcoin to a 1000 different people without a "centralized" agency that holds coins.

The inability to transfer less than 1 full bitcoin into your wallet is a limitation of whatever exchange you're using.  (With MtGox, it seems you can actually transfer decimal amounts, but not a smaller amount than 1 bitcoin.  E.g. you can transfer 5.1 bitcoins but not 0.1 bitcoins...)

The system "knows" to distribute your 1000$ coin to 1000 different people, because that's what you tell it to do...  the coin itself doesn't have anything stopping it from being split up..