Bitcoin Forum

We should switch to uBTC and be done with it (forever). Switch our clients, our exchanges, our store plugins, etc, to use uBTC by default.

• It would give Bitcoin two remaining decimal places, which is what people are already familiar with, and would be much more compatible with existing financial software.
• One uBTC is worth enough that it wouldn't be too cumbersome at this point to use. Buying something for $25 would be sending 31,255 uBTC.
• The conversion is easy too - just remember 1 million. You multiply or divide by one million to convert between current BTC and uBTC.
• We would only have to switch main denominations once, whereas a change to mBTC only helps us with the current price. If the value of BTC continues to go up, we'll find ourselves in the same situation of having a main denomination that is too valuable.
• Finally, it would give enough room for BTC to grow however large and valuable it could possibly grow. Even if everyone in the world used bitcoin, uBTC + 2 decimal places would be enough to provide all the precision we would need.

Who is with me, and what are the steps we need to take to make this happen?

At this value of Bitcoins it makes more sense indeed. If you see this value at the stores who accept coins it's kinda more transparent. 
For everyone who doesn't understand the Bitcoins value please read my Blog :).

http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/bitcoin-values-and-numbers/ (http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/bitcoin-values-and-numbers/)

This proposal is just interstep to use of Satoshis...and we will be using them soon  ;)

If 1 SAT is ever worth a dollar, there will have to be a lot of off-chain transactions, or the protocol will need to be changed.

The idea itself is alright, but consider the front it presents. Overconfidence is dangerous, and it is REALLY overconfident to declare to the world that bitcoin is the future until it actually IS the future.

Take it step by step. When you start hearing random people (or even better, the media) talking about the need to switch again, you know bitcoin has made it big. If that never happens, well, then it failed and it would be pointless anyway.

If people decide to use uBTC's, call them 'bits' instead of uBTC.

1 million 'bits' in a bitcoin.

Agreed, who needs to lead this? Whats the plan of action?

no one entity decides.. all the exchanges, wallets, clients, and users will have to decide when it's best. if, say coinbase wanted to do it, they could.. but then all of the other exchanges would be displayed in BTC.

I like the idea. In stock market, we already has stock split which helps reduce the stock price (therefore increase sales) and but keep capitalization value intact.

I believe that switching to uBTC will make novice people think BTC is cheaper and affordable to buy. The more people owns BTC, the bigger network effect in Bitcoin is, which is a very good thing for mass market adoption.

I Don't know why more markers aren't doing this already.  With such a denomination , you'd see a lot more people buying these "cheap" coins.  Someone would go buy 20-30 uBTC for almost nothing.  This would then cause the price to go up much faster as well.  Should be done ASAP.

If you want to use μBTC, just use μBTC. The clients have supported changing the unit for years. It's the exchanges and sites and such that are lagging behind.

I wonder how many of these topics there already have been in the last two years (many!). It just doesn't work. Even though everyone agrees that using smaller subdivisions is better, everyone wants a different subdivision.

In a distributed project you cannot force anyone to use your preferred unit. The only thing that might be effective to get bigger adoption for your idea is if you educated the larger community.

Maybe create a nice user friendly campaign site (and have it translated to many languages) that explains exactly what a μBTC is and why people would want to use it.

I think uBTC is premature. What we want is a unit that's close in value to a dollar or euro. The day may come when bitcoin is worth so much that it would make sense to switch to uBTC, but that's years away, if ever. Now would be a good time for mBTC.

At this moment I believe mBTC is best. We will likely hover close to $1000/BTC for a while and that will make 1 mBTC close to 1 dollar. That will make things easy.

This is really unfortunate because I just switched my pricing to mBTC...

Against. We should use mBTC now.

Soon? Hmm not sure that 1btc = $1 million USD any time soon :-\

I'm on the fence but actually I'm starting to like the idea of uBTC instead of mBTC. That way if a further split was needed, it would have to be at protocol level, since with uBTC the cent/penny would be a satoshi. Also, it's quite possible that with mBTC the value will quickly go beyond any fiat currency, again making Bitcoin different in most likely negative ways ("it's an investment, not a currency").

A product worth 1 € would be approximately 1700 uBTC right now. A product worth 10 € would be approximately 170 uBTC. These are quite reasonable numbers. I think we have some currencies that are like this already. It's fine, and even fairly common, for some currencies to have low unit valuations like this. However it's extremely uncommon for a currency to have more decimals than the cent/penny.

Regardless, what we need for these changes is for a major Bitcoin service to make a move. Someone has to implement it and then others can follow. I'd be fine with mBTC as well but I'm starting to like the uBTC idea.

+1

Then you could say 1.44MB or 360KB.

It would make my old Floppy Disks look valuable, lol.

 ;D

On edit: that's bytes not bits, but I got a laugh anyway

Using uBTC or mBTC will never work. The only way to use a smaller subdivision is to shift the decimal point and continue to use BTC as a unit.

I just read up on pre-decimal denominations of United Kingdom. Maybe we can borrow something from that old system:

Inspiration	Name	Value
Pounds	Bitcoin	1.00000000
Shillings	Bitshilling	0.00100000
Pence	Bitpence	0.00000100
(farthing)	Satoshi	0.00000001

This makes the most sense by far.