Bitcoin Forum

Maybe it's time to think about smaller monetary unit, which will equal 1/100 of the bitcoin? Or even smaller one, 1/1000? It may be called bitcent (BTCN) or somehow other. Or it won't be good looking, when in the "bitcoin economy" of the future (maybe nearest future) most things will cost "0,0251 BTC", "0,003 BTC" and so on. Not very convenient.

regular currency doesn't really do this, yes they have sub dollar denominations but that's because they know that those denominations will not continually get smaller. There is nothing smaller than a cent. There is also nothing larger than the dollar.

Since bitcoin will continually be used in smaller and smaller denominations we would continually have to come up with new names for them, which is pointless.

Is there another name for 1Billion dollars? No, and for the same reason there shouldn't be another name for anything under 1btc.

I like ribuck's terminology:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3311.msg46648#msg46648 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3311.msg46648#msg46648)

He suggests bitcents, then millicents and microcents. Microcents happen to be the smallest available subdivision of bitcoins, so this works nicely.

Regular currency is inflationary, and they do change denominations: There are no longer half-cents like there used to be, and people are talking about getting rid of the penny more and more lately. Bitcoin is deflationary (as seen by its climb in price), so I think the opposite would be a good idea. If Bitcoin got to the $10 USD per BTC point I would think it would be prudent to move the decimal point to keep it more conveniently sized.

Or, we could just use the standard metric prefixes: Millibitcoins, microbitcoins, etc.



Fun fact: The US money system was originally based around five units: the cent, dime, dollar, eagle, and union. Each one worth ten times the previous unit. Union coins never ended up being actually minted for circulation.

Somebody should write a distopian science fiction story where it costs you 1 United States Union for a tank of gas.

and all other transactions are expressed in unions, leading to "old west" prices - Five unions for that horse? Way too high. Plus I need 50 Unions to hire a US marshal to find out who killed my poppa for his two california gold pieces.

lets look a little longer term here, and maybe a bit optimistic.

currently the format supports e-08 accuracy, why not just call that a credit? a currency built and started by geeks (crypto/econ/general) would have its most common term for a unit be the 'Credit'. if in time the currency becomes so popular that additional levels of accuracy are required (i.e. e-12) those would chits or credits (lower c) similar to the difference between a bit and a Byte (mbps/MB). and if it goes in the other direction and never reaches a .0000001 BTC/$ then it would simply look more like the Yen or other similar currency. Video games (poor example I know but only one I can think of) have used basic 3 levels of currency for some time now. Typically gold/silver/copper (1/.01/.0001) Eve users simply tack on the modifier to the currency name 'isk' giving a kisk, misk, bisk, tisk. Its simple to understand not confusing and easy to say, for most people, But mostly it allows for infinite expansion.

Overall point being don't think in terms of just a couple of decimal places and anymore than 3 denomination names would be confusing. the easiest systems to change are modular in nature, and since the BTC is nowhere near stabilized against other currency placing a hard name on it would lead to the same kind of clutter we are dealing with in cellphones, protocols, and standards.

Keep it modular, fluid, and simple. and you'll keep it able to adapt and change as it grows into something of its own.

Me Gusta.

Begone Reddit user!

I can't wait to use satoshi to denote a very small fraction of bitcoin :D.

oh, sounds great

1 satoshi = 1 microbitcent (smallest denomination)

100 million satoshis = 1 bitcoin

Are we agreed?

Yes, do it!

Affirmative.

I think it would be too confusing to change the "bitcoin" name
to something else; in addition, it woud be difficult to find an
agreement on a new name.

When government issued currencies become worthless,
it is common to move the decimal point without changing
the name of the currency ; there is a transition period during
which the new currency is called "new ruble", "new franc", or
"new whatever". After a few months, people just drop the
"new" in the name.

we should just do that.

if one bitcoin becomes worth more than 10 usd, I suggest to
release a new version of the bitcoin client so that all amounts
are multiplied by 1000. That is, we move the decimal point so
that "new bitcoin" refers to 0.001 BTC. after a few months,
people will just say "bitcoin" instead of "new bitcoin", and
"old bitcoin" in order to refer to todays bitcoins.

why x1000 and not x100 ? First, because we do not want to do this
too often. it would be relatively easy to do this operation now, because
the community is small, but when the community becomes larger it will
become more difficult. Second, x1000 is probably more intuitive than x100 :
"21 million" becomes "21 billion", and so on.

I'm in favor. abbrv STS?

Satoshi = STS!

The concept of Millibitcoins, microbitcoins, etc. is good, it makes it easier to name the small amount.

However, these are not the units that people are using everyday. And it could be very confusing for ordinary folks to identify the number of zeros, and do calculations.

I don't agree with abbreviating the 'Satoshi', it would defeat the point I think. ;)

I agree with both things: to move decimal point and to use Satoshi. Why not do both? And maybe then there will be no need to do anything else

Only dividing by 1,000 is kind of arbitrary .... why not 10 or 100? Consumers are always confused anyway, it is the way of the world.

Not really, the 1000 instead of 10 or 100 is because that's precisely how we already do it. And not just in SI measurements, but in currency as well: $1k; $1,000,000; etc.

Except you are wrong since decimal divisions of currency have always been done in hundreds, as in centimes, cents ... the 1000's are used on the other side of the decimal point.

Don't get me wrong I like 1000's and use scientific notation as it is simpler but the consumer doesn't, today. There has never been a sufficiently deflationary currency that has required it ... maybe they will get used to milli, micro, nano and pico when their meal ticket depends upon it ... but the couch potatoes I come across get lost when they run out of fingers and toes.

Indeed, the 1000s are used on the left-hand side of the decimal point - for currencies - and on both sides for other units of measurements. So it is precisely how we already do it - for SI units, and for whole currency amounts. My point is that this isn't anything new or overly confusing.

(Incidentally, there are currencies which are subdivided into 1000s. The Omani Rial springs to mind (1000 baisas) but there are/have been others).

I see why 100 is attractive - it's what we know - but it's an anomaly when dealing with anything other than the first set of decimal places. It makes sense if we divide one BTC into "cents", but if we just stick with BTC then it's an anachronism. We'd end up with something like 1,000,000.00,000,001 just to conform to a pattern that made sense in a low-inflation/deflation 19th century world. 1,000,000.000,000,01 is clear, logical and easily parsed by most humans. I'd argue that it's more couch-potato friendly than the former pattern, except in the limited set of circumstances where bitcoin amounts conform to amounts in their usual currency (e.g. for USD something like 12.34).

Your example with RAM is wrong in the sense that it is on the other side of the decimal point, kilos, megas and gigas not millis, micros and nanos .... I'm struggling to think of a common usage of terms over many orders of magnitude on the right of the decimal point ... ppm and ppb.

The easiest way out of all this is to give a name, any name, to the smallest denomination, BTC 1e-08 = 1 Satoshi, and then go up from there .... upwards in orders of magnitude is much more familiar and commonly used than downwards.

e.g;
100 million satoshis = 1 BTC
10 million sts = 0.1 BTC
1 million sts = 0.01 BTC
100 thousand sts = 0.001 BTC
10 thousand sts = 0.000 1 BTC
1 thousand sts = 0.000 01 BTC
1 hundred sts = 0.000 001 BTC
10 sts           = 0.000 000 1 BTC
1 sts            = 0.000 000 01 BTC

I bet you 100 million sts it works out something like this.

It's an easy choice for me. 'Cents' only make sense for soon-to-be-obsolete physical coins. Even if Bitcoin never gets used and the world keeps using government-issued money, there's no reason why my bank balance shouldn't be able to show as 1000.3333333333.

People seem to be asking for a convention that meets these criteria:

1. It can be scaled downwards as far as needed

2. It is based on divisions of 1000 like the SI system

3. It uses the familiarity of 100 "subcoins" per "coin".

Here's how we can do it.

For now, we use Bitcoins as the "main" unit. For convenience and familiarity, we "usually" use two decimal places (e.g. 0.15 or 2.63) which gives us a resolution of one bitcent.

If bitcoins become significantly more valuable, we can start expressing prices in milli-bitcoins (nickname "mills") and milli-bitcents (nickname "millicents"). So 0.02 bitcoins would be 20.00 mills, and 0.15 mills would be 15 millicents.

If bitcoins become even more valuable, we start expressing prices in micro-bitcoins (nickname "mikes") and micro-bitcents (nickname "satoshis"). So 0.02 mills would be 20.00 mikes, and 0.15 mikes would be 15 satoshis.

This caters for everything down to the current base unit, but if ever a finer resolution is needed we just continue the pattern: nano-bitcoins, pico-bitcoins etc.

My preference, and I'm not sure yet how many share this opinion, is to leave cents in the past where they belong and have something like:

1 = 1 bitcoin
0.001 = 1 millicoin
0.000001 = 1 microcoin
0.000000001 = 1 nanocoin
0.000000000001 = 1 picocoin

After reading this thread, I like this idea best:

 1 milliBitcoin (mBTC, "milli") = 0.001 BTC
 1 microBitcoin (uBTC, "mike") = 0.000001 BTC
 1 satoshi = 0.01 uBTC = 0.00000001 BTC

suggestion for transition

now we use #.## BTC
next we use #.### BTC
then we use #.## mBTC
then we use #.### mBTC
then we use #.## uBTC
then we're old and soon dead

My preference is to keep it as simple as possible, to avoid barriers to entry, and I think avoiding "cents" achieves that.

Beyond that, let users decide based on usage and custom. I daresay that there will be places - online and in meat-space - where people use "cents", because it makes sense for them to do so. I don't think we should encourage that, however, because it will serve to discourage other users, for whom "cents" is meaningless. Equally, I daresay there will be places where people never need to go below the decimal point. They'll use their own terminology, too.

Where I am (the UK) it's become customary to refer to £1000 as "a grand", or, more recently, "1K". There's nothing official about that, but they're useful, just as "buck" and "quid" are useful, even though they're completely unofficial.

Our default position should be: "there is a bitcoin, and it can be subdivided. Do your worst, people!" It's not helpful to replace that with, at the worst extreme, something like: "there is a bitcoin. One hundredth of a bitcoin is a cent, and 0.00000001 bitcoins is a satoshi and - are you writing this all down? Good! - when cents or satoshis aren't appropriate we use SI units."

LMG makes a good point though, people from different walks of life will inevitably come up with their own nicknames anyway, even if some 'official' (on bitcoin.org?) naming convention exists.

Just like 'half a bar' means $500,000 to those who use that phrase.

The good news is that Bitcoin, being an inherently online currency, does not normally require people to speak the cost of something. In most cases you will be fine just writing "BTC 1.23555293" or "BTC .0000334"  and being done with it.

However it does seem to me that it would have been better to mint 21,000,000,000,000 Bitcoins and have them divisible to two decimal points. It's much more convenient to deal with digits to the left of the decimal point. I think whoever decided to have eight decimal points did this because he/she thought earlier parity with the US dollar would be A Cool Thing, and that it was worth sacrificing long-term ease of use for near-term parity.

Haha, well known, I live in AMERICA.

;)

It would have been better to have multiplied the initial value of bitcoins by 10^8 or more, so we would have no decimal places instead of .00000001. Bitcoins client software could still be re-denominated in the future so the satoshi is the new standard BTC unit. Huge integers are a better option than miniscule fractions; the populace understands billions more than it understands picos:

Then we denominate our paychecks in Satoshis.

Satoshi=CIA lol Just kidding!

While it *is* true that the world understands the multiplicative SI prefixes (kilo, mega, etc.) better than the divisive SI prefixes (milli, micro, etc.) it is also true that the world is VERY good at coming up with nicknames - pounds, pounds sterling, sterling, British pounds, ster, stg. and quid all refer to the same thing. This discussion seems to be about what the official names of < 1 BTC units will be, but realistically it'll be a week before the "millibitcent" turns into "millie" or "mill" or some such truncated version. The community is scientifically fluent enough that the SI prefixes will see common use, what we really need to decide on once and for all is if a "millie" is going to mean 1/1000 of a full bitcoin or 1/1000 of a bitcent. I for one say we subdivide the bitcent to allow the current smallest unit (e-8) to have a "round" name. If we need to add more precision in the future, we'll just need to do so 3 decimal places at a time so that the next SI unit down can apply to the new "smallest unit"

I am sure as bitcoin grows the developers are going to agree to do something along the lines of a stock split. Like for every bitcoin you have it is multiplied by 1000. So if you have 1 btc it will turn into 1000 btc. It won't affect the total value of your holdings since your holdings will still be the same value. Right now its not really an issue. Maybe we could do a 15-20x bitcoin split so btc trades around 1btc = 1usd. That would make things much more easy to transition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_split

+ 1  for sticking to the bitcoin as the unit to which the SI prefixes apply.
That other idea of millibitcents etc is awful.  Guaranteed to cause mass confusion. 0.001 BTC  is  far easier to read off as 1 mBTC than  10 millibitcents.

I don't agree that 'bitcent' should be phased out.  It's too well understood and convenient.  Just don't base other units on it!

Resurrecting this thread because it seems like this may be a good time to drop the decimal point down a notch.  The problem it can address is that a "bitcent" is too large a denomination for micro-payments. I'm not sure how this would address verification if suddenly there are transactions for 0.005 BTC (currently equivalent to a nickel).

If there is a use for 0.005 BTC, I would think it would add perceived value to the currency. This might open up development for software and websites that support these micro-payments.
just my .002 BTC