Bitcoin Forum

my question is that is it possible to send half satoshi?

At current moment it's impossible. In addition, sending less than few hundred satoshi (vary by address type) is considered as dust output and other node won't broadcast your transaction. However it's possible with either soft/hard fork to add smaller unit/more precision. And as workaround, it's already possible to do so on Lightning Network. Although the amount will be rounded down when you close channel.

if the bitcoin price rose very much that one satoshi's price became $1 and a person need to send $0.50 to another person,

how would he send half of satoshi?

it's possible that the protocol could be updated to allow for more decimal places, which will allow for smaller transactions?

if the bitcoin price rose very much that one satoshi's price became $1 and a person need to send $0.50 to another person

It's neither possible (unless you pay a miner) to send 500 sats at the moment on-chain, because the overwhelming majority of nodes will not propagate a transaction which creates output worth less than 546 sats.

The dust limit for segwit outputs is only 294 satoshi.

This is the default setting and nodes are free to accept smaller outputs with changing DUST_RELAY_TX_FEE.

It's worth to note that in 2011, that limit was 0.01 BTC, because then, that was about the same as today's ~500 sats.

means after some years this amount will decrease more? (i don't have knowledge that deep)

Not without a fork. But, as has been said the odds of needing it without a lot of things changing are fairly small.
And it's probably so far in the future none of us are going to be alive to care about it.
-Dave

for bitcoin without a fork is not possible, but we can send value through other coins (that's nice idea to transfer value)

1 sat is $0.000280 I think we will have to see a 100x on the price of BTC (2,800,000) before this becomes relevant to solve. But it is technically solved with millisatoshi and c-lightning: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/83475/what-makes-millisatoshi-real
- me above

According to consensus rules, the amount field in a bitcoin transaction must be an integer between 0 and 2100000000000000. (Note that in the bitcoin protocol, we deal with satoshis, not BTC. So, 1 = 1 sat)

for bitcoin without a fork is not possible, but we can send value through other coins (that's nice idea to transfer value)

you don't need it right now.  1 satoshi is $0.0002822 USD.  the value of bitcoin would have to increase 70/80 times to make a Satoshi equal a cent.  at that point Maybe you will need it

you don't need it right now.  1 satoshi is $0.0002822 USD.  the value of bitcoin would have to increase 70/80 times to make a Satoshi equal a cent.  at that point Maybe you will need it

One easy way to think about Satoshi: when Bitcoin go to 1 million dollars (Hal's terminal value would be 10 million, actually) one satoshi would be worth 1 cent. So when receiving 100 satoshi today, you are receiving one dollar when bitcoin gets to 1 million dollars (nothing is said about the real purchasing power of such a sum.

They could send them milli-sats. They're not exactly like sats, they don't exist in the main chain, but it's a very real concept off-chain...

It is probably hard to imagine 1 bitcoin being worth 1 million in the next few years. It's more likely that such a price point would be reached in the range of 10 to 20 years from now, assuming it is even possible. However, it is highly unlikely that bitcoin will ever reach a value of 100 million dollars, and the idea of 1 satoshi being worth 1 dollar is currently unrealistic.

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For OP, sending half of a satoshi would be impossible because satoshi is already the smallest unit of Bitcoin. However, there are other cryptocurrencies or altcoins that use different units of measurement for that to make it happen.

At current moment it's impossible. In addition, sending less than few hundred satoshi (vary by address type) is considered as dust output and other node won't broadcast your transaction. However it's possible with either soft/hard fork to add smaller unit/more precision. And as workaround, it's already possible to do so on Lightning Network. Although the amount will be rounded down when you close channel.

This is mind blowing fact about the Bitcoin/Satoshi. I can not imagine the fact that we can’t spend anything less than a dollar if price really goes to that extend. Though we have workaround like you suggested, using LN but I’m not sure how everyone will react about this fact in the future.

So my counter question is, why is it not possible to upgrade the current version of Satoshi through its development?

Is it a closed coding which can not be touched any further and thus making it difficult to rewrite entirely?

This also makes me think, was there any specific reason as to why Satoshi divide bitcoin to currently available digits on the right hand side of decimal? I’m sure there is answer for this, it’s just I don’t know this I guess.

just assume,

if the bitcoin price rose very much that one satoshi's price became $1 and a person need to send $0.50 to another person,

how would he send half of satoshi?

is it possible to break satoshi in parts or any other solution?

it's just an assumption so don't reply me with hate and don't tell me that at that time the $1 will worth 0.01 cents. my question is that is it possible to send half satoshi?

and in year 2136, the rewards will become 1 satoshi then obviously bitcoin price would became much much higher then today's, so price of 1 satoshi may also be more then $1, so how we will cut the satoshi in half when we want to pay $0.5.

How? Currently transactions sending from zero coins to zero coins have no restrictions at all (except matching signatures of course). In the new format, they would be valid only if new amounts would match.

I think that sending zero satoshis is the only option to completely skip amount validation. Using any other amount would mean that adding them would be necessary. Also, if going from this new format to the old one should be possible, then all fees from such zero satoshi outputs could be collected in some special output and splitted between old accounts when needed.

It will recognize them as valid. The old node would see two zero satoshi inputs and single zero satoshi output. Unless that new output should be in the old format, then it would be taken from previously accumulated coins (because if someone converted N old satoshis to new zero satoshis, all these coins were taken as fees and placed in a special coinbase output).

If more precision is needed, then more than one output should be used.

No, it can be saved by creating two outputs, one with 0.8 satoshis and one with single satoshi. And we talk here about 56 bits of precision, so such cases would be extremely rare.

But in the future inflation would make more goods cost more than $1, so it's not as concerning as you though. And people who often make send/receive very small amount of Bitcoin would enjoy benefit of LN.

What exactly do you mean by "upgrade the current version of Satoshi"? If you refer to split Bitcoin on smaller fraction, it's possible on technical level. But IIRC it require hard fork and changes of various software which used to manage Bitcoin, which makes it's hard to achieve.

No. Both Bitcoin protocol and many full node software are open source.

There are so many theory and speculation about it. Although i've seen some people use this Satoshi post as reference of their theory/speculation, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583.msg11405 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583.msg11405).

If you refer to split Bitcoin on smaller fraction, it's possible on technical level. But IIRC it require hard fork and changes of various software which used to manage Bitcoin, which makes it's hard to achieve.

Yeah I wanted to ask on technical level only. So whatever upgrades are done they are basically soft forks. Does it mean we end up creating other coin like those BCH, WBTC and coins like that?

Let's just say such a change is much better implemented through a hard fork than a soft fork but it is not impossible. We should technically be able to come up with a very messy way to implement it and still remain backward compatible (ie. through a soft fork without needing others to upgrade). It requires adding a new field (and stripping it for old nodes like SegWit did) that holds the fractions but it should keep them there even when they overflow.

Lets say we have a UTXO worth 2 satoshis to break into two new UTXOs worth 1.8 and 0.2.
- UTXO_1 would have two amount fields, the old one holding the 1 satoshi and the new one holding the 0.8.
- UTXO_2 would have two amount fields, the old one holding the 0 satoshi and the new one holding the 0.2.
When spending UTXO 1 and 2 the new UTXO would have two amount fields, the old one holding the 1 satoshi and the new one holding the 1.0 satoshi.
This way the old nodes see the amount field is not overflowing (1+0<=1) while the new nodes seeing both fields can see the fractions and verify that it also is not overflowing ([1+0=1] + [0.8+0.2=1] <= [1+1]).

I hope it won't happen. Various backward compatible upgrade (especially major ones such as SegWit) already make maintaining Bitcoin software/library difficult.