Bitcoin Forum

Why not have 1 btc as 0.00000001current btcs?
(or 0.000001btc, allowing for 1 btc to be split into 100..?)

It makes a 50btc block reward 5,000,000,000 btc (or 50,000,000.00btc) reward sound much better  ;D

This means if some addon/patch is done to create more divisible bitcoins we could then use the 0.xxxxxx?

2.1 x 10^15 doesn't actually sound like that many bitcoins if you compare it to USD M2 in pennies.
If such a change is made later it might be quite confusing, but as the user base isn't that large right now, why not plan something like this to hapen after a certain date so everyone is aware and is ready for it?

Some extra notes (13/may/11):

x	| Current Bitcoins |	| Bitcoins+8 (aka satoshis) |
'Total BTC':	21million	21quadrillion

Some examples assuming 6usd per btc and XE market rates...

100USD in BTC:	16.66666667	1,666,666,667
1USD in BTC:	0.16666667	16,666,667
1UScent in BTC:	0.00166667	166,667
1EUR in BTC:	0.23809524	23,809,524
1JPY in BTC:	0.00206271	206,271
1KRW in BTC:	0.00015319	15,319
1VND in BTC:	0.00000817	817

Pronouncing values below 0 in the english language can get interesting...
a number like 1,543,234 can be read:    one million five hundred fourty three thousand two hundred thirty four.
whilst a number like 0.1543234 is read:  zero point one five four three two three four.
On the face of things current BTC looks shorter and easier, but it sounds very drone and as a listener it is very difficult to tell what value the number is.


(going to make a table of pros & cons here..)

less than one year ago it cost 10,000 bitcoins to order pizza.  assuming that was a $40 order that meant 1 btc = $0.004 at the time.

it is easy at this point to wish for a smaller value per bitcoin but that value might never have gotten here if 1 btc = $0.0000004 at the time.

when the decimals gets to be a problem we can start using mbtc units.  for example, today 1 mbtc = 0.5 cents each
  (or $0.005, assuming a btc equals about $5)

even if btc was 0.00000001 current btcs, a 10k btc would be.. 10^12 or 1trillion btc.
numbers & currencies are easier to talk about in large numbers than small ones like 0.xxxxxx.
people arnt really used to talking about milli/micro/nano, especially when dealing with money..

I suspect when typical transactions start to be less than 1 BTC (i.e. 1 BTC ~= $100), then there will be a lot of support for the idea of moving to microbitcoins.  Dealing with quantities less than one hundredth is a pain, but so is dealing with quantities of over a million.

there are many currencies that deal in high numbers (jpy? krw? zwd (extreme)?)
but I don't really know of any that go below 1/100th of the currency's basic unit.

with cash it's easy to see a trillion dollar note vs a billion dollar note, but with online transactions the UI should help with the zeros. (eg commas, 'read' the amount, etc.)
the largest possible number base you would have to deal with is a quadrillion which is used to describe all the bitcoins in the universe..

That's because there are no other deflationary currencies. They all decrease in value over time, some more slowly than others.

Some countries have removed zeros from the end of bank notes and coins,  but I've never heard of adding them :)

Let's first see whether it stays this high.

Everyone (except possibly some people in Liberia and the USA) knows the difference between a meter and a millimeter or a liter and a milliliter. Understanding bitcoins and millibitcoins will be just the same and going from there to microbitcoins is pretty straightforward.

I wouldn't mind using mili and micro but I'd prefer moving the decimal place to the right once the exchange rate gets too high to spare people from having to deal with tiny numbers.

But... moving the decimal place is what milli- and micro- do!

This is a problem that will take care of itself when it becomes relevant. Someone will come up with a new naming scheme we'll all start to use. That's how language evolves.

I'd recommend keeping things as they are. There's too much opportunity for confusion in trade if some people start using the word "bitcoin" to mean 0.0001 of another person's "bitcoin." If you want to start using bigger numbers, use a word other than bitcoin. Of course, if you're going to use a word other than bitcoin, why not decicoin, centicoin, millicoin and/or microcoin...? Not only are they unique and unlikely to cause confusion, but they incorporate intuitive descriptors of quantity familiar to most of the civilized world.

They could be abbreviated like this:
1dBTC
1cBTC
1mBTC
1mcBTC

Or 1muBTC if you want to pay homage to the greek letter normally used to signify "micro." (I would copy and paste it here, but all my attempts so far have resulted only in the letter 'm.')

No need to use all of my suggestions: one will do. I understand if the metric system is too complicated for your taste...  ;)

[edited]

+1

Try AltGr-m. The usual thing thing to do when you can't write "µ" is to use "u".

Um... oh yeah. Good call.

(In my defense I've only gotten about 9 or 10 hours of sleep so far this week...)

But there's still a fairly big issue with 0.xxxx values. They are very difficult to read because unlike large numbers we do not split them up using commas.
For example 1,000,000 is fairly easy to read as being 1 million. Whilst 0.0000001 isn't easily recognisable and I doubt most people would know the SI unit... :/

One millibitcoin ("one Millie") is 0.001 BTC or 1 mBTC.
One microbitcoin ("one Mike") is 0.000001 BTC or 1 µBTC.
One satoshi is 0.00000001 BTC or one base unit (or 10 nBTC).

why not just deal in 'satoshi's? That will get rid of the need for mBTC/µBTC..

What I meant was to pretend that there are 210 million bitcoins with 7 decimal places, or 2.1 billion coins with 6 decimals and so on. Like someone else said, a transition to that would be dirty and confusing for existing traders but I think it would end up being more marketable for the mainstream.

That's a non-starter. Every published price would need to say something like "43 Bitcoins (in Bitcoin-7 notation)".

... and give you kSAT, MSAT, GSAT and maybe some day even mSAT.

Psychology.  If you have to spend 10,000 to get a pizza, it seems worthless.

But other large denomination currencies don't need to do this because large numbers are made easy to read through commas and more well known common naming systems.


But other large denomination currencies seem to do this fine..? Would you be able to say what 0.0000001btc is in english?

Concerning "large denomination currencies", there are really very few currencies for which a day-to-day purchase would exceed one million of the base unit.  Assume the upper limit of a day-to-day purchase is 100 USD.  For that to be more than 1 million units, there would have to be 10,000 units to 1 USD.  Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_valued_currency_unit

This is the case for precisely four currencies: Somalian shilling, Vietnamese đồng, Santomean dobra, and Iranian rial

I agree that large denominations are a reasonable option, but beyond a point it gets unwieldy and psychologically uncomfortable.  Buying a loaf of bread for 10,000 units seems pretty natural to me - buying a loaf of bread for 10,000,000 units doesn't.

Which is why I'm a fan of just using the metric system. It's flexible and easy to understand. :-)

So do you use kilo/hecto/mega to describe bitcoin amounts?
It's currently a mishmash, no?

No. Read the previous posts. It's centi, milli, and micro. (And nano, if we ever start trading in values less than a factor of 10^-8, or "1 satoshi.")

As an aside, I don't have any issues with saying "1 satoshi" instead of "10 nanocoins" for 10^-8 bitcoins as there is no prefix in the metric system to correspond with that factor. But as I see it, why try to come up with a new system or alter the already established system in our nascent community to solve the unwieldiness of writing things like 0.00000001 BTC when there's already a perfectly good solution that has not only proven itself in other areas where exact measurement is necessary, but which is also already in widespread usage? Bitcoin already faces enough challenges to its adoption without us infighting and fabricating new ones.

as general public in us, uk, and few other countries (that are crucial to btc success) don't exactly care about SI that much why not to use something like that:

1 btc = 1 Abtc
1 Abtc = 100 Bbtc
1 Bbtc = 100 Cbtc

that way 1btc = 10,000 Cbtc etc.

first it is easier to remember for average joe than difference between mini and micro, second you can go all the way down to Z or AA, AB etc. without strange nano, pico, femto, atto names

keep in mind that if it will ever become as widely used as usd we will operate at nano level

plus, it is about the time to start doing something in that field, as no one (new and unfamiliar with it) will buy 1 btc for $20, 40 or 50, but 100 miliBtc OR 100Bbtc for the same price seems to be a much much better deal - even if it is exactly the same

Do not want!

The current generation is very familiar with SI, which is highly parsable.  Learning some ancient-Roman-looking new system is a huge disincentive to joining.

I propose that :
1.234567 BTC
be said as :
(1,234.567 SC) One Thousand Two Hundred Thirty Four point Five Sixty Seven space credits   (ok, perhaps not the space credits part)

For the short term, it is far to easy to put a k in front of the name.  Everyone knows kOhms, kW, kb/s, etc.  I mean, when do you expect to see kBTC?  I could see us one day saying "mili-BitCoins" as the standard unit of trade, but to me that sounds like a mouth full.  So, in short, I agree with the OP.