"milli" perhaps, "micro" not so much.

That's not my main point though. Even if people understand the meaning of the prefixes it is still easier to relate "500 BTC" to "1,000,000 BTC" than it is to relate "500 μBTC" to "1 BTC". I believe this to be true for most people, scientist or not.


I'm the one you quoted and I'm from Sweden, so not in my case.

Why? That would instead cause confusion for people reading the code. We are still in the very early stages of Bitcoin, we shouldn't be afraid of making changes to the code.

No. the point is to change what we now call "microbitcoins" into "bitcoins". It should not say "microbitcoins" anywhere. When making the switch we would of course have to be very clear about what we are doing, but after that it's just "bitcoins".

The reason for doing 6 right away is that we don't want to have to do it again later.

Copying my post from this thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8282.140.

I think that instead of coming up with names for 0.001 and 0.000001 bitcoins we should seriously consider changing the value of 1 bitcoin. I propose that what now is 0.000001 bitcoins becomes the new bitcoin. If we want bitcoin to be widely used we have start thinking about how to make things simple for Average Joe. So, a couple of reasons why this would be better:

• Bitcoin sounds like a small amount.
• While milli- and micro- is very simple to understand for a scientific community, "a thousand" and "a million" is understood more intuitively by Average Joe. So instead of having "a microbitcoin", "a millibitcoin" and "a bitcoin" in everyday use it would be better to have "a bitcoin", "a thousand bitcoins" and "a million bitcoins".
• No currency that I have used have smaller amounts than 0.01 main units. Using the new definition of a bitcoin the smallest possible amount would be just that, 0.01 bitcoins.

I don't think that it's too late to make a change like this.

I think that instead of coming up with names for 0.001 and 0.000001 bitcoins we should seriously consider changing the value of 1 bitcoin. I propose that what now is 0.000001 bitcoins becomes the new bitcoin. If we want bitcoin to be widely used we have start thinking about how to make things simple for Average Joe. So, a couple of reasons why this would be better:

• Bitcoin sounds like a small amount.
• While milli- and micro- is very simple to understand for a scientific community, "a thousand" and "a million" is understood more intuitively by Average Joe. So instead of having "a microbitcoin", "a millibitcoin" and "a bitcoin" in everyday use it would be better to have "a bitcoin", "a thousand bitcoins" and "a million bitcoins".
• No currency that I have used have smaller amounts than 0.01 main units. Using the new definition of a bitcoin the smallest possible amount would be just that, 0.01 bitcoins.

I don't think that it's too late to make a change like this.