This is probably a dumb idea, but it occurred to me this morning and I thought I'd throw it out there so that people can bash it.

There has been some discussion that 21,000,000 bitcoins will lead to a price so high that the decimals become a pain to work with. For example, if BTC reaches $500,000USD each, a value meal would run you .00001BTC. Yeah, of course we could just call it "10 millibits". It just seems ineloquent. What if we just moved the decimal back by a couple places. This could probably be done with relative ease in the software. It could be implemented on a certain block #. Then there could be 2,100,000,000 "two point one billion" bitcoins. Every bitcoin already in existence would be 100x more bitcoins but would have the same value:

Before the split you would have: 1BTC  =  $500,000USD
After the split you would have: 100BTC = $500,000USD

The value of a bitcoin would go from: 1BTC = $500,000
To: 1BTC = $5,000

I confess that it would be confusing for many people temporarily, but the confusion would pass and the system would become easier to use. This would in effect be like a stock split. It would also probably help the value increase even more as people like the idea of buying one whole unit of something, more people would buy a small amount.

I am NOT arguing that 21,000,000 is not enough BTC for commerce. I fully understand the infinite divisibility of BTC. My argument is that the human mind would prefer to work with INTEGERS and not with decimals or millibits. Comments?

grains of sand on earth
700,500,000,000,000,000,000

atoms in the human body
7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

how many seconds has the earth existed
435,355,989,674,234,985,345,394,783,892,394,837,983,847,293,957

number of possible bitcoin addresses
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976

Has anyone had success returning a miner to BFL for a RMA? My single lasted 2 weeks and then unexpectedly died. They have been unresponsive so far. Anyone else experienced this?

Been using dropbox for awhile. Well, after this news I started looking for an alternative. My business partner found Bittorrent Sync. Been trying it out. So far = awesome!!! I'm cancelling dropbox right now. I hope they ask why so I can tell them they suck.

This is pretty amazing how successful this thread has been. Great job everyone!

Ok, well since everybody seems to be voting for the "DO A VIDEO ON BITCOINS OR CRYPTOCURRENCY !" comment that was posted after my original post, let's all pile into that one instead. I'll go with the flow.

Just voted another 9 times. 45 total votes from me now! We are closing in on position 2 very quickly!

4 thumbs up in 24 hours. Let's keep it going.

Go to http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=w2tKg3E53DM and find the comment by JRWperformance, "I would like to see a spinoff of this money episode to explain BitCoins..." Maybe if we get enough thumbs up on that comment they'll make a video about Bitcoin and educate more people. Vsauce makes some really great educational videos if you haven't seen them before.

Edit: Vote for "DO A VIDEO ON BITCOINS OR CRYPTOCURRENCY !" instead. It's got more votes now.
       Also, just use this link now, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2tKg3E53DM , we finally got it to the main page!

Done. Thanks for the input!

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Check out my craigslist ad for full details. I'm located in the northwest Chicago suburbs. Asking $13,500USD OBO. BTCBitcoin gladly accepted!

I think it would be nice to have well produced documentary style video that gives the definition of money, a brief history of money, a brief overview of how bitcoin works, and why bitcoin is better than the currency we currently have. This should be posted front and center on the home page. The video at weusecoins is very well done but it's too short to convince people. There needs to be more info about the FED and the USD. Check out this video promoting gold... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyV0OfU3-FU. Something along those lines would be nice, just replace the words "gold & silver" with "bitcoin". Documentary style videos seem to be very effective at turning public perception.

I heard Arch Linux was good.

I thought about mining on my laptop when I'm in a hotel and decided that it's not worth it. Still way to slow.

1JiU6rDy9idWkWLqGZZqsSPaPs9AenTDme

Thanks!

I have the idea of introducing people to bitcoin via a fictional story about a "magical rock". This rock has magical powers such as when you hold it in your hand and say someone's name, it instantly leaves your hand and appears in someone else's hand. The magical rock is easy to divide into smaller pieces and it also has the magical ability to fit an unlimited amount into your pocket. There are only 21 million ounces of magical rock in existence and it's impossible to fake it. This magical rock has no industrial uses and it's ugly. Nobody wants jewelry made from it. Really the only thing it can do is the magical things listed above. Then at the end of the story, I ask that if such a magical rock existed, would you want some of it? How much would you be willing to pay for it? Then I say, well, it's real -- sort of. It's called Bitcoin, and it's not a magical rock but a real digital currency. No, it doesn't have any utilitarian uses and you can't use it to make jewelry. No government backs it. But does it still have value? Yes! Of course it does! It has value from it's "magical properties".

What do you think? Any ideas on how to tell the story? I have a draft already written that I'll post here soon. Also, we could turn it into one of those youtube videos with the talking characters with computer voices. I think comparing it to a magical rock would help people get past the roadblock in their head about no physical object being there. Just think of it as a magical rock that exists when you want it, and doesn't exist when a thief is trying to steal from you. It's even more valuable when you think of it that way! Thoughts?

Part of it is also the strength of your currency. If Bitcoin goes up, it could actually just be your currency going down instead of Bitcoin actually going up. It's hard to know which is moving. It's like when you sitting on a train and you start to move. It's sometimes hard to tell if it's you moving on the train next to you moving.