Odd time for a dump, slap-bang in the middle of a 3-5 day holiday. Do you think they'll hold off dumping until Tuesday, or are you thinking it's more imminent than that?

The Commonwealth includes countries like India where the Queen isn't Head of State, and even countries like Mozambique which have never been ruled by a UK monarch. That aside, probably not - in theory the Queen is Head of State and has executive power (which she does sometimes use); in practice most executive power rests with the governments.

Put another way -  can you imagine how please Canadians would be if the Queen told them they had to drop the Canadian dollar in favour of... well, anything!

Any exchange outside the PRC? As I understand it, China's exchange controls are one-way.

Market making isn't "deciding what the price should be", it's participation in the market. It's purpose is to provide liquidity and reduce volatility. It's no different to a buyer and a seller placing bids and asks, except it's one entity placing the bids and asks, hoping to profit from the spread as a reward for providing liquidity.

Thinking aloud here, but it reminds me of block adjustments: difficulty remains constant for a set number of blocks, then adjusts. In this case bid price and ask price would both be fixed for a predetermined period, and then adjusts (it might also be desirable to adjust the spread). I'm not sure this would work within the system, but might instead be an external layer that references the Bitcoin protocol (there might even be multiple external systems of market makers, somewhat like the market making system NASDAQ employ where there are multiple, competing market makers).

The goal is to stabilise, not fix, so if the price moves rapidly the market makers would adjust their bids/asks. The price is still able to move, but spikes are reduced.

Dollar: Yes, that's right. This predated the formal adoption of the metric system, and the centuries of revision that have followed. The first version of the metric system, the system adopted by France, used 1s and hundreds (an "are" was (is still) 100 square metres, for example).

Euro: the Euro uses cents (or "cent", according to Brussels) as the hundredth division of the Euro). But since the US dollar every currency has moved to a 10^x system - GBP was the last hold-out so far as I know.

Informally, "k" is a common nickname for thousand but most currencies predate metric (and even SI). One interesting exception is "cent" - the revolutionary zeal in the new-born US presumed that the metric system would catch on, and the proposed pefix for hundreds - "centi-" - was adopted for the hundredth division of a dollar - a year or two, I think, before France adopted metric.

I don't know whether BitPay will succeed with this, but this is the way to gather real consensus and bring about change - if it's a popular change with BitPay users, those users will help spread it, other merchants will start using it.

Wait - µBTC is 100 Satoshi (I guess really I should say 100 Satoshi is 1 µBTC, since we started with BTC and Satoshi came later). So if µBTC isn't future-proof, then new-name-for-100-satoshi won't be either, surely?

It's not an alt-coin, it's a proposed name for 100 Satoshis. (Of all the BTC renaming proposals it's actually one of the better ones, because some thought has gone into what would need to be done, etc).

We're all specialists and generalists - I an expert (at least I think I am) on what my neighbours and co-workers can understand; I know nothing about you, your neighbours or co-workers' preferences or abilities. My point is that we don't know - we can't know at anything other than a basic level - what will be most readily understood and utilised by everyone else. What's simple for you and me to understand will not necessarily be readily understood by someone else - 10^3 seems simple to me because I grew up with thousands, millions, and billions, with kilometres and millimetres and terabytes. But that's not universal; there are counting systems that use other exponents, even systems that mix their exponents. Even within the Bitcoin ecosystem there are already different systems, systems that in some cases have evolved organically. My way is not any more valid than their way. I'm (currently) free to use whatever system suits me (and, to be honest, the system that suits me most varies with whatever activity I'm engaged in - when (!) I buy an island I won't be using Satoshis or µBTC.

The OP's proposal may well lead to greater understanding of Bitcoin within a group of people. What concerns me is that this group is undefined and - more importantly - the disadvantages to other groups (of a change) are not being considered. I got involved in Bitcoin because it held out the promise of freedom from centralised control (this was a few years after centralised control over my finances became a major issue in the country I was living in). I see this issue as seeking to impose (by us) change over the wider community, in the name of convenience. Just because I have a chance to hold the whip doesn't make it any more palatable.

Because it has non-trivial ramifications.

The classic (at least in IT) example is of a nuclear power plant where the board comprises a few specialist (nuclear physicists) and many generalists (administrators, managers, etc). Discussion about important issues -  safety, etc - is edged out by discussion about less important issues. That's certainly a risk here, but far more importantly is - if the generalists succeed in forcing change it will impact on the specialists - and the community at large.

I can't but I can say that if quantum computing became a credible threat to Bitcoin it would also be a threat to all online commerce. The quantum computing argument is a bit like saying "a global nuclear war would bring down every node!" It's true, but misses the point that we would no longer care.

Honestly? I suspect it's bikeshedding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality. We want Bitcoin to succeed, we want to help it succeed, and we instinctively feel that the way we can make that happen is by "making it easier for other people". Tinkering with convention seems much easier than starting a BTC business, building an innovative platform on top of Bitcoin, etc. If I wanted to start a BTC business I'd have to come up with a business plan, find investors, purchase equipment etc. But this - all I need to do is have an opinion. I don't even need to research the demographic I believe I'm "helping".

This is my concern with this issue. I have no idea what works for anyone but me. None of us do (well, obviously some of us have some - limited - idea about our customers. But hopefully you get my point). Our preferences, or what we think others might prefer, won't work for many people - perhaps not even the people we think we're helping. My solution is to leave people alone, and give them the freedom to adopt whatever system works for them - Satoshis, kiloBTC, whatever.

I'll take your word for it! And - as ludicrous as 0.00075kl sounds (I prefer 750µl - it tastes better ) - this is a good thing. Individually, as BTC users, merchants, exchanges - we can choose the system that suits us. Right now. Some people use "Satoshi". Some people use µBTC. Some people use mBTC. Some people use BTC. And some people won't get out of bed for less than kBTC. All of this is possible right now. If my region/country uses 10000s instead of 1000s - that works too.

Put another way - whatever system we have, whatever system we adopt, it will confuse some people, delight others, and be irrelevant to still more. Given that there's a cost to change (time, resources, risk of confusion, etc) if we want to change the existing system we should be very clear about who will be affected, and in what ways. Too much of this discussion is based round "people" finding the current system confusing. It is not at all clear to me who these people are, and whether the benefits they'd gain would outweigh the detriments other people would face. Nor whether the immediate gains would remain in the longer term (as price changes).

The symbol predates the adoption of the dollar by the US: http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html. The linked article from the US Bureau of Engraving doesn't provide a definitive explanation, but suggests the symbol is an "S" (Spanish) and a "P" (pesos) overlaid.

And presumably that's why wine (say) is sold in 750ml bottles, as opposed to 0.75l bottles. But that doesn't seem to be an argument in support of moving the decimal point 2, 3 or 6 places.

Oh. Now I am confused. I thought we had BTC and - by definition - mBTC and µBTC (uBTC). We also have a protocol - Bitcoin. So is "microbitcoin" a fraction of the protocol, or an alternative name for a fraction of BTC?

Incidentally, when you say "using those tiny fractional units is confusing and error prone" - what subset of the global population do you have in mind? What size is that subset? Reason I ask is - the only time I've ever (I'm middle aged) seen people say this is confusing is on Bitcointalk (I'm not a scientist, engineer, etc, but I have lived/worked in a number of different countries in APAC and EMEA).

I think the idea is that people could choose to work with Satoshis and bits (a coffee might cost 1 bit, 50 Satoshis) or with "coins" (an island might cost 50 coins/BTC). Much like we can choose now.