If theres only 21 million bitcoins, How many people can use BitCoin ?

[Veritas]

If theres only 21 million bitcoins, How many people can use BitCoin ?

Think about it, how many people do you figure are already using and trying to amass bitcoins? At least 500,000 by now if not more....

Thats only 42 BitCoins per person......Which sets a rather low transaction cap, about $1,500 at todays rate. assuming you have the max amount of bitcoins someone could have, if everyone had roughly the same amount of BitCoins.

[Stephen Gornick]

If theres only 21 million bitcoins, How many people can use BitCoin ?

How many threads are you going to create about this?

a single bitcoin is equal to 100,000,000 Satoshis,

So there are
  2,100,000,000,000,000 Satoshis to go around.

Or about 300,000 Satoshis per man, woman and child on the planet today.

Which sets a rather low transaction cap, about $1,500 at todays rate.

There is no cap.  The value of a bitcoin will rise to accommodate the level needed for use as a digital currency.

[Veritas]

For the satoshi to be the base unit of BitCoin the value would have to skyrocket...well over 1BTC = $1000 USD

Also my other thread deals with bitcoins going out of circulation past the inital 21 million mark, While related, is not exactly the topic of this thread.

[DannyHamilton]

For the satoshi to be the base unit of BitCoin the value would have to skyrocket...well over 1BTC = $1000 USD

Yes,  I'd assume that it would actually be somewhere around 1 BTC = $1,000,000 (1 Satoshi = $0.01)

Won't that be nice when it happens?

[lassdas]

For the satoshi to be the base unit of BitCoin the value would have to skyrocket...well over 1BTC = $1000 USD

The Satoshi already is the base unit of Bitcoin, the value doesn't change that.
It was the base unit when 1BTC was less than a cent, is the current base unit and will probably still be the base unit when 1BTC hits $1000 or more.

[Mike Christ]

What they said if EVERYONE was using BTC, the price would be incredibly high, because everyone would want it. Since it can be divided several times, it's nothing to worry about.

[Stephen Gornick]

For the satoshi to be the base unit of BitCoin the value would have to skyrocket...well over 1BTC = $1000 USD

Correct, there is a mechanism to accommodate lost coins.  Market price.

Problem?

[samurai1200]

Also remember that if need be, the bitcoin protocol can be changed (with reverse compatibility) to support as many decimal places as deemed necessary.

[MoonShadow]

Also remember that if need be, the bitcoin protocol can be changed (with reverse compatibility) to support as many decimal places as deemed necessary.

Correct, and this wouldn't even require a 'hard fork' of the code, like in the example of the max blocksize debate going on now.  And the current limit of divisablity is an artifact of the limitations of common computers today, as the value of any particular bitcoin address is stored as a 64 bit integer.  Once 128 bit CPU's and architectures are commonplace, the transition to 128 bit integers for bitcoin would be fairly straightforward.

In sort, the divisablity of bitcoins are only presently limited to eight decimal places; due to the limitations of common computing hardware, not due to any particular limitations of the Bitcoin protocol itself.

[BitHits]

But the tx fee makes using Satoshis as the base currency a loss for every transaction at rate of like 200,000 Satoshis at least per transaction...so how can it be the base unit ?

[talbitcoin]

I believe if the exchange rate of BTC continues to rise, as I believe it will, we will see a reduction in the nominal value of BTC fees. I mean, essentially what we're seeing wight now is deflation in the BTC economy.

[berto]

But the tx fee makes using Satoshis as the base currency a loss for every transaction at rate of like 200,000 Satoshis at least per transaction...so how can it be the base unit ?

I think the transaction fee was mostly introduced to keep the miners going once all bitcoins have been mined since they are the ones who collect the fees. When that happens you will need to pay a fee to make your transactions go through. Of course you won't need to pay 200 dollars per transaction but the more you spend the sooner your transaction will be picked up by miners. I don't know about any other client but with electrum you can choose how much you want to pay. In the long run, if Bitcoins don't die, the fee will settle down somwhere in a range that's both affordable to pay and profitable for miners (I can't give an example because I don't know how many transactions fit in one block).  One problem I see is getting back spent bitcoins when your chosen transaction fee is insufficient to make your transaction valid anywhere whithin the next 100 years .... I'm not THAT familiar with the whole transaction mechanism and block size stuff though.

[Gabi]

This thread=fail