Is a bitcoin can be divided with more than 8 zeros or not??

[grondilu]

changing the protocol to allow nodes to accept blocks containg EG 50 decimals is not something one can do alone on ones own system as the other users will still be using the bitcoin standard protocol, 
so it would have to be a world wide change that affects every person.... basically getting everyone to download a new client and stop using the old one.

while your at it.. call it BBBBBBBitcoin as its no longer the 8decimal coin we use now.

thats not breaking a satoshi.. thats called inventing a new currency

That may create a fork indeed.  A consensus would be required.

But the idea of allowing the code to behave differently depending on the height of the block was mentioned by Satoshi himself on this forum, iirc.

[BkkCoins]

thats not breaking a satoshi.. thats called inventing a new currency

This is just newbie sillyness. The devs have mentioned many times that an extension of decimal places could be coded into the blockchain if ever required. I don't know why people are wasting so much effort on this topic as this is way, way off in some imaginary future that will require other client/blockchain adjustments before getting to this point. None of this means a new currency is created - only that changes are made to the client and consensus among users to accept and use the new client.

The 0.7.0 release today has 3 new BIP in it. Extending the decimals is likely discussed, coded and accepted in a similar way.

[Foxpup]

Oh yeah, I think I get it.  A group of one, then a group of two, then a group of three...   So you can indeed store an infinite number of reals.    That's pretty smart.  Thanks.  I've learnt something today.

Erm, no, you can store an infinte number of rational numbers. Representing the set of all real numbers (both rational and irrational) is harder, and may pose a potential security risk for the infinite divisibility fork: creation of infinite bitcoins through an infinite overflow caused by sending an irrational number of bitcoins (proving that bounds checking is still important, even when dealing with infinite memory).

Foxpup, I believe you are mistaken.  Until you mentioned it, this topic never had anything to do with infinitely divisible.

The OP asked only about more than 8 decimal places:

. . . So is it technically and easily possible to do that?

and grondilu, whom you replied to, only spoke of an arbitrary range.

Computers can certainly deal with more than 8 decimal places. I suppose deciding if it can deal with a "wide, arbitrary range" would depend on the definition of "wide".

It was a joke. People are constantly claiming that bitcoins are "infinitely" divisibile, which is of course completely ridiculous. And an "arbitrary" range is equally ridiculous if it is taken to mean "anything up to infinity", I was just pointing that out by taking that statement to it's logical extreme. I wasn't really expecting my comment to derail the whole thread. Oh well.

[kjj]

It was a joke. People are constantly claiming that bitcoins are "infinitely" divisibile, which is of course completely ridiculous. And an "arbitrary" range is equally ridiculous if it is taken to mean "anything up to infinity", I was just pointing that out by taking that statement to it's logical extreme. I wasn't really expecting my comment to derail the whole thread. Oh well.

The term "arbitrary" has a long history in computing.  It is always understood to mean "no particular artificial limit", and not "infinite".  Computer science may be a branch of mathematics, but it is not a branch that cares about literal infinity.

[DannyHamilton]

Erm, no, you can store an infinte number of . . .

Until you mentioned it, this topic never had anything to do with infinitely divisible. . .

It was a joke. . .

Obviously it was a joke. I was just pointing out that it your comedic timing was off a bit.  The joke would work better if you waited until someone mentioned infinite divisibility before making your joke about countable infinity vs. uncountable infinity.

[exdirrk]

It can be done, and it's not easy. I don't think you need to worry about it for the next 10 years at least.

I lay awake at night, worrying that by the next day, Bitcoin prices will have gone beyond 10^8 USD and the divisibility limit will be a problem.

Counting down the days.

[dree12]

Oh yeah, I think I get it.  A group of one, then a group of two, then a group of three...   So you can indeed store an infinite number of reals.    That's pretty smart.  Thanks.  I've learnt something today.

Erm, no, you can store an infinte number of rational numbers. Representing the set of all real numbers (both rational and irrational) is harder, and may pose a potential security risk for the infinite divisibility fork: creation of infinite bitcoins through an infinite overflow caused by sending an irrational number of bitcoins (proving that bounds checking is still important, even when dealing with infinite memory).

With an countably infinite memory, you can store a countably infinite number of real numbers. This is easily derived through basic set theory. However, the process of storing the real numbers will take a countably infinite amount of time, unless the operation is atomic, so in practice even given an infinite memory, storing arbitrary reals is impossible.