A flaw in bitcoin, if it became widely adopted 21m bitcoins, 7b people on planet

[VirosaGITS]

1.xxxxxxxxxx so its kinda deceiving... Everyone only having 0.xxxxxxxxx would seem odd

my brother was the same.  when i first explained bitcoin to him he had to have a whole one.  which was strange to me because i had been buying in what ever 0.0.....'s i could afford. 

The other point is if you check out some other wallets for example Breadwallet on the iphone you use micro bits so instead of 0.00430000.  its shown as 4300mbtc which means it looks like whole numbers.

This is a "problem" with a readily available solution indeed.

There is not a limit of 21 000 000, there is a limit of;

2 100 000 000 000 000. Divided by even 10 billions human, thats 210k sat per capita. So plenty. And if we EVER need more, we can easily add as many 0's as we need.

So right now the limit per capita for 10b humans would be 210 000, if you somehow can't wrap your head around decimals.

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[cellard]

2,099,999,997,690,000... an insane number. Sorry if I seemed stupid it was a curious question and I do find that currently I need a minimum spend before one can send coins with the current wallet client... Id bet widespread adoption would change the whole dynamic of transaction fees and the like? Especially if people were not owning whole bitcoins, the transaction fee would become more noticeable and would need to be adjusted? Sorry if I seem dumb on this front its been a curious thing for me its a psychological thing about having 1 complete bitcoin, or is that just the way the wallet reads it out as in 1.xxxxxxxxxx so its kinda deceiving... Everyone only having 0.xxxxxxxxx would seem odd

Now you've explained that to be, so the actual form of the currency is measured in the smallest units, not the 'BTC' measurement which kinda was psychologically deceiving! Should have done the math and checked how many satoshis there could be : )

Jacob

It's indeed psychological, that's all. Other than that is a no-argument. People will use BTC for it's features, not because they can call what they are holding Bitcoins or satoshis. Most people use the dollar, even tho they will never see a million dollars on their bank accounts, this is the same, even if most people will never see 1 full BTC, they will still use it, because the features are exactly the same.

[bob123]

If it later feels like its too less.. its no problem at all to split satoshis into 0.1 and 0.01 more..

[Kakmakr]

I wonder what people will call a Satoshi, if the comma needs to be shifted? I am not saying, it will be a immediate need, but we should be debating this, in the event that this needs to be done. Any suggestions ? If Gavin & Mike succeeded in taking control over development, it might have been 1 x Gavi or 1 x Mikey.

Just fooling around, do not get your panties in a bundle. ^hmf^

[VirosaGITS]

I wonder what people will call a Satoshi, if the comma needs to be shifted? I am not saying, it will be a immediate need, but we should be debating this, in the event that this needs to be done. Any suggestions ? If Gavin & Mike succeeded in taking control over development, it might have been 1 x Gavi or 1 x Mikey.

Just fooling around, do not get your panties in a bundle. ^hmf^

For practical purposes, i'm guessing mBTC will be used, then uBTC, etc. I dont think Sat or Mikey is going to be used as the principal denominator.

[BADecker]

In the Bitcoin Core, satoshi's will always be able to be split into as many little divisions as necessary to fill a need for more bitcoins.

As long as the encryption isn't cracked, division will not be a problem.

[ranochigo]

Bitcoin will never have exactly 21 million Bitcoins, it would have 20999999.9769BTC in total. That is still more than a century away. By that time, the population would grow even higher. Also, many users lost their private keys in the past and some burnt it voluntarily and hence the actual number would be much much lesser.

Bitcoin itself can be divided into more than satoshi so it isn't a problem at all. The minimum relay fee can be changed easily if the nodes adopt it.

[Amph]

There are only 170,000 tonnes of gold in the world. Is that a fatal flaw in gold since it is not possible to own 1 tonne per person?

Scarcity exists. It will always exist. Picking any unit and saying "There aren't enough of these for everyone to have one" is arbitrary.

Bitcoin is fungible to eight places and even after that can be patched to support more.

What is the difference between everyone having 1 bitcoin and everyone having .003 bitcoin? Nothing.

but there approximately 6B(35285 in one ton, x170k) of ounce, which about the same as the numbers of people in the world minus 1B

you need to compare gram to satoshi and you are on the same boat, but with a much lower number for gold

[jacobmayes94]

It seems interesting discussions and has explained a lot. I was more curious to the communities view and it seems like there will be more than enough to go around! I went to bed early so only just read all these replies

Jacob

[cjmoles]

This is not a flame or diss at bitcoin, but it is something I can't get out of my mind. I love bitcoin, and would love to see traditional banks loose their grip. But its one teeny flaw, that I am not sure how it would be addressed short of a hard fork.

7 + billion people on the planet, of which most of those handle a currency of some description.

21 million bitcoins. Would mean that if it became widespread no one human could ever have a 'full' coin but it could be spent in smaller denominations.

Discuss. I feel this is an interesting issue I am curious to hear others opinions on.

Quite a blunt topic I know, but I am insanely curious on this one.

Jacob

Well, if we're talking economy of scale, then the topic starts becoming heated instead of interesting because, while there are plenty of satoshi to go around the world, will the blockchain platform be capable of handling (2.1 *10^6)(1.0 * 10^8), or so, transactions at any given moment?  I mean, the more valuable each satoshi becomes, the more relevant it will become in the ledger and the more likely it will become to see a one satoshi transaction.  Hmmmm!  Just a thought?

[Mickeyb]

I wonder what people will call a Satoshi, if the comma needs to be shifted? I am not saying, it will be a immediate need, but we should be debating this, in the event that this needs to be done. Any suggestions ? If Gavin & Mike succeeded in taking control over development, it might have been 1 x Gavi or 1 x Mikey.

Just fooling around, do not get your panties in a bundle. ^hmf^

Haha I will rather stop using Bitcoin altogether than calling units Gavi or Mikey!

I think that these are all potential sweet troubles! If we ever come to have worries like this in a community, that will mean that we have made it big time!

[USB-S]

There are 50 billion dollars being pumped into the system each month. Did you know that there are people in this world who don't even own a single dollar. Also there are people who can't afford a dollar because their are in debt.

[Light]

There are only 170,000 tonnes of gold in the world. Is that a fatal flaw in gold since it is not possible to own 1 tonne per person?

Scarcity exists. It will always exist. Picking any unit and saying "There aren't enough of these for everyone to have one" is arbitrary.

Bitcoin is fungible to eight places and even after that can be patched to support more.

What is the difference between everyone having 1 bitcoin and everyone having .003 bitcoin? Nothing.

but there approximately 6B(35285 in one ton, x170k) of ounce, which about the same as the numbers of people in the world minus 1B

you need to compare gram to satoshi and you are on the same boat, but with a much lower number for gold

I don't think you understand - the dollar value or any artificial value is meaningless - all that matters is what can be purchased with it (i.e. real purchasing power). Compare USD and Yen - Yen is roughly a factor of 100 times larger in terms of unitary size, but any meaningful conversion realises that this difference is irrelevant. Given that we can have smaller units than a satoshi if needs be - it matters not what the supply limit is.

[Amph]

There are only 170,000 tonnes of gold in the world. Is that a fatal flaw in gold since it is not possible to own 1 tonne per person?

Scarcity exists. It will always exist. Picking any unit and saying "There aren't enough of these for everyone to have one" is arbitrary.

Bitcoin is fungible to eight places and even after that can be patched to support more.

What is the difference between everyone having 1 bitcoin and everyone having .003 bitcoin? Nothing.

but there approximately 6B(35285 in one ton, x170k) of ounce, which about the same as the numbers of people in the world minus 1B

you need to compare gram to satoshi and you are on the same boat, but with a much lower number for gold

I don't think you understand - the dollar value or any artificial value is meaningless - all that matters is what can be purchased with it (i.e. real purchasing power). Compare USD and Yen - Yen is roughly a factor of 100 times larger in terms of unitary size, but any meaningful conversion realises that this difference is irrelevant. Given that we can have smaller units than a satoshi if needs be - it matters not what the supply limit is.

i was just arguing that gold is not rare, and the "rare" factor does not matter at all, when you want to talk about adoption and about divisible numbers

bitcoin is not rare also, it's all about divisibility, if you take into account 1 satoshi as the main divisors, there are plenty for eveyrone, bears in mind that i'm not against what he have said, just pointing out a thing

[Light]

i was just arguing that gold is not rare, and the "rare" factor does not matter at all, when you want to talk about adoption and about divisible numbers

bitcoin is not rare also, it's all about divisibility, if you take into account 1 satoshi as the main divisors, there are plenty for eveyrone, bears in mind that i'm not against what he have said, just pointing out a thing

Rarity plays a value in things that are hard to divide as well as the perception of value itself (humans will tend to overvalue things that are 'rarer'). But yes, for all intents and purposes Bitcoin doesn't suffer from this issue due to the ease by which it can be divided. If you were to use an analogy Bitcoin would be like oil (easily dividable) whereas a rare commodity would be like a rare painting - indivisible without losing value.

[piloder]

If all the people want to own some bitcoin, then 21M/7B = 0.003 bitcoin. If the bitcoin is distributed evenly, every body will get 0.003 bitcoin. If you have 3 bitcoin, you are 1000 times richer than average person.

[midmir]

I see no problem. All I see is cute satoshies which worth much more than $

[Soros Shorts]

If it later feels like its too less.. its no problem at all to split satoshis into 0.1 and 0.01 more..

This would require a hard fork. Also if 1 satoshi would be worth something significant we might also consider changing mining schedule to go beyond 2140 - that is make the block reward keep halving into fractional satoshis. This would effect how the last few satoshis are mined, but would have no significant impact on the ~21 million total BTC.

[BADecker]

There are only 170,000 tonnes of gold in the world. Is that a fatal flaw in gold since it is not possible to own 1 tonne per person?

Scarcity exists. It will always exist. Picking any unit and saying "There aren't enough of these for everyone to have one" is arbitrary.

Bitcoin is fungible to eight places and even after that can be patched to support more.

What is the difference between everyone having 1 bitcoin and everyone having .003 bitcoin? Nothing.

but there approximately 6B(35285 in one ton, x170k) of ounce, which about the same as the numbers of people in the world minus 1B

you need to compare gram to satoshi and you are on the same boat, but with a much lower number for gold

Except that gold is measured in troy ounces. This makes one tonne to have about 32,151 troy ounces. This gives everyone in the world less than ¾ of a troy ounce of gold. This equals almost 1.1 standard avoirdupois ounces of gold per person in the world on average.

[BADecker]

If it later feels like its too less.. its no problem at all to split satoshis into 0.1 and 0.01 more..

This would require a hard fork. Also if 1 satoshi would be worth something significant we might also consider changing mining schedule to go beyond 2140 - that is make the block reward keep halving into fractional satoshis. This would effect how the last few satoshis are mined, but would have no significant impact on the ~21 million total BTC.

Are you sure it would need a fork? I would think that all it would need would be that everyone update his Bitcoin client.