The single most important issue for BitCoin today

[eMansipater]

Is that we all switch to talking about millicoins instead of bitcoins.  Humans think in terms of objects, and nobody wants to spend an "object" worth $20--it's now become a collectable.  An "object" worth  .02 USD, by contrast, is very spendable and will help get mindsets "back in the game" about the difficult-to-fathom quantities of value we are now all dealing with.  All sites need to switch, all software needs to switch, and all brains need to switch--nuff said.

[td]

When would be the plan to move the decimal?  I think we are already there. Maybe not moving it a whole 8 decimals over, but it should be moved some.

[Jaime Frontero]

that's a valid point.

boy!  do i have a lot of millies...

(is it 'millis' or 'millies'?)

[rezin777]

Is that we all switch to talking about millicoins instead of bitcoins.  Humans think in terms of objects, and nobody wants to spend an "object" worth $20--it's now become a collectable.  An "object" worth  .02 USD, by contrast, is very spendable and will help get mindsets "back in the game" about the difficult-to-fathom quantities of value we are now all dealing with.  All sites need to switch, all software needs to switch, and all brains need to switch--nuff said.

I remember a story I heard about Martha Stewart. I don't know if it is true or not.

Anyway, she was trying to sell cookies at the mall (back when she wasn't famous). They were homemade, probably delicious, and very, very reasonably priced. Well she wasn't selling any cookies, so what did she do? She jacked up the price to a ridiculous amount and sold out shortly after.

Anyway, I doubt this could compare to Bitcoins at all, but this is what it reminded me of.

Oh, and I'm sure the people who are quick to shout "ponzi scheme" will love to hear we are trying to "manipulate" the perception of Bitcoin in the eyes of the public.

[Cusipzzz]

Disagree. I'd put that pretty low on the list

1. Securing Wallets by default (watch the chaos when a virus/trjoan hits)

2. Mining pool operator gains 51%, or colludes with other mining pool owners to get > 50%. Needs to be a switch to the distributed style mining pool, where the owner does not have the same amount of control (cuddlefish idea, but enhanced a bit)

3. Network defense of govt takedown/attack - allow for flexible port-switching, tor-by-default, etc

4. Headless clients with geographically diverse supernodes like fallback list (to allow for true mobile apps)

etc...somewhere down there is the .02BTC issue. It's pretty simple, if 1BTC is $20, people will have no problem spending 2-3decimals out. In fact the client should be enhanced to prevent decimal entry errors, by giving a readback/confirmation screen with guidelines.

[Findeton]

Developers should set a date and try to make publicity of the date, so we move to UBT (micro bitcoins). The bitcoin program should use UBT (1 000 000 UBT = 1 BTC) as unit, mtgox should use UBT as unit and everyone that is not selling houses or planes should use UBT as unit.

[rezin777]

Disagree. I'd put that pretty low on the list

1. Securing Wallets by default (watch the chaos when a virus/trjoan hits)

2. Mining pool operator gains 51%, or colludes with other mining pool owners to get > 50%. Needs to be a switch to the distributed style mining pool, where the owner does not have the same amount of control (cuddlefish idea, but enhanced a bit)

3. Network defense of govt takedown/attack - allow for flexible port-switching, tor-by-default, etc

4. Headless clients with geographically diverse supernodes like fallback list (to allow for true mobile apps)

etc...somewhere down there is the .02BTC issue. It's pretty simple, if 1BTC is $20, people will have no problem spending 2-3decimals out. In fact the client should be enhanced to prevent decimal entry errors, by giving a readback/confirmation screen with guidelines.

I agree that these issues, especially 1 and 2 (which could be in any order), are far more important.

[Danny Crane]

Hey, just for fun, why don't we creat a new binary-based virtual currency?

[eMansipater]

It's pretty simple, if 1BTC is $20, people will have no problem spending 2-3decimals out.

Try to meet some of these "people" you refer to--regular people don't think like that.  And yes, I can say that because I'm probably a bigger geek than you are--I just work in usability and education.  No hard feelings .  The lightbulb moment for me was when I sent out wedding invitations to people who mostly own bitcoins because of me, and didn't get .01 donated despite getting plenty of cash in cards.  By contrast, I received over 30 tips from random internet users in the first couple months of this year which have now dried up despite the increased community size and traffic (some pieces I've written have received >15,000 views).  People haven't continued being just as free with smaller portions of money--they've stopped spending them altogether. People don't spend $20 objects freely when they expect them to be worth $40 tomorrow, and they don't just move the decimal place over mentally.  This isn't my opinion--I have a pretty large sample space on this one that makes it an empirical observation about the BitCoin economy.

[stic.man]

I know to a logical person the idea that someone would rather have 100 of something than 1 of something is stupid if it's worth the same but psychologically people would prefer the 100.  A broad userbase would benefit from such a move to bitcents at least.

[vrotaru]

Developers should set a date and try to make publicity of the date, so we move to UBT (micro bitcoins). The bitcoin program should use UBT (1 000 000 UBT = 1 BTC) as unit, mtgox should use UBT as unit and everyone that is not selling houses or planes should use UBT as unit.

That would be nice. Is there any memorable date with 3-4 months to use? Some national hoilday, for the nation with most bitcoiners, maybe. Or other memorable event?

It may generate some good (and bad) press.

[Gabriel Beal]

You may be right, but I have some anecdotal evidence to the contrary.  Since the $10+ spike in bitcoin prices we've sold considerably more shirts in our store.  When the price went to a fraction of a bitcoin (currently something like .82), sales got a strong boost.  

Of course there are a lot of confounding factors (the site is gaining trust, we've added more designs, etc), but you can at least argue that there is a psychological effect along the lines of "Hey, I don't want to spend $15 for a shirt, but for less than a single bitcoin, how can I go wrong?"

See, it all depends on if you're doing your thinking in bitcoins or your national currency.  Having my prices be lowered to .1 bitcoins because of deflation might make me a millionaire.  

[mewantsbitcoins]

Nothing's gonna change until we see 0.000 in the GUI

[wareen]

It's pretty simple, if 1BTC is $20, people will have no problem spending 2-3decimals out.

Try to meet some of these "people" you refer to--regular people don't think like that.
...
they don't just move the decimal place over mentally

I totally agree - moving to some smaller denomination would be very important from a psychological point of view. I am sure many people who now hesitate to spend 20$ for one BTC would love to have the opportunity to buy 1 million UBT for just 20$.

I think we would have to work on the name though - micro-Bitcoins doesn't have a selling ring to it IMHO...
Moving the decimal point 6 places has some nice properties already discussed elsewhere and is a final solution because we would never have to do it again. In addition to that, we could theoretically keep the name Bitcoin because there is little risk of confusing "old" BTC with "new" BTC when they are 10^6 apart.

Last but not least, the early-adopter greed factor would probably be reduced as well because now everybody can be a millionaire again

As for the other issues on Cusipzzz's list: they are very important as well but somewhat orthogonal to the denomination question. A change of the representation could very well be done easily once a consensus is reached, whereas the other issues require quite some more design and implementation work.

[pokwer]

Disagree. I'd put that pretty low on the list

1. Securing Wallets by default (watch the chaos when a virus/trjoan hits)

2. Mining pool operator gains 51%, or colludes with other mining pool owners to get > 50%. Needs to be a switch to the distributed style mining pool, where the owner does not have the same amount of control (cuddlefish idea, but enhanced a bit)

3. Network defense of govt takedown/attack - allow for flexible port-switching, tor-by-default, etc

4. Headless clients with geographically diverse supernodes like fallback list (to allow for true mobile apps)

etc...somewhere down there is the .02BTC issue. It's pretty simple, if 1BTC is $20, people will have no problem spending 2-3decimals out. In fact the client should be enhanced to prevent decimal entry errors, by giving a readback/confirmation screen with guidelines.

+1

It's pretty simple, if 1BTC is $20, people will have no problem spending 2-3decimals out.

Try to meet some of these "people" you refer to--regular people don't think like that.  And yes, I can say that because I'm probably a bigger geek than you are--I just work in usability and education.  No hard feelings .  The lightbulb moment for me was when I sent out wedding invitations to people who mostly own bitcoins because of me, and didn't get .01 donated despite getting plenty of cash in cards.  By contrast, I received over 30 tips from random internet users in the first couple months of this year which have now dried up despite the increased community size and traffic (some pieces I've written have received >15,000 views).  People haven't continued being just as free with smaller portions of money--they've stopped spending them altogether. People don't spend $20 objects freely when they expect them to be worth $40 tomorrow, and they don't just move the decimal place over mentally.  This isn't my opinion--I have a pretty large sample space on this one that makes it an empirical observation about the BitCoin economy.

+1 ... and it just occurred to me that this could be (?) one of the reasons people don't seem to mind an inflationary economy -- as currency devalues they feel they have more "things" ($), even though they may well actually be poorer in real terms.

[Frozenlock]

Nothing's gonna change until we see 0.000 in the GUI

This!

If my account is:
1 BTC;
1.0 BTC;
1.00000 BTC;

Which one gives the impression to have more of it?
The last one, as it shows we are supposed to look in the decimal zone.

Don't change the name, simply add some zeros in the GUI.

[Findeton]

Nothing's gonna change until we see 0.000 in the GUI

This!

If my account is:
1 BTC;
1.0 BTC;
1.00000 BTC;

Which one gives the impression to have more of it?
The last one, as it shows we are supposed to look in the decimal zone.

Don't change the name, simply add some zeros in the GUI.

First add zeros, then move the point.

[ironwolf]

I think it would be useful to have a feature in the official Bitcoin client that uses open data feeds to show the up-to-the-minute exchange rate from BTC to the currency(ies) of your choice, and lets you send the Bitcoin equivalent of an amount denominated in one of those currencies to any Bitcoin address. So if I'm in the US and see a blog post I like, and want to give the guy or gal a few cents or a dollar for their efforts, I can just conveniently enter it that way into the Bitcoin client without having to do the conversion myself every time.

[jed]

There are already a bunch of other threads about this.
To me the best solution by far is to just change what we mean when we say bitcoin.
so 1 BTC now = 1,000,000.00 BTC or whatever in the new client.

UBC is the second best option but it seems bad to lose the bitcoin name.

A good side effect is now people won't ask "But there are only 21 million bitcoins. how can that work?"

[Alex Beckenham]

There are already a bunch of other threads about this.
To me the best solution by far is to just change what we mean when we say bitcoin.
so 1 BTC now = 1,000,000.00 BTC or whatever in the new client.

UBC is the second best option but it seems bad to lose the bitcoin name.

A good side effect is now people won't ask "But there are only 21 million bitcoins. how can that work?"

Instead they'll say "but you told me there can never be more than 21 million! Now there are 21 trillion! It's all LIES LIES LIES!!"