Shift the decimal point over?

[kjj]

My vote is to NOT change BTC, but get used to talking in micro-BTC (UBT,UBC,uDTC,whatever the concensus), but that's not clearly available in the vote!

"micro" sounds too tiny when spoken aloud. I suggest a new name altogether. And it needs to be 2 syllables.

UBC is ok. But when spoken aloud, it should sound like "you-coins" (not "micro-bit-coins").

mBC is ok. But when spoken aloud, it should sound like "em-coins" (not "micro-bit-coins").

I wonder if mBC might be confused with "million". The m comes from micro, but obviously the real abbreviation for micro looks more like u.

So, let's go with UBC, pronounced "you-coins".

I'll send an "you-cent" to anyone who agrees with me

I suspect that people will just say "milli" or "micro", just like we now say "cent" rather than "percent of a dollar".

And mBTC will never be confused for MBTC.  The context will always make it clear.

[Frozenlock]

I think it'd be suicide to revalue the BTC now, and it'll cause problems with people who don't upgrade old clients. Now that Bitcoin has been featured in Forbes and The Economist and people are trading at $20, this isn't very early days anymore.

This!

People use millilitters and milligrams, what's the problem using millibitcoins? Rename it if you want but we can't change BTC value

Agreed.
Any change in the definition of a bitcoin would be suicide.

Repeat after me: There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins. Ever.

[D.H.]

My vote is to NOT change BTC, but get used to talking in micro-BTC (UBT,UBC,uDTC,whatever the concensus), but that's not clearly available in the vote!

"micro" sounds too tiny when spoken aloud. I suggest a new name altogether. And it needs to be 2 syllables.

UBC is ok. But when spoken aloud, it should sound like "you-coins" (not "micro-bit-coins").

mBC is ok. But when spoken aloud, it should sound like "em-coins" (not "micro-bit-coins").

I wonder if mBC might be confused with "million". The m comes from micro, but obviously the real abbreviation for micro looks more like u.

So, let's go with UBC, pronounced "you-coins".

I'll send an "you-cent" to anyone who agrees with me

I believe that we're mixing concepts here. "BTC" is the equivalent of "USD" or "EUR", an abbreviation of the currency. But there is no such thing as "cUSD" or "CUD" when talking about cents. What we do have is a dollar sign ($) and a cent sign (¢).

If we're not going to move the decimal point (which I still hope that we are), we should come up with a symbol for "millies" or whatever people want call them. In that case, my suggestion is that we use ß for this, since it is logical looking at the greek alphabet. B (similar enough to ฿) is uppercase Beta and ß is lowercase Beta. This could possibly also satisfy the ones who suggested ß as the main bitcoin symbol, as ß will probably be more widely used than ฿ if the value of Bitcoins continue to increase.

[jashan]

Agreed.
Any change in the definition of a bitcoin would be suicide.

Repeat after me: There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins. Ever.

Think about it: 21 million Bitcoins for a global currency?

I might be repeating myself ... but: That might work for the currency of a little city - but for a global scale, it will be by far too little. Ok, they can be divided - but only geeks will work with 0.00001 Bitcoin amounts. Again: That'll work just fine for a niche currency (the currency that only mathematicians use) - but it won't work when Bitcoin scales up to where it will be really disruptive.

So I'd say: Let's switch it over as soon as possible. Let's do it in a way that doesn't scare people away (see link to other thread posted above - by doing it with a couple of steps over a longer period of time it should be easy enough; and that is "as soon as possible" - sooner would in fact very likely be a problem).

Then, we'll have 21 trillion Bitcoins. Sounds much more reasonable to me. That 21 million thing really is a bug (see a few pages above ;-) ).

Let's fix it :-)

[forbun]

If we're not going to move the decimal point (which I still hope that we are), we should come up with a symbol for "millies" or whatever people want call them. In that case, my suggestion is that we use ß for this, since it is logical looking at the greek alphabet. B (similar enough to ฿) is uppercase Beta and ß is lowercase Beta. This could possibly also satisfy the ones who suggested ß as the main bitcoin symbol, as ß will probably be more widely used than ฿ if the value of Bitcoins continue to increase.

My only problem with this is that most people don't know how to type ß.

I had to spend time searching on Google until I finally found this.

Turns out, the way to do this on a Mac is option/alt+s. If you're on a Mac, try it. ßßß

[sergio]

Very bad idea to shift to 6 decimal places.
From a mathematical point of view it makes no difference.

But from a press point of view it will make it look like there is hyper inflation, not good.
You do not want the average person to start comparing the bitcoin to the zimbawen dollar.

It is much better to use the proper term, microbitcoin 1/1000000 or milibitcoin, for 1/1000 if the value of the bitcoin goes up, or simply just use decimals, after all most transactions are online.
 
Bitcoin it is a currency anti inflation, and it is best to reflect that fact.

[kerogre256]

No just make somme easy way to see diference 1.00000000
0.00000810
0.00100032
2.10000000
Lats make wallet background chang 

[jashan]

Bitcoin it is a currency anti inflation, and it is best to reflect that fact.

That's why I believe it is important to make that change as soon as possible. Currently, there's only around 60.000 people trading with Bitcoin at Mt.Gox. That's almost nothing compared to what it will very likely be in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. So, while such a change already is kind of painful, the longer we wait, the more painful it become.

Mathematically, it may not make a difference - but what matters is the difference in perception: No one wants to work with a currency where you have to do transactions like 0.0001 BTC sent over. That simply doesn't work. However, sending around 100 uBTC seems reasonable. The way I see it, Bitcoin is especially interesting for microtransactions - and for that specific use case, the current way the decimal is handled is just wrong.

Of course, that kind of change must be communicated wisely ...

[kerogre256]

Bitcoin it is a currency anti inflation, and it is best to reflect that fact.

That's why I believe it is important to make that change as soon as possible. Currently, there's only around 60.000 people trading with Bitcoin at Mt.Gox. That's almost nothing compared to what it will very likely be in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. So, while such a change already is kind of painful, the longer we wait, the more painful it become.

Mathematically, it may not make a difference - but what matters is the difference in perception: No one wants to work with a currency where you have to do transactions like 0.0001 BTC sent over. That simply doesn't work. However, sending around 100 uBTC seems reasonable. The way I see it, Bitcoin is especially interesting for microtransactions - and for that specific use case, the current way the decimal is handled is just wrong.

Of course, that kind of change must be communicated wisely ...

No

[no_alone]

There should be a change...
I dont exactly know when but there should be...
Maybe when the reward in coins get to 25BTC instead of 50BTC?

Maybe even now.

[ploum]

There should be a change...
I dont exactly know when but there should be...
Maybe when the reward in coins get to 25BTC instead of 50BTC?

Maybe even now.

It doesn't make sense to make such a change before bitcoin reach a stable value above 100$.

I like the method proposed in another thread (step by step). We could implement it and decide later if there's a need to change or not. Speaking in uBTC would be as acceptable to me.

[Kolbas]

I think that bitcoin price growth is the only thing now that makes it attractive to most people and helps to promote it . When bitcoin becomes famous and known all over the world, then stabilization in price is reasonable and we can really talk about "bitcoin economy". So, it's a good idea to move the point as soon as possible and let people buy, buy, buy and become rich

[newMeat1]

On a related topic, the .01BTC transaction fee is killing me. I make lots of small transactions, so it's basically like paying a 50% tax. I think the transaction fee should be proportional to the amount you send.

[sadpandatech]

On a related topic, the .01BTC transaction fee is killing me. I make lots of small transactions, so it's basically like paying a 50% tax. I think the transaction fee should be proportional to the amount you send.

on an un-related topic, if you go to Bitcoin.org and download the current client build you will find the tx fee is now lower...

and the notes from the version they adjusted this in can be found here; http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16553.0

[k]

Slightly relevant blog post on Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen) about how people adjust to nominal changes, e.g. in this blog post the change from old Turkish Lira to New Turkish Lira by knocking 6 zeros off the old Lira denomination, i.e. kind of the opposite of what is being suggested by many people in this post.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/07/how-quickly-do-people-adjust-to-nominal-changes.html

In this case it seems people adjusted quickly.
I guess people will just start using metric pre-fixes (milli, micro etc.) and it won't really be an issue.

[matrixfighter]

Now that the price of Bitcoin has passed $1000 mark at least three times, shifting the decimal point is a necessity. A prerequisite for mass adoption by the ordinary critical mass.

[minerva]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/02/02/zimbabwe.dollars/
"Zimbabwe removes 12 zeros from currency"
Will Bitcoin have the same problem?

[bitbrasil]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/02/02/zimbabwe.dollars/
"Zimbabwe removes 12 zeros from currency"
Will Bitcoin have the same problem?

NO it's the opposite problem for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is deflating not inflating.

[bitbrasil]

Copying my post from this thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8282.140.

I think that instead of coming up with names for 0.001 and 0.000001 bitcoins we should seriously consider changing the value of 1 bitcoin. I propose that what now is 0.000001 bitcoins becomes the new bitcoin. If we want bitcoin to be widely used we have start thinking about how to make things simple for Average Joe. So, a couple of reasons why this would be better:

• Bitcoin sounds like a small amount.
• While milli- and micro- is very simple to understand for a scientific community, "a thousand" and "a million" is understood more intuitively by Average Joe. So instead of having "a microbitcoin", "a millibitcoin" and "a bitcoin" in everyday use it would be better to have "a bitcoin", "a thousand bitcoins" and "a million bitcoins".
• No currency that I have used have smaller amounts than 0.01 main units. Using the new definition of a bitcoin the smallest possible amount would be just that, 0.01 bitcoins.

I don't think that it's too late to make a change like this.

I agree...

[Coin_Master]

Changing the value of what is called a "Bitcoin" is a very, very bad idea. Nothing kills a new product/service/currency like confusion/uncertainty/doubt.

Agreed.