Can bitcoin be divided beyond satoshis?

[BitNerd]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

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[OmegaStarScream]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I suppose it's possible but there is no point of doing that unless Bitcoin price increase .. a lot of course.

[Lauda]

Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.

[NUFCrichard]

Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.

Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary!  If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.

It is 1 billionth of a bitcoin anyway. At $100,000 per bitcoin , 1 satoshi would be worth 1/100th of a cent.  I think it would be generations before it would be necessary, and then only because so many coins would be lost.

[Patatas]

That's pretty much possible.Since there are no rules "regulating it" ,you can come up with your own assumptions or say units.The question is ,WHY ? Why would you want them to be divided beyond the value is not used on daily basis.
As mentioned by @Omegastar.. ,there is no need to unless price rise is one of the factors.Personally,I don't even like to measure in terms of Satoshi's ,just a fancy name.

[Blind Legs Parker]

Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.

It will be needed if bitcoin becomes one day the world's only currency  
Otherwise it won't be needed. Now even if it does become the world's only currency, dividing the Satoshi into a million Laudas won't be needed: one more decimal will do the trick (to which we'll add 2 more for the sake of clarity).
1 BTC = 1,000 mBTC = 1,000,000 uBTC = 1,000,000,000 Parkers = 100,000,000,000 Nakamotos. That would give us a total of 21,000,000,000,000,000.00 Parkers, which is more than enough to store all the wealth that there is in the world.
(The satoshi would have to properly disappear as a unit otherwise it would become horribly hard to navigate between the new units and the old, so the role of the bitcocent could be given to a new unit called the Nakamoto or whatever.)

That's a nice day-dream though, that would make quite a bunch of us billionaires  

[Lauda]

Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary!  If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.

Without having to come to any agreement, just add mili/micro (or some other unit that is smaller) satoshi and the problem would be solved. I can see how it would be hard to reach an agreement on the name though.

Otherwise it won't be needed. Now even if it does become the world's only currency, dividing the Satoshi into a million Laudas won't be needed: one more decimal will do the trick (to which we'll add 2 more for the sake of clarity).

If you do not use Laudas, I will stall consensus for all eternity!

[Amph]

it's useless to do it, if you're thinkign about doing it because of the possible fee being too expensive, it will not solve the problem

everythign can be changed in the code, they are just line of code after all, but changing the fundamental like the supply, the numbers of satoshi etc..., will never happen i think

[Mumbeeptind1963]

It is possible it is useless.. What are you want to that divided beyond satoshi lol you are kidding man. Dont you think the transaction fee is higher than than collecting divided satoshi

[eternalgloom]

It is possible it is useless.. What are you want to that divided beyond satoshi lol you are kidding man. Dont you think the transaction fee is higher than than collecting divided satoshi

It wouldn't be useless if the price goes up by a very high amount, they would lower the transaction fee too if that were the case.
Not likely to happen any time soon, but who knows, maybe in 20 years or so...

[thend1949]

It is possible it is useless.. What are you want to that divided beyond satoshi lol you are kidding man. Dont you think the transaction fee is higher than than collecting divided satoshi

It wouldn't be useless if the price goes up by a very high amount, they would lower the transaction fee too if that were the case.
Not likely to happen any time soon, but who knows, maybe in 20 years or so...

Yup its not useless in that time but you are saying future so we dont know if that really happen but it is possible to happen. We can divide it beyond satoshis but now we dont need that amount.

[X-ray]

satoshi can't be divided and there's no point sending a bitcoin lower than a satoshi because the normal fee for your transaction to be confirmed is 10000 satoshi

[Herbert2020]

this is an argument for the very far into the future not now. today it is not possible to divide it beyond eight decimals because the code doesn't allow it. but in the far future if the price is so high or if the lost coins amount are too much that we need more than the current amount then it is done with a change in the code.

[cpfreeplz]

As others have said, right now it goes to the 8th decimal point and there's really no need for anything further (because it's already a fraction of a haypenny lol). If it comes down to it and 100 Satoshis are worth $1.00 it might be time to fork and go further than the Satoshi.

Of course if there is a price rise of 100x from right now and people are upset because you can't do micro transactions anymore, it may be brought up then as well. Anything is possible with Bitcoins, you just need concensus.

[Dabs]

The most likely thing that will happen: people start using sidechains, or alt-coins with lower value, or internal credits of whatever financial institution (off chain transactions).

If coffee costs less than 1 satoshi, then you will simply get credit for as much coffees as they are worth or less, and you just claim them later.

[BitNerd]

If anything can be changed in the code, then is it possible to increase total supply beyond 21M? And if it is, doesn´t it mean bitcoin is a weak currency doomed to fail?

[BitcoinPC]

If anything can be changed in the code, than is it possible to increase total supply beyond 21M? And if it is, doesn´t it mean bitcoin is a weak currency doomed to fail?

Well in the current structure of the bitcoins, it is not possible. But why there is a need for more division. I satoshi is already very low in value and we dont need further divisions.

[richkellj]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I suppose it's possible but there is no point of doing that unless Bitcoin price increase .. a lot of course.

Yes, it is something not required and wanted.

[Lauda]

If anything can be changed in the code, than is it possible to increase total supply beyond 21M?

Adding additional division units != adding additional supply. To increase the monetary supply of Bitcoin would require a hard fork with near unanimous consensus. Most of the people hate even the thought of the idea.

And if it is, doesn´t it mean bitcoin is a weak currency doomed to fail?

No.

[CIYAM]

As it is using an unsigned 64 bit integer to store the number of Satoshi's any extension to this would not at all be trivial (it would require quite a lot of code to be reworked and a huge amount of testing) so I can't see any such thing happening for many, many years (if ever).

Understand that it affects the entire system in regards to the txs (memory, protocol and storage). Perhaps people might recall the amount of work that was done to solve the Y2K problem?

(am guessing most here are too young to know about that - but it resulted in huge numbers of retired COBOL programmers coming out of retirement to earn huge amounts for a few years)

Those that say "Bitcoin's 8 decimal places can easily be extended" do not understand software engineering.

[Denker]

Theoretically yes.With consensus of course.
But there is aboslutely no need for that.
Bitcoin must have a very high value before we should even think about that.

[Kprawn]

What is the chance of that happening, if we cannot even reach consensus on Block sizes.   ... The protocol is not set in stone, but you will get a lot of people who would have objections about that. The price

per Bitcoin would be crazy by that time and most people will fight for every Satoshi if that happens. I guess the payouts for faucets will be VERY valuable by that time too, and it would shut the mouths of the

people who has been bashing faucets for many years now. Back in the day, Gavin's faucet paid out 1 to 5 bitcoins and look where we are now.  

[romero121]

The possibility of bitcoin to be divided beyond Satoshi is possible only if the price goes very high. Big price increase will cause a division.

[virtualkeybuyer]

no, beyond it, bitcoin is unable to divide more, satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin which is further undivided, someone will say it half a bitcoin but that digit is unable in the technology of bitcoin.

[Dabs]

You could try increasing the money supply, but you will be alone in your own fork.

[coinzat]

why should we think about a unit smaller than satoshi ? . even if the price doubled or tripled form the current one, I think no one would ever will need a smaller unit.

[sase007]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

Considering that generally speaking, the minimum amount of bitcoin that you can send via the network is 0.00006BTC this is pretty useless to have anything less than a Satoshi, obviously, if the price increased, we would have to endorse this.

A milli satoshi or a satoshi bit may be used in this case.
A milli satoshi being 0.001 satoshi
A satoshi bit being 0.001 milli satoshi

[sase007]

Why not?  You could add up to 3 more decimal places and you could still store the total number of these milliSatoshis that will ever exist in an unsigned 64-bit integer.

So let's see: 184,467,440,737.09551615 is the largest possible unsigned 64 bit value - we have not 3 more decimal places but 1 actually.

How is 20 characters a 64-bit value.
If it works that way, you could have an extra few after the decimal point according to that.

[Jannn]

Some casinos do this already! They show satoshis, but you can win smaller amounts. If you do that a few times in a row, your balance does not change for every bet.

[BitMaxz]

For me for now it cant divided because bitcoin is still cheap and i think it cant divided even twice... but if the value of bitcoin is gradually increase more and more after block halving  i think around 10k value this is possible to happen..

[delliaerd]

Maybe not everyone agree with me, but i think it is depends the developer of bitcoin itself, only him who can do that. But from my point of view, if bitcoin divide further than 0.00000001 bitcoin, it will be too small value .

[BitFomo]

It depends on the cross currency pair its traded against. For example, you can trade btc to ltc, and each satoshi will be worth several litoshi.

Example is novaexchange.

[quintiilieo]

Yeah thats possible and i think this is we need in faucets amount in future. We need it if the price of bitcoin is really high.

[countryfree]

I wonder what block size would be needed if one satoshi was worth enough to make a worthwhile transaction. Better not think about it...
What I like though is that to make such a small transaction worthwhile, one BTC should be over $100,000. Well, I could stop working if this happens!

[Supercrypt]

Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.

It will be needed if bitcoin becomes one day the world's only currency  
Otherwise it won't be needed. Now even if it does become the world's only currency, dividing the Satoshi into a million Laudas won't be needed: one more decimal will do the trick (to which we'll add 2 more for the sake of clarity).
1 BTC = 1,000 mBTC = 1,000,000 uBTC = 1,000,000,000 Parkers = 100,000,000,000 Nakamotos. That would give us a total of 21,000,000,000,000,000.00 Parkers, which is more than enough to store all the wealth that there is in the world.
(The satoshi would have to properly disappear as a unit otherwise it will become horribly hard to navigate between the new units and the old, so the role of the bitcocent could be given to a new unit called the Nakamoto or whatever.)

That's a nice day-dream though, that would make quite a bunch of us billionaires  

But I too do see very soon, one day that bitcoins would become the world's only currency as most being used currency, if everything, literally everything in this world is valued in bitcoin and available for bitcoin. While what you suggested is practically infeasible, because I foresee the need to divide bitcoin beyond satoshi also.

[betohell]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

may be ? if bitcoin increase the price very high. probably around $ 100k / BTC bitocin may be divided more deeply under satoshi?

[DimensionZ]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I suppose it's possible but there is no point of doing that unless Bitcoin price increase .. a lot of course.

Yup the future price of Bitcoin will be the main reason for a readjustment of the Bitcoin subunit structure. If the price is astronomically high in a couple of decades and the miner fees amount to hundreds if not thousands of dollars I guess the code will need to be changed. I also suppose all Bitcoin faucets and other ways of getting some free satoshis right now will be shut down because it would be like giving out free $10 dollar bills to random people every couple of minutes

[target]

there would be no need to divide satoshis is you will just use other  coins to store your wealth though. perhaps those ETH, DASH, LTC and the rest would be more useful for you once the value of bitcoin becomes extremely high. I don't think I'd live more than 50 years from now before that would happen.

[Bitware]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

You're talking about precision, and yes it can be increased by modifying the Bitcoin source code.

[Cuidler]

Some casinos do this already! They show satoshis, but you can win smaller amounts. If you do that a few times in a row, your balance does not change for every bet.

Sure, every service is free to do it internally, but you cant cashout under 1 Satoshi (practically you cant cashout even 1 Satoshi even when it is technically possible because of the much higher fees + dust limit preventing to relay such transactions)

I guess the payouts for faucets will be VERY valuable by that time too, and it would shut the mouths of the
people who has been bashing faucets for many years now. Back in the day, Gavin's faucet paid out 1 to 5 bitcoins and look where we are now.  

If Bitcoin was worth cents at those times, then you could buy thousands of Bitcoins for $20. Much better in the end than having tens of Bitoins just from faucets  .

[Whosdaddy]

Theoretically yes.With consensus of course.
But there is aboslutely no need for that.
Bitcoin must have a very high value before we should even think about that.

Theoretically yes but only in our views , and not in the technology, the developers have not worked much on that and there is no any technology integrated in the system of bitcoin, so in actual we will say no, Satoshi is the last dividend unit.

[davinchi]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

There is no need of any half value of satoshi, satoshi is already a smallest unit which I think alone have no any value, then why will someone ask for a half value of satoshi? So we have to rely on satohi as enough for to be smallest.

[rickadone]

The possibility of bitcoin to be divided beyond Satoshi is possible only if the price goes very high. Big price increase will cause a division.

Yes, if the value of bitcoin reached to millions of dollars then I think there will be an idea appear that satoshi should have to divide and a new term will be appeared which will be used for the sub particles of satoshi.

[~Bitcoin~]

It will take lots of time and price should be skyrocket to million marks per coin than only there will be need of getting smaller fraction than satoshi. But for now satoshi is fine and will be fine for next few decades.

[Kartikay]

Yes bitcoin can be divided beyond satoshis. But it would require a major hard fork. It doesn't justify the current price of bitcoin. Such major amendment in bitcoin protocol might only be required only when it's price rises very high.

[Superbitzz]

if the coins are still in satoshi control then they will be devided by him. but if they are now not in his control then who will divide them . i thinks there is no need to talk about this topic. i think we should think about the bitcoin and not about the satoshi.

[oblivi]

Yes, but I would like to know what is the limit of division? I heard BTC economy can run on 1 BTC only. What division level would be at for that??

[Cryptonitex]

Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.

Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary!  If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.

It is 1 billionth of a bitcoin anyway. At $100,000 per bitcoin , 1 satoshi would be worth 1/100th of a cent.  I think it would be generations before it would be necessary, and then only because so many coins would be lost.

At that price:
$2 100 000 000 000 market cap.
It could happen.

[Sniper44]

Yes, but I would like to know what is the limit of division? I heard BTC economy can run on 1 BTC only. What division level would be at for that??

it is all in the coding.
you can see 1 as 1 or 1.000 or 1.00000000000000 and treat it that way. so if there is a need because of the price or amount of bitcoin lost there can be changes in the code that implement further division.

[tobacco123]

Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.

Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary!  If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.

It is 1 billionth of a bitcoin anyway. At $100,000 per bitcoin , 1 satoshi would be worth 1/100th of a cent.  I think it would be generations before it would be necessary, and then only because so many coins would be lost.

At that price:
$2 100 000 000 000 market cap.
It could happen.

$2.1 trillion dollars market cap! That's unimaginable at the moment. Gold is only about $7 trillions. If this happens, bitcoin will definitely need to be scale-up a lot to meet the demands!

[jtipt]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I don't think there is any official unit after Satoshi
But you can just add one more zero in front and create a new unit it's not a big deal but it's useless to divide bitcoin further. It would be like dividing 1¢ further to 0.001¢ or something like that.

[JarBinks]

As it is using an unsigned 64 bit integer to store the number of Satoshi's any extension to this would not at all be trivial (it would require quite a lot of code to be reworked and a huge amount of testing) so I can't see any such thing happening for many, many years (if ever).

Understand that it affects the entire system in regards to the txs (memory, protocol and storage). Perhaps people might recall the amount of work that was done to solve the Y2K problem?

(am guessing most here are too young to know about that - but it resulted in huge numbers of retired COBOL programmers coming out of retirement to earn huge amounts for a few years)

Those that say "Bitcoin's 8 decimal places can easily be extended" do not understand software engineering.

I agree, Changing either the 8 decimals, very painful, or the total supply, creates uncertainty, is not something that will happen soon.
Look at how the needed increase in block size is going!!

Ahhhh, COBOL and Y2K, I remember that and ya know I am kinda glad COBOL is barely used anymore!

Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary!  If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.

Without having to come to any agreement, just add mili/micro (or some other unit that is smaller) satoshi and the problem would be solved. I can see how it would be hard to reach an agreement on the name though.

Otherwise it won't be needed. Now even if it does become the world's only currency, dividing the Satoshi into a million Laudas won't be needed: one more decimal will do the trick (to which we'll add 2 more for the sake of clarity).

If you do not use Laudas, I will stall consensus for all eternity!

I will vote for Laudas!!

[GreenBits]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

Only on off-chain ledgers. A transaction smaller than one satoshi will simply not be accepted by the network. Also, the value is so insignificant it's almost useless to track.

But, if the value of btc goes up to something epic, this may have to be considered..

[lixer]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I believe only the price of bitcoin will demand that.
When there is a demand for trading less than one satoshi like calculating value of one satoshi greater than 1 cent and then we have to divide further.

[GreenBits]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I believe only the price of bitcoin will demand that.
When there is a demand for trading less than one satoshi like calculating value of one satoshi greater than 1 cent and then we have to divide further.

Exactly. If bitcoin goes up to say, 10000 a coin, a satoshi will be significant, and will have to be factored in. I will admit that it will be a tiresome fix (all that code this far is designed for 8 decimal places, changing that will be a nightmare).

[Akupuniard]

I think it's possible but it's not so easy to do and also it's so useless cause you anyway need a lot of satoshis to pay your fee for transaction.

[Hirose UK]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

I suppose it's possible but there is no point of doing that unless Bitcoin price increase .. a lot of course.

yeah. even if we can divided bitcoin further than 1 satoshi, no one will use that digit IMO because it's too small. I even rarely use 1 satoshi.

[katrimans]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

Now I think we do not need divided further because still only 74% mining has been completed and we do not know how much coin we are circulating and how much coin are lost. When 21 million will arrive to us and after that we can think about divide a satoshi further.

[pat_13b]

Sorry to dig up an old topic but I had been thinking about this recently.

It would only take a 2 decimal place shift in the price of BTC before 1 satoshi is equal to approximately 1 cent. Arguably a long way off, however there are 2 reasons I think this should be taken more seriously:

1. Streaming money - Maybe 1c or 1sat isn't a small enough division to pay for 30 seconds on a song, half an hour of insurance etc.

2. 1c may seem like an insignificant sum of money for someone from a rich/developed country, however it may not be a sufficiently small division in use cases of people from poorer/developing countries.

Cheers

[AlexsanderGusev15]

So the bitcoins are Satoshi. It's just that bitocaine is measured in satos. As I understand it

[malekbaba]

I dont think anything beyond satoshi is needed. 1 sat is quite low. But if btc goes beyond million, than may be something will be introduced like ibtc (0.001 btc) or nbtc (0.0001btc). Just my own way of thinking. However satoshi is well established unit and may be we should not spend single effort on it, now