Can bitcoin be divided beyond satoshis?

[BitNerd]

Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?

[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.