Well... Hello all. I found out about bitcoins a day ago, and boy, am I kicking myself for not knowing about this a few months ago!
This 8bit thing, you all know where pirates "pieces of eight" came from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_%28money%29In the U.S., the "bit" as a designation for money dates from the colonial period, when a common unit of currency was the Spanish milled dollar. As a way of making change, these dollars were cut into eight pie-slice shaped pieces which were called "bits". (For this reason, the whole coin was known as a "piece of eight.") Each eighth-dollar bit was then worth 12.5 cents, "two bits" was a quarter of a dollar (25 cents), "four bits" was a half-dollar (50 cents) and "six bits" was 75 cents. Because there was no one-bit coin, a dime (10 ¢) was sometimes called a short bit and 15¢ a long bit.
Bitcoin has a great and long future ahead of it.