Why I'm switching to mXBT — and why you should too

[Peter Lambert]

When I buy water, I never buy less than 1.0 gallon. (wait, no, I bought a 1/8 gallon bottle of water the other day)
When I buy land, I never buy less than 1.0 acres. (wait, no, my house is on less than 1/4 acre)
When I buy fabric, I never buy less than 1.0 yard. (wait, no, sometimes if I only need a small amount I get less)

The whole argument that people want to buy a whole bitcoin is silly. And anybody who claims bitcoin has a higher barrier to entry now than six months ago because the price went up should be kicked in the kidney. It is just as easy to buy 100 usd worth of bitcoins now as it was six months ago.

actually i don't like the idea of cents or millicoins, and i don't think it's easy to work in numbers like millions

i ask again, why not find a name for the middle unit 0.0001 BTX? and then we keep the discussion for most people in the realm of 5 digits.

Why invent something new when we can just take the metric system which people are familiar with and use mB (read millibits)?

Everybody knows 0.001 L = 1 mL and 0.001 g = 1 mg, so it just makes perfect sense for 0.001 BTC = 1 mB .

so 1 satoshi = 0.00001 mB, that is a bit easier to read than 1 satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC

[1714994949]

1714994949

[1714994949]

1714994949

[Birdy]

When I buy water, I never buy less than 1.0 gallon. (wait, no, I bought a 1/8 gallon bottle of water the other day)
When I buy land, I never buy less than 1.0 acres. (wait, no, my house is on less than 1/4 acre)
When I buy fabric, I never buy less than 1.0 yard. (wait, no, sometimes if I only need a small amount I get less)

Ever took a look at the prices in the supermarket and wondered why they are like $99.99 ?

When you buy lands or fabrics, you will not measure it this way, that comparison is stupid.
If you buy water, actually yes you often buy 1 liter packages in the supermarket.

[muyuu]

I always put £20, this way petrol prices never go up for me!

[Peter Lambert]

I always put £20, this way petrol prices never go up for me!

You are paying 20 for a liter of gas? Wow, that's expensive!

[muyuu]

I always put £20, this way petrol prices never go up for me!

You are paying 20 for a liter of gas? Wow, that's expensive!

Nope, I put £20 no matter how many gallons that is Fixed price petrol for me, yay.

[shantee]

I totally agree, and I 'll try  most of the time to use  mBTC.
i actually think it's a big issue that could stop bitcoin from rising up in value. I would not like to own 0 point xxx of something and if i can't afford the full thing i'll certainly switch to something cheaper lite litecoin.

And I would add that, I am not a big fan of the "satoshi" thing ..Yeah I know it's cool it put some kind geeky mystic aura in that cryptocurrency but (with all respect I have for that Satoshi person or group of person) I don't think it's a good marketing idea for bitcoin. It might not sound really serious, really reassuring, really cool for many people ..including me actually

[acoindr]

I think this thread is spot on.

First, let me say I don't like using XBT. Although I understand the reason behind it I believe it will confuse people (the majority that use it); already in this thread people are putting the X in different places. BTC makes sense and is the most widely adopted.

Second, I do think we should make a concerted push toward mBTC (we shouldn't skip all the way to Satoshis).

Newer people will not know that we had a large discussion about moving the decimal place early in this forum's and Bitcoin's life. Some of the exact same reasoning about perception being key was brought up, including by myself. In fact, if you look at the chart on this page you will see there was one weird spike in Bitcoin's price history where it went from around $1 to $30 and back to around $1-2 in a short timespan. Guess what. That spike, if you look at this forum's history, corresponded with discussing moving the decimal place in a concerted way. People understood that if 1 mBTC reached dollar parity then owning whole bitcoins would mean a lot of value (1 thousand times more, to be precise), and the price shot up, then crashed.

We mostly didn't move the decimal place. I think because it wouldn't have made sense. We had only recently reached dollar parity, giving Bitcoin that crucial credibility boost. It wouldn't make sense to hide that by referring to everything with mBTC which would then be worth about $.001. Now, however, things are different. We've reached $100, and I think perception is one reason we're sort of stuck there. If we go to mBTC now they would be worth $0.10 each approx, which is easy to comprehend.

I think we need to push the exchanges to do this. If they do so everyone else will follow.

[nobbynobbynoob]

Count me in for mBTC, but my psychological threshold to think primarily this way is a floor price of about $0,25/mBTC. Units worth much less than that are barely worthy of merit now, IMHO. Bitcoin is hard money after all.

I'll switch my client to mBTC at $0,25/mBTC.

[Peter Lambert]

I totally agree, and I 'll try  most of the time to use  mBTC.
i actually think it's a big issue that could stop bitcoin from rising up in value. I would not like to own 0 point xxx of something and if i can't afford the full thing i'll certainly switch to something cheaper lite litecoin.

And I would add that, I am not a big fan of the "satoshi" thing ..Yeah I know it's cool it put some kind geeky mystic aura in that cryptocurrency but (with all respect I have for that Satoshi person or group of person) I don't think it's a good marketing idea for bitcoin. It might not sound really serious, really reassuring, really cool for many people ..including me actually

Unless I can buy 1 Google, I am just going to go buy something else. I do not want to own 0.000000001 Google, I want the whole damn thing. Why is Google so expensive? They should lower the price so I can have it ...


Satoshi had no idea what the price of a bitcoin was going to be. He just put the decimal about half way through the total (21 000 000.000 000 00), and that is why a bitcoin is the size it is.

[Tas]

+1 to OP and post #61.

I like the notation mB too, but I'd prefer it pronounced em bee. (Micros would then be uB and pronounced you bee.)

Edit: Come to think of it, embits and youbits sounds nice too.

[tributetosn]

Could the Bitcoin Foundation help spreading this? It could be under a Best Practices section.

[BlueNote]

I agree with the one guy who seemed to have the fresh idea of picking the mid-point (four decimal places) and just calling it a "bit." That is a really cool idea because it does away with the jumble of "mBTC" and sounds NATURALLY like it should be the acting base unit of BITcoin.

Then it would be easy to tell people, "You want Bitcoin? You need to buy bits. The exchanges sell bits. Merchants price in bits. A bit is $.01 right now. How many would like?"

I like this idea! This is a highly appealing streamlined solution. It's non-geeky too because you're not even thinking of decimal places like you would with mBTC. We just take the midpoint and give it a very simple convenient name which is actually in Bitcoin so it can stand for Bitcoin.

Think about mBTC. What is that? It's a code you have to decipher. It's a jumble of letters, not a word. Those letters will be assaulting your eyes forever. A bit, on the other hand. What is that? A small word - light and airy - no caps even, no codes. Everyone recognizes that it means some kind of small unit. Yes, exactly. It's the base unit of Bitcoin.

So how many bits are in your wallet right now?

[dserrano5]

I agree with the one guy who seemed to have the fresh idea of picking the mid-point (four decimal places) and just calling it a "bit." That is a really cool idea because it does away with the jumble of "mBTC" and sounds NATURALLY like it should be the acting base unit of BITcoin.

This is how I work too, except that I don't have a name for it. Eight decimal places call for either 4 subdivisions of 2 places each or 2 subdivisions of 4 places each.

[BlueNote]

I agree with the one guy who seemed to have the fresh idea of picking the mid-point (four decimal places) and just calling it a "bit." That is a really cool idea because it does away with the jumble of "mBTC" and sounds NATURALLY like it should be the acting base unit of BITcoin.

This is how I work too, except that I don't have a name for it. Eight decimal places call for either 4 subdivisions of 2 places each or 2 subdivisions of 4 places each.

Yes, it makes sense to name just a few groups of divisions. The midpoint is a bit and the endpoint is a Satoshi. So you can then describe everything in between in terms of these two quite easily. And, of course, you still have the full bitcoin reference as well. So these three simple names can cover very small to very large amounts easily.

IMO, the math-like names are just too cumbersome. They're just awful for use in mass adoption. But with bitcoin/bit/Satoshi, you have three groups of ten thousandths that cover the whole range.

[Peter Lambert]

I agree with the one guy who seemed to have the fresh idea of picking the mid-point (four decimal places) and just calling it a "bit." That is a really cool idea because it does away with the jumble of "mBTC" and sounds NATURALLY like it should be the acting base unit of BITcoin.

This is how I work too, except that I don't have a name for it. Eight decimal places call for either 4 subdivisions of 2 places each or 2 subdivisions of 4 places each.

Yes, it makes sense to name just a few groups of divisions. The midpoint is a bit and the endpoint is a Satoshi. So you can then describe everything in between in terms of these two quite easily. And, of course, you still have the full bitcoin reference as well. So these three simple names can cover very small to very large amounts easily.

IMO, the math-like names are just too cumbersome. They're just awful for use in mass adoption. But with bitcoin/bit/Satoshi, you have three groups of ten thousandths that cover the whole range.

But nobody uses tenthousandths. We are all used to converting from mm to m, or from km to m, or from mL to L, which are all increments of three orders of magnitude.

[amincd]

For those who doubt the importance of this change, just look at XRP (Ripple).

If I'm interpreting https://ripplecharts.com/markets correctly, the current price is 152,884.58 XRP for $1

Right there that sounds cheap right?  Sure I'll buy a million XRP for six and a half dollars.  Except that that means that the market cap is 654088.20, which is about two-thirds the market cap of bitcoin.  Should ripple's market cap be anywhere near the market cap of bitcoin?  No way.  Bitcoin has four years and hundreds of thousands of people behind it.  Ripple is new and untested.

So why is Ripple beating bitcoin? Because it looks affordable.  In order for bitcoin to keep growing we need to be able to recruit regular people.  Regular people can't handle numbers.

+1  If we redefined a bitcoin to mean what we now call a mBTC, and its price went down to $0.10, I think we'd see a lot more interest from casual investors/potential-adoptees. Going from $0.10 to $0.20 seems a lot easier than going from $100 to $200. At $200 every one is screaming 'bubble', simply because it's a big number.

[Peter Lambert]

For those who doubt the importance of this change, just look at XRP (Ripple).

If I'm interpreting https://ripplecharts.com/markets correctly, the current price is 152,884.58 XRP for $1

Right there that sounds cheap right?  Sure I'll buy a million XRP for six and a half dollars.  Except that that means that the market cap is 654088.20, which is about two-thirds the market cap of bitcoin.  Should ripple's market cap be anywhere near the market cap of bitcoin?  No way.  Bitcoin has four years and hundreds of thousands of people behind it.  Ripple is new and untested.

So why is Ripple beating bitcoin? Because it looks affordable.  In order for bitcoin to keep growing we need to be able to recruit regular people.  Regular people can't handle numbers.

+1  If we redefined a bitcoin to mean what we now call a mBTC, and its price went down to $0.10, I think we'd see a lot more interest from casual investors/potential-adoptees. Going from $0.10 to $0.20 seems a lot easier than going from $100 to $200. At $200 every one is screaming 'bubble', simply because it's a big number.

Just price your bitcoins in gold. Get your bitcoins quick while the price is low! Just 0.0736 XAU per bitcoin today!

[yona]

I agree with the one guy who seemed to have the fresh idea of picking the mid-point (four decimal places) and just calling it a "bit." That is a really cool idea because it does away with the jumble of "mBTC" and sounds NATURALLY like it should be the acting base unit of BITcoin.

This is how I work too, except that I don't have a name for it. Eight decimal places call for either 4 subdivisions of 2 places each or 2 subdivisions of 4 places each.

Yes, it makes sense to name just a few groups of divisions. The midpoint is a bit and the endpoint is a Satoshi. So you can then describe everything in between in terms of these two quite easily. And, of course, you still have the full bitcoin reference as well. So these three simple names can cover very small to very large amounts easily.

IMO, the math-like names are just too cumbersome. They're just awful for use in mass adoption. But with bitcoin/bit/Satoshi, you have three groups of ten thousandths that cover the whole range.

But nobody uses tenthousandths. We are all used to converting from mm to m, or from km to m, or from mL to L, which are all increments of three orders of magnitude.

well, i think the reason it does not have a 'spaced 3 digit increment name' only makes it special and in need of a name.
but if it is important to stick to the 3digit division we could move the 'bit' a decimal point up or down. 0.00001BTX, still less digits then using either extreme and starting to count from it.

[BlueNote]

But nobody uses tenthousandths. We are all used to converting from mm to m, or from km to m, or from mL to L, which are all increments of three orders of magnitude.

That's irrelevant here. Once adopted, no one need know or care that it's a ten-thousandth. The bit can describe a large range of Bitcoin by itself quite comfortably precisely because it's the midpoint of the decimal range.

Bitcoin is a digital currency. It does not require numerous actual coins of incremental denominations to function. It's just a number we keep in a ledger. We do not need to reference intermediate decimal places at all when we have convenient groups of divisions - in this case, three. We have Bitcoin/bit/Satoshi. That's all we need.

The mathematical names for each decimal place are simply not needed here. In the US, the dollar is currently denominated in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars. These coins are PHYSICAL OBJECTS. If the dollar were totally digital in practice, we would not need all these divisions. We would just use pennies and dollars for reference. No one would say, "I need two quarters (or five dimes, or one half-dollar)," if we weren't using actual coinage. No, all of that is just 50 pennies, and a "penny" would just be the name of the most convenient unit to describe a range of the dollar (three decimal places).

So for a totally digital dollar, you'd only need Dollar/Penny (unless it hugely deflated). You can describe the range of $.01 to $ infinity with these two words along with already established large-scale descriptors like million and billion.

Since Bitcoin has eight decimal places, it makes sense to simply divide that in half and have two four-decimal ranges as a convenient reference - bit and Satoshi. Remember, there are no physical coins here. The mathematical or shorthand names of the intermediate places are irrelevant when describing a range for the sake of convenience. This is a currency and we need it to be as convenient as possible. We don't need nine divisional names for the the damn thing. Three will do just fine.

Bitcoin has a hard cap on the main unit - 21 million. It has currently 8 decimal places to allow for smaller units to accommodate mass adoption. People will only need to reference "Bitcoin" or "bit" to describe anything from .0001 to 21,000,000. They'll do that for a long time. There's only one conversion factor to remember. That's all you'll need to know. It'll be a common factoid: One Bitcoin equals 10,000 bits. One bit equals 10,000 Satoshis. Put it up on Wikipedia and you're done.

That is so simple and convenient. Tell me, why do we need anything else?

[Anonymousg64]

We need alias denotations to change people perception of thinking one whole bitcoin is worth allot.
at 10000$/bitcoin we need new denotations not based on BTC itself like mBTC or uBTC.
like a satoshi
we could use exponential increments from a base of 16
1satoshi = 0.00000001BTC = satoshi
16satoshi = 0.00000016BTC = alias
256satoshi = 0.00000256BTC = alias
4096satoshi = 0.00004096BTC = alias
65536satoshi = 0.00065536BTC = alias
1048576satoshi = 0.01048576BTC = alias
16777216satoshi = 0.16777216BTC = alias
268435456satoshi = 2.68435456BTC = alias
why base 16? idk, anything that has small enough interval and not too many aliases to remember.

the mindblock is perceptual and based on language dynamics
has nothing to do with ease
bitcoins, btc, mbtc, ubtc all use a bitcoin as the base,
people want to own units, not subdivisions.

If we can introduce a new language for bitcoins to wrap the subdivisions and disassociate it from a single whole btc,
people will be more willing to buy some of alias A, B or C and less likely to think its overvalued.
but theres actually a more important problem below that, the us dollar is bitcoins reserve currency, we dont know how else to express value quantitatively.