The "I cannot afford 1 BTC"-Problem

[BigBall]

Oh good idea bro but that is not possible because everybody wants for bitcoin price go up and bitcoin is cryptocurrency what is a good reason why that is not possible.They will not make btc for some small amount of peole more similar to fiat currency that is not good.

[bobitza]

Hi everyone,

I have a question concerning the current high value of a BTC. I talk a lot with friends who don't know much about BTC and try to convince them to buy some too.

When I tell them about it, the same question which always comes up is:

"But since it is so expensive (2000-3000$), how can I afford 1 BTC?"

I always tell them that it is possible to buy 0.5 BTC or even 0.001 BTC. But I think this is a major problem which gets worse with the price rising even higher.

So here is my question:

Are there any plans on changing BTC to make it "look more affordable"? Perhaps introduce something like mBTC (worth 0.001 BTC / 1 BTC = 1000 mBTC) so that people have a better feeling buying something, which is not a number behind a zero (e.g. 0.025).

I don't want it to become something like a "discount looking currency". But it's a psychological problem, that people don't like to buy only a part of something or (as in this case) often don't know that they can buy less than 1 BTC.

To say "Well, the people who don't know better shouldn't buy anyway" seems to be the wrong approach on the way to mass adaption.

Why do you need 1BTC? I think it does not matter, you can own any number of bitcoins, it does not need to be an integer. You should not take that seriously, "What would you do with that money?" That is the important issue.

[jakelyson]

Gold have a high price too but that is not stopping people who want gold buying them. I think the problem lies more on the fact that bitcoin is a new concept to them and they are afraid to invest a large amount of money. It is easy to explain that you do not have to buy in bulk or 1 btc and you can buy in retail. But if they insist that they cannot afford 1BTC, then it is an alibi to avoid buying bitcoin at all.

As others are saying, there is already a established units for what op wanted.

[Script]

I don't see how this is a problem, most people also cannot afford 1 kilogram of gold...

[amacar2]

Buying bitcoin is not a emotional investment it is just like hard cash and whatever you have in bitcoin have some value so you don't need 1 full bitcoin to get its value.

This is just some nonsense and not really a problem. There are few bitcoin wallets that allow its users to watch their balance in mBtc so you can suggest those wallets to those friends.

[Junko]

When talking to a friend or relative or whoever that is new to bitcoin, they often say something along the lines of "Bitcoin is too expensive," or "I can't afford to buy bitcoin," or anything indicating that it is cost prohibitive - ie whatever the current price of bitcoin is what is keeping them from buying in.

What I tell them - or rather, what I ask them, assuming that they are actually interested in buying bitcoin, but feel they can't because the price of 1 bitcoin is too high, is I ask them: "Without looking at the current price of bitcoin, how much money would you be able to afford/would be willing to invest/buy in bitcoin?" Then they will say whatever fiat dollar amount. And then I will say, "That's good, you CAN invest/buy that exact fiat amount worth or any fiat amount worth you want in bitcoin." I then go on to explain to them that it is not a requirement to buy bitcoin only in 1 btc increments and that you can buy lesser, decimal amounts.

I also tell them even if you can't afford 1 full btc all at one time, you can eventually reach that 1 btc amount incrementally by buying whatever you can afford bit by bit over time. The important thing is to just get in with any amount so you have some skin in the game, a ticket to ride on the Bitcoin Train and hopefully upgrade to a seat on the great Bitcoin Rocket to da moon and beyond.

[keithers]

Tell your friends to not look at it as an investment in terms of number of coins purchased.  They need to look at it from a US Dollar standpoint.  

If they can invest $1000, then they are hoping that their investment will become worth $2000 (or anywhere above their initial $1,000).

When I first got into bitcoin, I was really concerned with the number of coins that I could purchase, but if you are looking at it strategically to make money, you just have to look at it from a dollar standpoint (or whatever local currency you would be converting to).

If your $1,000 becomes $2,000...it doesn't matter if that is 1 bitcoin or .000001 bitcoin, you have still doubled your investment.

[Catmony]

Is this really a big problem ?  The one who can see potential of bitcoin will go straight and buy bitcoins with whatever they have ready to invest. I have also suggested and even helped many of my relatives and friends to buy bitcoin and never got any such questions/ dilemma from them.

[giveen]

So you are blaming bitcoin for this there is already mbtc and for your mind set it won't make a difference amd it's not at all complusory to actually buy exactly 1 btc i had purchased in starting 0.7 btc but i start trading and quickly turned those 0.7 btc to more than 1 btc , it will take time but I'm telling you trading is a hell lot of fun ones you start understanding.

[mindrust]

Right now I can get away with ~10k satoshi fee for each transaction I make but when a satoshi becomes 1$ (that'll make 1BTC=100Million$ btw), my minimum fee will become 10k$.

It is all good for early adopters (even the 3k$ buyers will be early adopters) but if the fees don't get adjusted to those high prices, bitcoin will never be able to reach everyone in the world. Now, you may come with a counter argument and say that bitcoin's (or blockchain's) transaction capacity will never be able to handle a worldwide demand because, physics.

And If the information I recently read wasn't wrong, if we stay with blockchain, that limits will never change and bitcoin will never be >1million$.

People name bitcoin as v1.0
Some name eth as v2.0
If the dude in alt forum says the truth, v3.0's will come out in 5-10 months. (he is working on some other alt named radix)

Unless bitcoin upgrades itself something similar to that v3.0 protocols which can handle visa level huge amount of transactions without being centralized and dumps the block chain; bitcoin is about to hit its limits. We either need to make super cheap transactions (segwit/lightning will do this) and miners won't like it or increase the capacity by huge amounts so miners can make the same amount of money while processing more transactions.

The cap increase shouldn't be by increasing the blocksize btw, because it will reduce the node count&safety and increase the centralization.
And super cheap transactions won't last forever.

We need to increase the cap without hurting anybody.

[Adbitco]

The best thing about bitcoin is it can be divided into many fractions the least being 1 satoshi. It can easily be taught to people that thete are fractions of bitcoin available for them to buy in case the can't afford to buy the whole bitcoin. Just like cents are to dollars satoshis are to bitcoin.

[Hammonds]

No such plan, just waiting for bitcoin for less than $ 1800.

[dreamer81]

We should all wear T-shirts saying things like, " Just 1 Satoshi at a time to my first Bitcoin " or "Bitcoin has small babies and they

are called Satoshi's " ..... or something similar to educate people. I have the same problem and once I explained this to people,

they dive right in. Once they bought their first few Satoshi's... they figure it out and they start buying more. 

Im totally down with that. Anyone know where to buy cool bitcoin /altcoin merchandise? I haven't really found good quality stuff, only the cheap s**t on ebay.

[Kevin77]

Will earning $2500 a problem for anyone ? Will you buy your wedding ring for one full ounce of gold or some fractions of ounce ? Bitcoin is a currency like PayPal or some other foreign currency, you may go buying it (for what ever prices ) and will spend it (for same value) to find the benefits of using BTC payments which may not available with other payment systems. Now tell me why we need to worry about price levels of bitcoins ?

[laluna24]

No such plan, just waiting for bitcoin for less than $ 1800.

This is the problem now if others wanted to buy bitcoin at lower price. And cannot afford for 1btc, all of us are aiming to get profit of btc. Actually, bitcoin price is volatile all of us must be ready and willing to take the risks. Just enjoy the ride and invest on what you can afford.

[nidacoinlove]

The first thing that you need to do is to stop complaining about the bitcoin price because in future you may not get it on 3000 USD even. It will grow higher because there is only 21 Million Bitcoin and look at the world population if 5% of the world population starts using bitcoin its price will go ways high.
In my opinion it is wise to convince those who can’t afford to buy 1 bitcoin as a whole to buy the satoshis they can afford and if they are fond of having 1 bitcoin in their wallet, they should start working for it to earn. BTC allows everyone to avail the opportunity to earn it. BTC can be earned through freelancing, signature campaigns, facets, and mining and through many more activities.
If you are waiting for BTC price that it will come down sorry to say but you are living in fools paradise.  

[haroldtee]

Discount? Where do you even want to get that? Everyone had their chance, this is your chance not until it gets to 10000usd and you start saying if I had known, I would have just gotten 0.01btc at least. If you or your friends had the chance to buy at 20usd, I am very sure you must have still said it is expensive then. Buy now what you can afford at the present value, the same amount in usd, you would have bought few years ago and at least you will still be better than people who ends up knowing and buying few years later. If you feel you are angry with the price, just find a way to earn if you have some skills then. But those your thoughts as well as those of your friends will keep taking you back until you regret later.

[freedomno1]

Nope fixed supply its beautiful cause its divisible, if they really want a whole coin there are plenty of alts on the marketplace
Could be balling with Dogecoins and be much wow lol.

[SvenBomvolen]

That's a psychology of round numbers, everybody love it. You are right that buying of mBTCs is going to be the right investment, cause of the price will raise even higher than 3000$. But you see, if a person will buy just 0.001 BTC the profit is not going to be so noticeable, as it would be if it was at least 1 BTC, right? I think for the kind of people who think the same there is only one option to earn and collect bitcoin.

[Rinaze]

It's hard to overcome human physiological. When I explain BTC or mBTC to my friends, they would say it's a nice way of saying that you have "X" amount of cents and cents isn't worth having (which is true to a certain extent because what can 5 cents buy you in the real world? then again 95 cents is a lot but that's very close to the integer 1).