Start Using mBTC as Standard Denomination?

[Razick]

EDIT: I answered a few questions on the topic for a CoinDesk article: http://www.coindesk.com/june-2-m-day-promotes-millibitcoin-as-unit-of-choice/

EDIT2: As of today I will be using mBTC whenever appropriate. I encourage you to do the same. Also, many clients/wallets have built in support for mBTC so be sure to change it over. Blockchain and Bitcoin QT included.

Now that Bitcoin's price is (relatively speaking) stable and shows no signs of any major decline in the near future, I think it is time to take a look at how we measure it. At the current price of ~$130, BTC is a little awkward to work with: If I wanted to buy something for $3.99 in Bitcoin, I'd have to pay BTC0.03069. That's an unattractive way of pricing things.

If, however, we made mBTC the default "denomination of reference" a few things would happen:

- Prices would be easier to work with, BTC0.03069 would become mBTC30.69. Much better (note the precision is the same).
- Bitcoin's exchange rate would be (seem) more attractive to newcomers. Many of which find $130 questionable because they don't understand the market.
- Newcomers wouldn't keep asking about why there are only 21,000,000 units, since there would obviously be 21,000,000,000. Plenty for now.

What do you think?

NEW OPTION:

Switch to XBT. An XBT is 100 satoshi (or 1/1,000,000 BTC). This allows us to have $21,000,000,000,000 units of the base unit of currency, and an exchange rate much less threatening to newcomers.

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[eMansipater]

zinodaur put it better than me:

[Birdy]

Absolutely, mBtc would be the better unit to get more people interested in Bitcoins.
It's just a psychological effect, but a huge one.

[Razick]

Absolutely, mBtc would be the better unit to get more people interested in Bitcoins.
It's just a psychological effect, but a huge one.

zinodaur put it better than me:

+1 Just fyi, I have already made the switch where possible. If this poll get's support I am going to start a petition to send to BitPay. Just to clarify the petition would ask for the option to use mBTC so it wouldn't force a switch.

[axefrog]

As I said in another thread, the word "coin" here is the problem. People see coins as small, semi-worthless denominations of a larger unit, and they also see them as somewhat non-divisible, at least not by a significant amount. It's not really in anybody's reality that you can divide a coin up to eight decimal places, so by having individual coins worth $130+, a psychological barrier is thrown up which creates resistance to adoption.

I propose that we retarget the word "Bitcoin" at smaller denominations, and perhaps start assigning (colloquially at least) the word BitDollar, or something else, to the denomination currently used by Bitcoin. By doing this, people will feel like what they are exchanging their fiat currency for has more actual value. I feel this is a better solution than simply defaulting to "mBTC", as mBTC is (a) a mouthful and (b) still appears to be a tiny subdivision of a greater whole, which doesn't address the psychological barrier issue.

[Razick]

As I said in another thread, the word "coin" here is the problem. People see coins as small, semi-worthless denominations of a larger unit, and they also see them as somewhat non-divisible, at least not by a significant amount. It's not really in anybody's reality that you can divide a coin up to eight decimal places, so by having individual coins worth $130+, a psychological barrier is thrown up which creates resistance to adoption.

I propose that we retarget the word "Bitcoin" at smaller denominations, and perhaps start assigning (colloquially at least) the word BitDollar, or something else, to the denomination currently used by Bitcoin. By doing this, people will feel like what they are exchanging their fiat currency for has more actual value. I feel this is a better solution than simply defaulting to "mBTC", as mBTC is (a) a mouthful and (b) still appears to be a tiny subdivision of a greater whole, which doesn't address the psychological barrier issue.

I see your point, but I think that would be pretty controversial. mBTC is a mouthful, but if we could come up with an alternative term for it (similar to how 1000th of $1 is a mill), it wouldn't be a problem. I think mBTC is simple enough, after all, even in the US people are taught decimal based measurements in school so just about everyone understands them.

We just have to make sure we don't end up saying "10 mee" like how the British use "10 pee." 

[tutkarz]

As I said in another thread, the word "coin" here is the problem. People see coins as small, semi-worthless denominations of a larger unit, and they also see them as somewhat non-divisible, at least not by a significant amount. It's not really in anybody's reality that you can divide a coin up to eight decimal places, so by having individual coins worth $130+, a psychological barrier is thrown up which creates resistance to adoption.

I propose that we retarget the word "Bitcoin" at smaller denominations, and perhaps start assigning (colloquially at least) the word BitDollar, or something else, to the denomination currently used by Bitcoin. By doing this, people will feel like what they are exchanging their fiat currency for has more actual value. I feel this is a better solution than simply defaulting to "mBTC", as mBTC is (a) a mouthful and (b) still appears to be a tiny subdivision of a greater whole, which doesn't address the psychological barrier issue.

this is good idea but almost impossible to convince everybody to use and don't confuse too much everyone.

[The 4ner]

So that's what M-Day was referring to! Ha ha!

[RoadToHell]

So that's what M-Day was referring to! Ha ha!

Oops - someone took the bag off the cat!

[acoindr]

Fantastic!

I think m-Day could be huge. All we need is MtGox on board. As I said earlier:

... 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.

[keelba]

As I said in another thread, the word "coin" here is the problem. People see coins as small, semi-worthless denominations of a larger unit, and they also see them as somewhat non-divisible, at least not by a significant amount.

I agree with your reasoning but I believe it is the "Bit" portion that is giving people the perception of "small, semi-worthless". I'd rather not see names like Bitcent, or millibit, or anything with "bit" in it. I like the idea of naming the denominations after those who've contributed to getting Bitcoin off the ground. Like 1 mBTC could be called a Gavin. I don't really care if it is called a Gavin, just want a unique name not associated with the word bit.

And I agree, no one should ever see the price of 1 BTC at $1,000. We should be dealing with smaller denominations before that happens.

[tlr]

I agree mBTC is kind of awkward. It's 4 syllables, and it isn't obviously related to Bitcoin unless you already know what BTC means.

Ideally we'd use something that's 1-3 syllables, and is obviously related to Bitcoin.

"Bitdollar" seems counter-intuitive since it's less than a bitcoin, but would be relatively close in value to USD... for now.

"Millicoin" sounds like a tiny amount, otherwise I like it. It extends to "Microcoin" if we're ever fortunate enough to have that problem.

[Tacticat]

How about MBC? Mili Bitcoin

Or maybe just "Milicoin".

[TippingPoint]

The word Bond might have potential.

[Abdussamad]

What does the m stand for? Milli or micro?

I find it confusing and would rather use a decimal point than worry about mBTC.

[TippingPoint]

From a subliminal, mass-marketing standpoint, "bit" is sometimes associated with something small, fractional, and insignificant, and "coin" is most commonly associated with a fraction of a dollar, franc, or peso.  

It is like being named Trevor or Agnes.

Although it is probably too late to do anything about it.

car names
http://carzz.co/designbook/375/ten-of-the-worst-car-names/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/car-life/best-and-worst-weird-wacky-and-wonderful-car-names/article12220424/

[blacksmithtm]

Why isnt there a "i support another denomination" option

[The 4ner]

It is like being named Trevor or Agnes.

LOL! I'm sure there are some Trevor's and Agnes' out there that like their name. Ha ha!

[kendog77]

The easiest way to force adoption of such a change would be to simply change the default units in the next bitcoin-qt release from BTC to mBTC.

Most people would not change the default and get used to dealing with mBTC.

[Tacticat]

What do you prefer?

10 mbc (milibitcoin)
10 mBTC
10 milis
10 milcoins
Other...

I really like 1 mbc, in lowercase also indicates that it's a subunit.