Start Using mBTC as Standard Denomination?

[xinzark]

The price are so high up now may be it will skip mBTC to uBTC , its all depend on the price

[nobbynobbynoob]

The price are so high up now may be it will skip mBTC to uBTC , its all depend on the price

As bullish as I might be, in the short term, I'm not that bullish.

It'll be good when exchanges, charts and similar platforms offer mBTC display (also, fiat per mBTC), stickable via cookie or account settings. I think this is very important, because psychologically some people don't want to mess with 0,000... etc. I am adept enough mathematically for the fractions not to bother me, but now I find mBTC display much more "humanized" and aesthetically pleasing. When bitcoin price was much lower than this, mBTC was often just too trivial to bother with TBH.

[Jaymax]

The price are so high up now may be it will skip mBTC to uBTC , its all depend on the price

First, we live in the 21st century people, we have technology, we can write μ when we mean μ can't we?

The unicode arbiters might not yet have given us our beloved double-stroke-B, but the greeks had a bit of a head start, so that's to be expected.

But writing a u when you mean μ is just a little bit unclever, don't you think?

Right, anyhow, to the case in point.  I agree that we should skip mB and head straight for μB.  One of the things we can learn from Friedman et al is that deflation impedes liquidity.  That's probably the most common criticism of bitcoin from serious economists - some people will sit on their stash [just like governments and others used to (or still do) with gold].  And deflation hurts liquidity - at least traditionally.

But Bitcoin in all it's brilliance has an 'out' - it doesn't need to stop at eight decimals. 

We should look to leverage that fact.  For every economist who worries about deflation and the currency failing due to it not being sufficiently liquid, the response should be that virtually anyone sitting on even a single unit BTC will not be  troubled by selling off a zillionth (i.e. hundred-millionth) of their holding to ensure liquidity remains.

Those who shepherd the protocol should already be looking to add another eight decimals, and those of us who want bitcoin to achieve its destiny should be talking up micro-bitcoin by yesterday at the latest.  People need to perceive μB as a unit in order to get around the psychological barriers to seeing value in 0.000001 of something.  μB has an additional advantage, in that one satoshi is 1/100th, which is how people are used to thinking about dollars and cents (pounds and pence, etc etc)

But please please please, thats micro, with a mu. μ.

[luqash3]

Razick for sure we should start using the new currency of modern time bitcoin as a standard one. No more usage of currency that is manipulated by central banks for their own personnel benefits. I am sick of tapering even now on $10 billion reduced. What is Ben doing?

[Timetwister]

No. It's too confusing. Use either full BTC or satoshis (if BTC becomes much more valuable in fiat).

[ToTheZeroth]

I typically denote amounts in BTC, mBTC and µBTC, like so:

6.72 µBTC
67.20 µBTC
672 µBTC
6.72 mBTC
67.20 mBTC
672 mBTC
6.72 BTC
67.20 BTC
672 BTC
6.72 kBTC
67.20 kBTC
672 kBTC
6.72 MBTC

(Most of these are hypothetical! I have never had the opportunity to ask for 6.72 µBTC or 6.72 MBTC in payment for anything.)

How is this confusing? We already deal with different units in the grocery store, grams, hectograms, kilograms. Plus, we practically already do with currency as well: "50 bucks", "50 grand", "50 million" (crore, lakh, whatever). The only question, really, is what to call the units, in speech, in different languages. And that, hopefully, will be decided by actual usage. Plus there will seldom be any reason to call them anything at all. A factor of 1000 between units is quite enough for any misunderstandings in familiar situations to be impossible. Of course, during the volatility stage this will be quite another matter. At any rate, any ideas with more than two syllables are ridiculously implausible: thinking that people will go around saying "That'll be 12 millibitcoin" (or "millibit" or "millicoin") is like thinking they would go around saying "That'll be 12 pounds sterling".

And saying "use either full BTC or satoshis" is like saying "mark all household scales in either tonnes or milligrams, and only allow these units in recipes".

Wait… was it 0.00004 tonnes of butter for the pancakes, or was it 0.0004?

Edit: by the way, speaking of butter, it is sold today (at one store in one country) at around 11.60 BTC/t, or at around 11.60 mBTC/kg. When will a bitcoin buy you a full tonne of butter?

[bryant.coleman]

No. It's too confusing. Use either full BTC or satoshis (if BTC becomes much more valuable in fiat).

If you want to use Satoshi as a base unit, then it should at least reach $0.01 in value. And for that, the BTC should cross $1,000,000 mark.

[btcusr]

No. It's too confusing. Use either full BTC or satoshis (if BTC becomes much more valuable in fiat).

If you want to use Satoshi as a base unit, then it should at least reach $0.01 in value. And for that, the BTC should cross $1,000,000 mark.

$0.01 = 122.6 indonesian rupiah

[skivrmt]

While the system is set, I do agree .002657 of something isn't very attractive to the general public.  And yes, it does matter.  Look at the stock market.  People -think- Apple or Google is more expensive than say JNJ because its price is ~10x of what JNJ is.  Technically speaking, JNJ is slightly more expensive than Apple, less then Google in "real life" (based on P/E). 

It's the reverse for XBT.  Someone buying 10mBTC "feels" a lot better since they own 10 of something.  Yes, in real life they don't.  They want to own more.

[Abdussamad]

mbtc is the biggest fail ever. I hate that "don't panic" sign on bitcoinity. Thank goodness non of the other sites adopted it.

[nobbynobbynoob]

I love that Bitcoinity took the mBTC jump. Time for the others to follow suit IMO.

[dperfect]

I prefer to just use "B-notation" (similar to scientific / e-notation except we drop the negative sign and prefix with "XB"). With 3 characters, you can efficiently represent just about any fraction of bitcoins.

5 BTC = 5 XB0
5 mBTC = 5 XB3
5 uBTC = 5 XB6
5 satoshis = 5 XB8

... if you ever need to use more precision than satoshis (if the protocol is adjusted to support it), you can represent that without getting into ridiculous naming territory (e.g., XB9).

It's also a lot clearer for those less familiar with metric naming conventions/abbreviations ("wait, does the 'm' in mBTC mean 'milli' or 'micro'? What's with the 'u' in 'uBTC'? If it should really be 'μ', then why don't we use that?"). I know- for the tech savvy, the whole "mBTC, uBTC, satoshi..." thing makes sense, but I really think "B-notation" would make a lot more sense to the general public - people don't even have to understand scientific notation. You just know that lower XB- numbers are bigger (plenty of measurement standards work this way already).


Thoughts? Who's with me on this?

[skivrmt]

I prefer to just use "B-notation" (similar to scientific / e-notation except we drop the negative sign and prefix with "XB"). With 3 characters, you can efficiently represent just about any fraction of bitcoins.

5 BTC = 5 XB0
5 mBTC = 5 XB3
5 uBTC = 5 XB6
5 satoshis = 5 XB8

... if you ever need to use more precision than satoshis (if the protocol is adjusted to support it), you can represent that without getting into ridiculous naming territory (e.g., XB9).

It's also a lot clearer for those less familiar with metric naming conventions/abbreviations ("wait, does the 'm' in mBTC mean 'milli' or 'micro'? What's with the 'u' in 'uBTC'? If it should really be 'μ', then why don't we use that?"). I know- for the tech savvy, the whole "mBTC, uBTC, satoshi..." thing makes sense, but I really think "B-notation" would make a lot more sense to the general public - people don't even have to understand scientific notation. You just know that lower XB- numbers are bigger (plenty of measurement standards work this way already).


Thoughts? Who's with me on this?

Honestly I think this is even more confusing than the mBTC, etc.  BTC really isn't the official Bitcoin acronym, but since its been used since the beginning, its probably the most popular.  XBT is the "official" on currency converters since they are counting it as a sovereign currency, anything starting with an X.

[bryant.coleman]

$0.01 = 122.6 indonesian rupiah

Don't compare with the Indonesian Rupiah. It is not among the major world currencies. If you want, you can compare with the Japanese Yen. 1 JPY = $0.01, I think.

[dperfect]

Honestly I think this is even more confusing than the mBTC, etc.

Can you explain to me how using "XB3" is more confusing than "mBTC"? It's shorter, doesn't require case sensitivity to make sense, and if we deal at that level for any significant amount of time, it would become just as common to see "XB3" as "mBTC". You don't really have to understand the meaning, though I'm not sure how the concept of "3 decimal places" is really that far out for people to understand if they want to know. Plus, when the value climbs to the point where it makes more sense to deal with XB6, then it's a quick, consistent change with no confusion.

Still, I'd love to hear some specific, concrete arguments against the use of the proposed "B-notation" system.

[sdp]

Only One:  It is not really known already.  Metric prefixes are known.  Common measures are 'millimeter', 'milligram', 'microgram'.  The first can be found on rulers outside of the USA and the later on most medicine bottles.

sdp

[skivrmt]

Only One:  It is not really known already.  Metric prefixes are known.  Common measures are 'millimeter', 'milligram', 'microgram'.  The first can be found on rulers outside of the USA and the later on most medicine bottles.

sdp

Exactly.  It's like trying to introduce a new system into an already established system.  People aren't familiar with the numbers.  I don't disagree that essentially it makes sense and people can learn it.  But why try to reinvent the wheel?  We (well, most outside US, lol), know the metric system already and it's fairly easy to use and implement.

[dperfect]

Exactly.  It's like trying to introduce a new system into an already established system.  People aren't familiar with the numbers.  I don't disagree that essentially it makes sense and people can learn it.  But why try to reinvent the wheel?  We (well, most outside US, lol), know the metric system already and it's fairly easy to use and implement.

Yes, the metric system is widely used, and so is scientific notation.

How many currencies do you normally deal with that use the metric system? "How many centi-dollars is that?"  
Admittedly, I'm not aware of any currencies that currently use a form of scientific notation either, but that's the point. We're working with something new here, so why not think outside the box? Why limit ourselves to a naming system that is less efficient and often confusing for newcomers (if you don't think there's any confusion over mBTC, uBTC, etc, then why do these threads keep popping up)?

One of the main reasons I see "B-notation" as a better system is that there wouldn't be such a psychological jump in moving to smaller or bigger denominations as needed. In Bitcoin software, you'd see a nice consistent list of options for denominations: "XB0, XB3, XB6...". You see something reported in XB6 but you're more familiar dealing in XB3? It's so much easier to see there's a difference of 3 decimals there instead of mentally resolving "m" to 1/1000 and "u" to 1/1,000,000 in your head before arriving at the conclusion that the conversion is a factor of 1000.

[shrimpdigger]

What does the m stand for? Milli or micro?

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

Imagine you're having dinner with a bunch of people. Someone else pays they check and agrees to take your share in BTC. It's just awkward to have to say, over the dinner-table, "your share comes to 0.0589 BTC." 

You dont need to say that, ya just say  "here ya QR Code mate, You scan it cause its your shout"

[grifferz]

You dont need to say that, ya just say  "here ya QR Code mate, You scan it cause its your shout"

I can even see a "split bill into X equal parts" being a fairly standard feature on the bitcoin terminal of restaurant staff quite early into widespread acceptance, should we ever get there.