Bitcoin Unit Colour Chart

[TTBit]

Glanced through this whole thread, and think you're onto something.

Observation: Isn't it funny how we all (at least in the US) can look at a $5 bill, three $1 bills, 5 quarters, 6 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies and quickly come up with $9.94? Imagine if someone on the boards here suggested that a 'gavin' is 0.25 btc, and a 'binary' is 0.05, he would get laughed off the boards.

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[julz]

Glanced through this whole thread, and think you're onto something.

Observation: Isn't it funny how we all (at least in the US) can look at a $5 bill, three $1 bills, 5 quarters, 6 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies and quickly come up with $9.94? Imagine if someone on the boards here suggested that a 'gavin' is 0.25 btc, and a 'binary' is 0.05, he would get laughed off the boards.

I'm a little embarrassed - but I hadn't actually worked out what US dimes and nickles were until now. Thanks for prodding me to look up US coins and get to grips with how you do things over there. (I'd actually just assumed you pretty much dealt with dollars and cents and that quarter, nickle and dime were some sort of archaic term!)

I do think it underscores the point that *instantly recognizable* subunits are vital part of the maths of trade.
They also should be relative to the prime unit: i.e in the case of the USD - you have the quarter and the half dollar
Correspondingly for bitcoins - the subunits should be relative to the whole BTC (not some unit which is a fraction of a bitcent)

[ctoon6]

I'm a little embarrassed - but I hadn't actually worked out what US dimes and nickles were until now. Thanks for prodding me to look up US coins and get to grips with how you do things over there. (I'd actually just assumed you pretty much dealt with dollars and cents and that quarter, nickle and dime were some sort of archaic term!)

at least for me, i don't hold on to change, we get it by supplying bill to a cashier and getting metal in exchange from the difference of the face value and the total purchase amount. its something i use in experiments that require small bits a metal. its also used for pinewood derby cars for weight. other than that, only/mostly children mostly collect and exchange it as bank rolls once enough is collected.

[TTBit]

What is confusing is using a decimal point at a level other than the BTC level. I suggest if anyone uses a decimal point, it is implied at the BTC level

4.12345678 BTC is equal to the sum of:

x 4
x 123
x 456
x 78

It would be bad practice to say 4,123.45678 mBTC

[PandaMiner]

I prefer:

9.87654321

9 BTC (Bitcoin)
87 cBTC (Centibit) (no color nessesary)
876 mBTC (Millibit)
543 μBTC (Microbit)
21 sBTC (Satoshi)

That would confuse everyone even more.  If you see a blue number, and it only has two digits, you would thing it were 087mili. :-/

[ampkZjWDQcqT]

This is madness. You people is addressing a problem which is not here, but instead is being created for the sake of being solved.

[Serith]

What is confusing is using a decimal point at a level other than the BTC level. I suggest if anyone uses a decimal point, it is implied at the BTC level

4.12345678 BTC is equal to the sum of:

x 4
x 123
x 456
x 78

It would be bad practice to say 4,123.45678 mBTC

I think the color system would be perfect to create something like good looking price tag that has not too many digits, but it wouldn't help to read a long row of digits. Maybe we could use already established standard.

"For ease of reading, numbers with many digits before or after the decimal mark may be divided into groups using a delimiter, with the counting of groups starting from the decimal mark in both directions."

"SI/ISO 31-0 standard,[10] and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures states that "for numbers with many digits the digits may be divided into groups of three by a thin space, in order to facilitate reading. Neither dots nor commas are inserted in the spaces between groups of three"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Digit_grouping

so if someone input 4123.45678 [edit:BTC] it would be automatically displayed as  

[netrin]

Observation: Isn't it funny how we all (at least in the US) can look at a $5 bill, three $1 bills, 5 quarters, 6 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies and quickly come up with $9.94? Imagine if someone on the boards here suggested that a 'gavin' is 0.25 btc, and a 'binary' is 0.05, he would get laughed off the boards.

Yes, he would be quite rightly laughed off the boards. Pennies and dimes are tangible goods. Decimal places are also named: for example hundreths, ones, tens, thousands, and millions. If you created physical bitcoin denominations, then they might be named, colored, and any other characteristics you are all yammering on about. Your $3.14 balance never reads three dollars, one dime and 4 pennies, whether on paper or computer screen.

Lest you've all forgotten, bitcoins are DIGITAL !

[julz]

Observation: Isn't it funny how we all (at least in the US) can look at a $5 bill, three $1 bills, 5 quarters, 6 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies and quickly come up with $9.94? Imagine if someone on the boards here suggested that a 'gavin' is 0.25 btc, and a 'binary' is 0.05, he would get laughed off the boards.

Yes, he would be quite rightly laughed off the boards. Pennies and dimes are tangible goods. Decimal places are also named: for example hundreths, ones, tens, thousands, and millions. If you created physical bitcoin denominations, then they might be named, colored, and any other characteristics you are all yammering on about. Your $3.14 balance never reads three dollars, one dime and 4 pennies, whether on paper or computer screen.

Lest you've all forgotten, bitcoins are DIGITAL !

What people yammer about is - the old "when is the decimal point going to shift"  with regards to bitcoin.

I argue that with a decent UI and set of visual hints, it's not necessary for some general shift by everyone.
Just get the UI to display it in a different unit - and get people used to the look of each unit.

This whole thing is about being able to flip a user interface into a different unit to work with - and minimize errors.
(It's because I'm interested in microtransactions - whether or not they are truly practical with today's bitcoin network)

Your $3.14 balance never reads three dollars, one dime and 4 pennies, whether on paper or computer screen.

Irrelevant.
I only split it out in the chart for illustrative purposes.
I'm not saying a BTC 3.14 balance would be displayed as 3BTC and 140mBTC  but it might be displayed as 3140 mBTC if you flipped your UI that way.

For some system (e.g a multiplayer game) where very small transactions are the norm - everything might be denominated in µBTC or satoshi.

[netrin]

What people yammer about is - the old "when is the decimal point going to shift"  with regards to bitcoin.

...

I'm not saying a BTC 3.14 balance would be displayed as 3BTC and 140mBTC  but it might be displayed as 3140 mBTC if you flipped your UI that way.

For some system (e.g a multiplayer game) where very small transactions are the norm - everything might be denominated in µBTC or satoshi.

Oh, so the context seems to be relevant. How much do you weigh: 70 kg or grams? How far to the moon: 380000 mm? What's the global debt: 39 terradollars or micro? If we consistently stick with orders of three (10^n3), we'll be fine. And SI is appropriate for bits: kilo, mega, and thus milli, micro, nano, pico...

[julz]

For some system (e.g a multiplayer game) where very small transactions are the norm - everything might be denominated in µBTC or satoshi.

Oh, so the context seems to be relevant. How much do you weigh: 70 kg or grams? How far to the moon: 380000 mm? What's the global debt: 39 terradollars or micro? If we consistently stick with orders of three (10^n3), we'll be fine. And SI is appropriate for bits: kilo, mega, and thus milli, micro, nano, pico...

Yes.. different contexts is the right way to think about it.
If bitcoin were widespread and software available in mobile phones, the preferred unit in parts of rural Africa might easily already be in mBTC.

Agreed that SI is nicest.  Satoshi are an artifact of the 10^-8 divisibility of bitcoin which has a certain quaint appeal, but ideally it would just have been nano.

[4coin]

Hey,

After reading a thread on /r/litecoin and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27663.0  i decided to throw together some code for some of my sites to apply colour coding and unit formatting for cryptocurrencies.  It's a little rough around the edges for now but does the job.  I have setup colour schemes for bitcoin and litecoin, but it is written in a way that it can support any crypto currency. 

The source code is available on the project hompage: http://cryptoformat.com

I would love to hear feedback & suggestions.   Thanks.

Qualifications: I'm colour blind


I have also briefly looked at the sourcecode of bitcoin-qt to see if I can play around with some type of input mask or apply some type of formatting but there's not much qt resources on the web (and i'm new to qt).  If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be most grateful.

Thanks.