Need to switch to mBTC soon

[coinage]

No one can dictate what all the exchanges and wallet software providers will do, so a variety of approaches will be tried.

This brings risk when a user accustomed to a particular decimal point location switches to another client.  A user in the habit of typing "100" for 0.1 BTC may accidentally overspend by a factor of 1000.

So we should advocate software that provides customizable transaction/fee size limits and warnings, regardless of whether there is a choice of btc/mBTC/uBTC preference.

We need warnings such as:  "You are asking to send 270 BITCOINS but you have requested alerts for payments over 2 BTC.  Previous payments to this payee have not exceeded .5 BTC (500 mBTC)."

And:  "You have not included any decimal point in the amount of this transaction.  Do you really intend to send 527 BITCOINS?"

And enforced limits such as:  "You have specified a 0.5 BITCOIN FEE for this transaction.  Your maximum fee setting of 0.5 millibits currently prohibits this."


(To limit such risks, one should of course keep higher balances separate in cold wallets.)

[teff]

No one can dictate what all the exchanges and wallet software providers will do, so a variety of approaches will be tried.

This brings risk when a user accustomed to a particular decimal point location switches to another client.  A user in the habit of typing "100" for 0.1 BTC may accidentally overspend by a factor of 1000.

So we should advocate software that provides customizable transaction/fee size limits and warnings, regardless of whether there is a choice of btc/mBTC/uBTC preference.

We need warnings such as:  "You are asking to send 270 BITCOINS but you have requested alerts for payments over 2 BTC.  Previous payments to this payee have not exceeded .5 BTC (500 mBTC)."

And:  "You have not included any decimal point in the amount of this transaction.  Do you really intend to send 527 BITCOINS?"

And enforced limits such as:  "You have specified a 0.5 BITCOIN FEE for this transaction.  Your maximum fee setting of 0.5 millibits currently prohibits this."


(To limit such risks, one should of course keep higher balances separate in cold wallets.)

It would be useful, at least for the foreseeable future, to include a fiat amount akin to bitcoin wallet on android. I can enter the amount I want to spend in either and it fills out the approx. amount in the other field. If someone is buying a bar of soap and fills in 0.5btc and see's the gbp amount of £281 they are going to think twice before hitting send.

[XBBlade]

No one can dictate what all the exchanges and wallet software providers will do, so a variety of approaches will be tried.

This brings risk when a user accustomed to a particular decimal point location switches to another client.  A user in the habit of typing "100" for 0.1 BTC may accidentally overspend by a factor of 1000.

So we should advocate software that provides customizable transaction/fee size limits and warnings, regardless of whether there is a choice of btc/mBTC/uBTC preference.

We need warnings such as:  "You are asking to send 270 BITCOINS but you have requested alerts for payments over 2 BTC.  Previous payments to this payee have not exceeded .5 BTC (500 mBTC)."

And:  "You have not included any decimal point in the amount of this transaction.  Do you really intend to send 527 BITCOINS?"

And enforced limits such as:  "You have specified a 0.5 BITCOIN FEE for this transaction.  Your maximum fee setting of 0.5 millibits currently prohibits this."


(To limit such risks, one should of course keep higher balances separate in cold wallets.)

It would be useful, at least for the foreseeable future, to include a fiat amount akin to bitcoin wallet on android. I can enter the amount I want to spend in either and it fills out the approx. amount in the other field. If someone is buying a bar of soap and fills in 0.5btc and see's the gbp amount of £281 they are going to think twice before hitting send.

Yes indeed a disadvantage of Bitcoin: How much am I really spending?! Insane with these increasing rates, good idea tho to make a converter into the wallet with the exchange rates of some bigger parties (kraken/btc-e/gox etc.)

More (dis)advantages of Bitcoin:
Disadvantages: http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/disadvantages-of-bitcoin/
Advantages: http://bitcoinpro.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/advantages-of-bitcoin/

[geofflosophy]

The price is irrelevant. But try telling that to normal people.

We could also just move the decimal point and create 21 billion bitcoins. It would not change the value of anyones holdings, but again, try telling that to people.

This.

I think a 1000:1 split is inevitable, and probably happening within the next year once we stabilize well over $1000.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The price is irrelevant. But try telling that to normal people.

We could also just move the decimal point and create 21 billion bitcoins. It would not change the value of anyones holdings, but again, try telling that to people.

This.

I think a 1000:1 split is inevitable, and probably happening within the next year once we stabilize well over $1000.

Yeah that is never going to happen.  You have been here six months and don't understand the concept of decentralized consensus. 

[TTBit]

Are there any graphics of a small 'b' to indicate mBTC?

[Rainkiss]

I'm not sure that changing everything to a mBTC standard would help anyone who doesn't know much about BTC. However, I can see where adding the option to buy in units of mBTC may have the effect you're looking for.

Something like this:

Buy 1 BTC = $1,000
Buy 1 mBTC = $1

or even buy 100 mBTC = $100

I believe the "100 mBTC" vs "0.1 BTC" may have a more positive effect on someone unsure of getting started.

Though, this all begs the question, does BTC need new support by people just flat out buying into the market?

[anti-scam]

Now that the price has reached 1,000 the time is ripe. Let's hope Mt. Gox is aware of this idea.

[Georgio]

The price is irrelevant. But try telling that to normal people.

We could also just move the decimal point and create 21 billion bitcoins. It would not change the value of anyones holdings, but again, try telling that to people.

This.

I think a 1000:1 split is inevitable, and probably happening within the next year once we stabilize well over $1000.

Yeah that is never going to happen.  You have been here six months and don't understand the concept of decentralized consensus. 

What is the right way for this to happen? Who is respectful enough to propose this? Bitcoin foundation? Maybe some kind of voting pool can be created and everybody owning Bitcoin will be able to vote?
Than exchanges can adopts this and other necessary step can be taken.

[NorbyTheGeek]

Here's my take.

People tend to like whole numbers.  Even with USD, people tend to think in whole numbers, not fractions.  If I have $3.28, I think "three dollars and twenty-eight cents", not "three point two eight dollars".

I think with Bitcoin breaking the $1000 barrier, and good and services currently costing fractions of bitcoins, changing up the denomination just makes it easier for most people to wrap their brain around.  Buying a song online for 1 mBTC that costs roughly $1 makes more sense then spending .001 BTC.

But this would have to be standardized across the board (wallets, exchanges, vendors) for it to work.  Otherwise you get the misplaced decimal point problems.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The price is irrelevant. But try telling that to normal people.

We could also just move the decimal point and create 21 billion bitcoins. It would not change the value of anyones holdings, but again, try telling that to people.

This.

I think a 1000:1 split is inevitable, and probably happening within the next year once we stabilize well over $1000.

Yeah that is never going to happen.  You have been here six months and don't understand the concept of decentralized consensus.  

What is the right way for this to happen? Who is respectful enough to propose this? Bitcoin foundation? Maybe some kind of voting pool can be created and everybody owning Bitcoin will be able to vote?
Than exchanges can adopts this and other necessary step can be taken.

It will never happen.  It would require a hard fork and the existing fork will continue to operate.  There would be two mutually incompatible "Bitcoins" operating simultaneously.  Bitcoin is already perfectly divisible if you want simply switch your client to show mBTC.  1 BTC = 1,000 mBTC.  The current Bitcoin fork has 21 billion mBTC.  The exchange rate today is ~$1 per mBTC.

[coinage]

Are there any graphics of a small 'b' to indicate mBTC?

Unicode has some options.

If these are shown properly by your browser, the last two are lowercase:
 Ƀ ᴃ ฿ B⃦ B⃦ B⃫ ␢ Ƅ

(Also note the second character is a small-caps version of the first.)

I wouldn't recommend you associate any of them with a particular portion of a bitcoin, though.  In the future it could become cumbersome too.

For ease of use, how about just m฿ and u฿ or (properly) μ฿?

We may see the reverse become common worldwide for fiat currencies if they continue their devaluation.

That is, if it takes $3,200 to buy a mango, that'll be 3.2k dollars please.

[FiatKiller]

I agree with OP. People hate math and do not understand decimals. The average person on the street has no clue that 0.2 is 1/5th. Whenever I tell someone about it, I ALWAYS mention that you can buy any fraction of it you want 1/10th, 1/100th etc.

[freebird]

I'm glad to see that my post started a good discussion.

I think the millibitcoin will serve us well for a long time as the typical unit for quoting the price of bitcoin and for commerce using bitcoin.

I also think the term millibit could catch on as a slang for mBTC. It has a nice ring to it.

Excited to see that one millibit is now worth approximately one dollar. It's the new internet dollar. 

[Coma]

I think that switching to mBTC will raise A LOT of negative media. Reporters and bears stating that is part of the whole scheme or something.

I also think that is a great reason to do it.

[worldtreasurefinders]

As the price of one bitcoin approaches and hopefully surpasses $1000, many ordinary investors will feel that it's "too expensive" to buy in. Yet they would be happy to buy if the asset were denominated in millibitcoins (mBTC), because then it would "feel cheap" at ~$1 per unit.

This psychological resistance to the high price of one unit of an asset is the reason why most stocks do splits, to keep the price of one share under a few hundred bucks.

This is why alt-coins are rising in popularity.  It is so much easier to sell $25 LTC than it is to sell $1000 BTC.  Unless the mBTC becomes the standard unit soon, expect the rise of BTC to stagger as alt-coins continue to attract new capital.

[Georgio]

As the price of one bitcoin approaches and hopefully surpasses $1000, many ordinary investors will feel that it's "too expensive" to buy in. Yet they would be happy to buy if the asset were denominated in millibitcoins (mBTC), because then it would "feel cheap" at ~$1 per unit.

This psychological resistance to the high price of one unit of an asset is the reason why most stocks do splits, to keep the price of one share under a few hundred bucks.

This is why alt-coins are rising in popularity.  It is so much easier to sell $25 LTC than it is to sell $1000 BTC.  Unless the mBTC becomes the standard unit soon, expect the rise of BTC to stagger as alt-coins continue to attract new capital.

True

The exchanges should consider adding also option to buy sell mBTC. Easy to implement i think. It will be better for them because more trade and better for us because price will go up.

[drakesajin]

I think many people will have to get used to using mBTC since they are so used to using whole numbers.

[I_bitcoin]

No one can dictate what all the exchanges and wallet software providers will do, so a variety of approaches will be tried.

This brings risk when a user accustomed to a particular decimal point location switches to another client.  A user in the habit of typing "100" for 0.1 BTC may accidentally overspend by a factor of 1000.

I did this in the reverse just the other day.   Felt pretty bad as I did not want the person to think I was ripping them off during my purchase.   This hatchet cuts both ways.

[zimmah]

I think this kind of talk is ridiculous. You want to switch to mBTC just so the perception of value changes to the point that the public will be ok with buying again?  The client will switch to BTC/mBTC/uBTC for personal convenience, not to fool people into a perception of lower valued units.

Perception matters. I've been telling some people I know about bitcoin, and the $800/unit price holds them back mentally. They are reluctant to buy, not because they don't like the idea of the technology or think it has potential, but only because of the high price per unit. They compare it in their minds to the prices of stocks they buy. Nobody wants to buy a fractional share of something. The average small investor might be happy to buy 250 mBTC of bitcoin, but would not bother to buy 0.25 BTC because it feels like a ridiculously small and meaningless amount.

Exactly, there's a lot of persons I know in everyday life who would never buy bitcoins because they are 'too expensive' but they would like buy several millibitcoins. Don't underestimate the power of the unconscious.