WHY 21 MILLION BITCOIN CANNOT SERVE THE WHOLE WORLD

[Lawrenzoo]

When we talk of bitcoin supply, we look at it as 21 million bitcoin, and people wonder how that can serve the whole 7 billion population, but we forgot that there are smaller units of bitcoin, we have the mbtc, we have the ubtc and we have the satoshi, and i will like to talk on the satoshi which i believe needs to be expanded to really serve the current economy.

SATOSHI,
This is the smallest units of bitcoin, and 1 bitcoin is equals to 100,000,000 satoshis, which means that the total satoshi that we have is 2100 thrillion satoshis.

The total circulating money of the world according to According to the Bank for International Settlements is 80 trillion dollars, the lowest denomination of usd is cent and 100 cent equals 1 dollar, so we have 8000 trillion cent circulating as money in the world, if satoshi is to be pegged to 1 cent and to be used as global currency, you see why it is necessary to have it expanded, because circulating money of the world will be short of about 5900 trillion satoshis.

[1715088960]

1715088960

[ralle14]

You're only saying that we don't have enough bitcoin supply for everyone because you're fixing the price of a satoshi to a cent but that's not the case here. If everyone starts buying bitcoin and most people use them as a currency, the value of a satoshi should be more than a cent.

Not all 21 million bitcoins could be used by everyone but we still have enough for everyone because off chain you can still divide satoshi in to smaller units called millisatoshi.

[Janation]

And that is the more reason why we don't need to expand or increase the total supply.

The lower the supply, the higher the demand and that also means the higher the price of it. Another thing is that not a lot of people will be using Bitcoin since most of them will stick to the traditional payment method. Don't also forget that there are a lot of Bitcoins lost in the total supply, that means the total supply is not really 21 million by now.

[deisik]

When we talk of bitcoin supply, we look at it as 21 million bitcoin, and people wonder how that can serve the whole 7 billion population, but we forgot that there are smaller units of bitcoin, we have the mbtc, we have the ubtc and we have the satoshi, and i will like to talk on the satoshi which i believe needs to be expanded to really serve the current economy

These and similar thoughts had been mainstream here like 4-5 years ago

When people really believed that Bitcoin can substitute fiat currencies one day (and that day was not too far in the future) and seriously expressed concerns that Bitcoin's denomination won't suffice and thus should be expanded to, say, 16 figures after the decimal point (instead of outright increasing the total supply)

Now such ideas seem completely out of place (and time) as Bitcoin is not serving the world even in its present state. Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear but it is better to see what is really going on, however unpleasant it might be. Other than that, what you suggest is what altcoins already do, effectively expanding Bitcoin's supply

[13abyknight]

The price of a Bitcoin ever since it existed has clearly been on the rise. We are pretty close to the 21 million cap and when I mean "pretty close", it might take anywhere between a year to ten to reach the maximum supply and when this eventually happens, the price of a Bitcoin could possibly be so high that a satoshi could even be a worth a dollar.

[gentlemand]

Now such ideas seem completely out of place (and time) as Bitcoin is not serving the world even in its present state. Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear but it is better to see what is really going on, however unpleasant it might be. Other than that, what you suggest is what altcoins already do, effectively expanding Bitcoin's supply

There's no point in any of us guessing where it's going to end up. It's early days still and anything could happen. This current period is a phase that'll pass. There'll be many more users who'll find many more uses.

The most likely scenario for more units being needed is machine to machine lightning network type stuff. That might become a reality without it getting anywhere near replacing a fiat currency.

[mersal]

For now the acceptance of bitcoin is lacking not its supply,we can discuss about the demand or shortage of bitcoin if there is any.Surely people will be using satoshi units over bitcoin if everyone adopted to crypto currency and bitcoin becomes mainstream currency.We also don't have to forget that we have some potential altcoins as well which can be used for crypto payments as well.

[mersal]

It's true that this amount of Bitcoin is not enough for the whole world but at the end this is not necessary. Not all people are interested in using Bitcoin and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will never replace fiat currencies, that is not possible, so I can't see the reason to be worried about.

But if there is a situation everyone started to use cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin become the most preferable crypto still we can use it for the whole well because the smallest unit of Bitcoin is satoshi that is what op is trying to say.

I don't know why you are saying cryptocurrencies will never replace Fiat there are high chances for cryptos to replace most of the banking system in near future.

[rdluffy]

We should be realistic in this subject
BTC is not the ideal coin to everyone use around the world, BTC is not easy to use as cash or credit card, a HUGE amount of people doesn't even have access to internet, PCs or smartphones etc
And even with BTC satoshis, it's not enought to serve the world

[mersal]

We should be realistic in this subject
BTC is not the ideal coin to everyone use around the world, BTC is not easy to use as cash or credit card, a HUGE amount of people doesn't even have access to internet, PCs or smartphones etc
And even with BTC satoshis, it's not enought to serve the world

If you think in that way then why you are still here on bitcointalk and discussing about cryptocurrencies,the reason of cryptocurrency is to eliminate centralised payment system and bring the real value to the the money which we are using.

Internet is almost available everywhere and in future it will be in every corner because we are planning to move to Mars.

[Vishnu.Reang]

After 20 or 30 years, if the community feels that the circulating supply (21 million coins or 2.1 quadrillion Satoshis) is not large enough, then the community can always split the existing Satoshis to smaller ones by a hard fork. But honestly I don't think that the purpose will arise anytime soon. At least not until BTC overtakes gold in market capitalization.

[TheCoinGrabber]

After 20 or 30 years, if the community feels that the circulating supply (21 million coins or 2.1 quadrillion Satoshis) is not large enough, then the community can always split the existing Satoshis to smaller ones by a hard fork. But honestly I don't think that the purpose will arise anytime soon. At least not until BTC overtakes gold in market capitalization.

I think 2.1Q is enough but even then people can probably find workarounds like the off-chain splitting ralle mentioned.

If all else fails then there's alts. In a world where bitcoin is the main currency, alts would definitely play a larger role than they do today. People can simply convert their satoshi into some other alt and just use that for transaction.

[gentlemand]

If all else fails then there's alts. In a world where bitcoin is the main currency, alts would definitely play a larger role than they do today. People can simply convert their satoshi into some other alt and just use that for transaction.

A world where a Satoshi is too expensive means that Bitcoin will have absolutely dominated everything. Alts will be innumerable and almost all worthless. I really can't see people being willing to move into something that's going to be vastly more volatile that most people will reject when they attempt to pay for something with it.

[mindrust]

Currently I believe, the smallest tx fee you can set on a transaction is 1sat/byte.

Again I believe, It is possible to set sub satoshi amounts as a fee. It is not being used now because miners don't accept those transactions. (I am pretty sure I've seen transactions with 0.1sat/byte before)

If bitcoin becomes too valuable, people will start demanding those sub satoshi fees and miners will have to accept those transactions.

Correct me if I am wrong. The only reason why we can't send 500 satoshis for 5sat fee is because the miners don't accept those tx's.

Instead of increasing the total supply, we better find a way to use sub satoshi fees.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

OP, this idea has been brought up before--I've seen it talked about a few times since I've been on the forum.  And anyone who knows anything basic about bitcoin knows how divisible it is.  It isn't like everyone would need to own a whole bitcoin in order for it to be useful.

And by the way, if bitcoin ever became inadequate for worldwide use because there wasn't enough of it to go around, there are still hundreds of other cryptocurrencies on the market that could step in and fill the void.  Hell, dogecoin doesn't have a cap on the total number of coins and it could easily be used as a currency--and it's not the only one, either.

IMO, adoption isn't catching up to supply in crypto.  There's more than enough to go around.

[breathlessz]

I don't think it's not able to serve the whole world, but every country has different problems to legitimize bitcoin. the more countries that use it the higher the price, while the supply will always be the same. unfortunately there are still few countries that legalize it, so there are lots of whales playing

[sandra_x]

The quantity of bitcoin that will ever be mined is not really of huge importance, it is the economy it supports. 1 satoshi (or 1/100 millionth of a bitcoin ) is a lot to go round. That is small enough for practical use even if bitcoin is the only currency globally, it may mean 1 satoshi becomes 100 usd if the need be

[coiningz]

We need really high price for 1 btc if we want by something on one satoshi

[1Referee]

1 Bitcoin = 100,000,000 satoshis on the main network.

1 Bitcoin = 10,000,000,000,000 satoshis on Lightning (1 main network satoshi = 1000 milli satoshi).

There will never be a shortage of satoshi units. There has been an auction last year where an 'art piece' has sold for 1 milli satoshi which back then was worth $0.000000037 in us dollar value. Obviously more of a publicity type of stunt, but it shows how small payments can actually be on Lightning.

It's much easier to deal with satoshis rather than 0.0000XBTC. It's only a matter of time before satoshis will become the main unit standard instead of BTC.

[Mahanton]

If all else fails then there's alts. In a world where bitcoin is the main currency, alts would definitely play a larger role than they do today. People can simply convert their satoshi into some other alt and just use that for transaction.

A world where a Satoshi is too expensive means that Bitcoin will have absolutely dominated everything. Alts will be innumerable and almost all worthless. I really can't see people being willing to move into something that's going to be vastly more volatile that most people will reject when they attempt to pay for something with it.

Volatility would always be the main issue that's why no matter how positive I am with Bitcoin it wont really come to a point to reach that full adoption worldwide lets say 100% on the entire population.They wont mind on jumping into something which is volatile and for sure majority would just stick into that traditional fiat currencies we have knowns and also I  don't stress out myself if there would be sufficient supply of bitcoin incase that thing happens.

[timotron]

You comparing with an imaginative and non-fundamental value. The few trillions they have tiped into the world has nothing to do with what the world need.

The amount of Bitcoin, even there are over 15% frizzed, can be enough for all of us. and it will be in movement...
A salary in BTC: 0.00001Btc
A car in BTC: 0.001
A house in BTC: 0.01BTC 
(speculations)

Due value is based on demand and supply (and manipulation)....
In any case, the future will give us the answers..

[MonsterV]

The amount of Bitcoin, even there are over 15% frizzed, can be enough for all of us. and it will be in movement...
A salary in BTC: 0.00001Btc
A car in BTC: 0.001
A house in BTC: 0.01BTC 
(speculations)

There are times when your speculations come true when demand & supply is high, but I don't think everyone should mention commas in every transaction with bitcoin. So at that time satoshi will play an important role, maybe people will say more with satoshi value except for the whales who have a lot of bitcoin.

And for me, we don't need to think long about the rest of this bitcoin supply because surely not everyone in the world will adopt bitcoin. Maybe there is bitcoin but fiat they prefer, there are times when bitcoin will switch functions into investment land.

[deisik]

And that is the more reason why we don't need to expand or increase the total supply

Bitcoin Cash does exactly that (even if it is not a true Bitcoin)

The lower the supply, the higher the demand and that also means the higher the price of it

The latter doesn't necessarily follow from the former

It works wonderful with valuable things that cannot be (easily) substituted with similar things performing the same role or function, and in that case a decrease in supply translates directly into an increase in demand and price (sometimes even with a vengeance). I'm not sure if this is the case with Bitcoin as its volatility prevails over any changes in the total supply (cp. the change in supply over the last couple of years with the price swings we see almost daily). In simple terms, it is more complicated

Apart from that, there is another factor which should be paid precious attention to, and that is utility. If utility goes down along with supply (a possible scenario), then the rise in demand is not guaranteed at all (so neither is the price). In other words, Bitcoin may become so rare that it may lose all utility it might have, and then it will quickly deteriorate and turn into a worthless asset (also a possible scenario). The same thing is going to happen if someone buys 99% of all bitcoins, just in case

Now such ideas seem completely out of place (and time) as Bitcoin is not serving the world even in its present state. Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear but it is better to see what is really going on, however unpleasant it might be. Other than that, what you suggest is what altcoins already do, effectively expanding Bitcoin's supply

There's no point in any of us guessing where it's going to end up. It's early days still and anything could happen. This current period is a phase that'll pass. There'll be many more users who'll find many more uses

I hope you are proved right in the end

Yet, Bitcoin has been in the spotlight for at least 5 years by now, so you can't possibly say that it is "early days still and anything could happen" (people had been telling that in 2013). Indeed, anything can happen (regardless of maturity) but if nothing particularly good happened in the last few years in terms of "many more uses" (more specifically, uses not related to trading and gambling), it leaves plenty of doubt whether and to what extent things are going to change in the future. So what is going to change that didn't or failed to change already?

[Bardman]

The code actually allows Bitcoin to be divisible further: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we-ever-need-smaller-amounts-of-bitcoin-than-a-satoshi

So even if we somehow need more satoshis, we can do it. Anyhow, I personally believe Bitcoin will never be a mainstream payment system, history has certainly shown us that Bitcoin is simply not that good when it's used as daily payment and we have far better options.

[mersal]

The code actually allows Bitcoin to be divisible further: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we-ever-need-smaller-amounts-of-bitcoin-than-a-satoshi

So even if we somehow need more satoshis, we can do it. Anyhow, I personally believe Bitcoin will never be a mainstream payment system, history has certainly shown us that Bitcoin is simply not that good when it's used as daily payment and we have far better options.

we have USDT,we have ripple,we are going to have libra but these are the better options you are talking about? The prices need to be somewhat stable for currency which is the only thing missing in bitcoin roght now but if everyone see the decentralized payment system will do more good then surely there will be a price range.

[darklus123]

Even if you don't fully understand how divisible bitcoin is, you might understand it by simply understanding the law of economics. It is simply just all about the demand and supply.

It is being discussed a lot of times, you can have 1 satoshi which is .00000001 and if the demand is purely high its value can be enough to supply the 7b people you were talking about. There is actually also no point in allocating bitcoin to each and every person.

I highly expect that the bitcoin user will never go up to a billion. I might be wrong but that is just I simply forsee it

[o_e_l_e_o]

The code actually allows Bitcoin to be divisible further: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we-ever-need-smaller-amounts-of-bitcoin-than-a-satoshi

Bitcoin is already divided in to milli-satoshis (msats), which is 0.001 of a satoshi, as the base unit on Lightning Network. For comparison. 1 milli-satoshi is 0.00001 of a US cent.

Anyhow, I personally believe Bitcoin will never be a mainstream payment system, history has certainly shown us that Bitcoin is simply not that good when it's used as daily payment and we have far better options.

That's what Lightning Network should address. Instant and almost fee-less transaction which can be used for transactions which require immediate confirmation, such as the often talked about "buying a coffee with bitcoin". You only need to broadcast to the main chain and wait for confirmations when you close a channel, or if you want the extra security when making or receiving a large payment.

I'm curious as to what "far better options" you think we have.

[Rustamm]

I think it is too early to say that the number of Bitcoin coins is small for everyone, given that each coin has 100 million satoshi. The price of one satoshi today is only $0.0001. I think this is a normal price for a unit of currency, which everyone can now use as money, because people can pay for goods and services using satoshi. The only thing that bothers me is the fee to the miners for the transaction, it is very high for micropayments.

[BitHodler]

We will never reach a stage at which there aren't enough coins in existence. There will always be a seller willing to let go of his coin(s) if a high enough price is being paid. It's just common sense.

We have seen that already happen in countries where coin scarcity has resulted in hefty premiums. South Korea's premium for Bitcoin was like $5000 over western spot prices during the previous bull run. Insane.

Another thing is that I doubt people will use Bitcoin globally all together. It's more of a wet Bitcoiner's dream. This is and will stay digital gold. It's impossible to compete with fiat as day to day currency.

[beerlover]

21 MILLION bitcoins that is, you are forgetting how much satoshi that would end up with, right now we do not have that much of a problem with how much bitcoin we have and how we can actually make sure everyone gets their share but in the end if bitcoin becomes so popular that 21 million bitcoin won't be enough for everyone we can literally find a way to drop prices to satoshis instead of bitcoin (getting a coffee is satoshi anyway) and that way we can easily send and receive in satoshis and talk prices in satoshis etc etc without a problem.

Real problem is think of bitcoin at 210 thousand dollars for example, even 1 satoshi will be super expensive and I don't know how we can deal with both fee's and spending bitcoin on small items like lets say a cup of coffee, which is why number is fine but price is dangerous, getting too high might create problems.

[Bardman]

The code actually allows Bitcoin to be divisible further: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/122/will-we-ever-need-smaller-amounts-of-bitcoin-than-a-satoshi

Bitcoin is already divided in to milli-satoshis (msats), which is 0.001 of a satoshi, as the base unit on Lightning Network. For comparison. 1 milli-satoshi is 0.00001 of a US cent.

Anyhow, I personally believe Bitcoin will never be a mainstream payment system, history has certainly shown us that Bitcoin is simply not that good when it's used as daily payment and we have far better options.

That's what Lightning Network should address. Instant and almost fee-less transaction which can be used for transactions which require immediate confirmation, such as the often talked about "buying a coffee with bitcoin". You only need to broadcast to the main chain and wait for confirmations when you close a channel, or if you want the extra security when making or receiving a large payment.

I'm curious as to what "far better options" you think we have.

People have been selling the idea of 'instant transactions' for quite a long time and yet there is no cryptocurrency out there that has instant transactions, bitcoin transactions take minutes, even hours sometimes. Even if you can have instant transactions and without fees, bitcoin would still be garbage as a payment option, why in the world would anyone accept Bitcoin in their business when the price can crash 20% in one day?

[Theb]

Look even central banks who has the possibility to print infinite amounts of their fiat currency isn't enough, why do you think "expanding" the units of BTC would solve your nonexistent problem? Why do banks don't print more money as they can to solve their financial problems? Because doing so will just cause inflation and further devalue their own currency, it basically won't solve anything but just dig yourself further to the ground. Just imagine Bitcoin doubling the supply we have now or even just adding half of it. It will just expand its current demand more therefore decreasing the price of Bitcoin. Let's not think about of the number of people Bitcoin can handle if it's supply expanded let the people (demand) adjust for its price increases.

[AjithBtc]

Right now its too early to think about bitcoin serving the whole world. The growing adoption and acceptance increase the demand, but even with the limited availability it is possible with the lowest denomination. There should be no modifications made on the algorithm to increase the number above 21 million. If such a change is done it is same as devaluating bitcoin same as the fiat currencies.

[veleten]

When we talk of bitcoin supply, we look at it as 21 million bitcoin, and people wonder how that can serve the whole 7 billion population, but we forgot that there are smaller units of bitcoin, we have the mbtc, we have the ubtc and we have the satoshi, and i will like to talk on the satoshi which i believe needs to be expanded to really serve the current economy.

SATOSHI,
This is the smallest units of bitcoin, and 1 bitcoin is equals to 100,000,000 satoshis, which means that the total satoshi that we have is 2100 thrillion satoshis.

The total circulating money of the world according to According to the Bank for International Settlements is 80 trillion dollars, the lowest denomination of usd is cent and 100 cent equals 1 dollar, so we have 8000 trillion cent circulating as money in the world, if satoshi is to be pegged to 1 cent and to be used as global currency, you see why it is necessary to have it expanded, because circulating money of the world will be short of about 5900 trillion satoshis.

so you , actually , prove that 21 million bitcoin can serve the whole world?
what is the point of the question then , yes 21 million compared to trillions of dollars and other printed coloured paper we call money is a small number
the smallest denomination is satoshi that makes it 2,100 trillion units , enough to serve anything you would want to serve
well , minus the burned and destroyed coins and lost keys wallets, that some of the analysts amount to 25% of the coins already
the problem is not in the physical number of coins , but that bitcoin cannot serve as a payment gateaway at the moment
it has several bottlenecks that prevents it to serve as the money that we all know
the most important one is the transaction speed , it is crawling at several transactions per second compared to tens of thousands per second of that of VISA and Mastercard

[lixer]

The first thing that we need to overcome first is that adoption, adoption cannot grow at once for bitcoin to serve the whole population as you speak, although you analogy is quite okay but I think that you know one of the problem we have is over printing of money which is destroying some countries as a result of corruption, now that bitcoin is limited in supply, don’t you think that it will correct some of those faults, an moreover, when we get to the bridge, we will cross over it.

There will always be a way to expand the limit of bitcoin when we get to that stage, and more so, don’t forget that we will always have other alternatives like altcoins, and fiat will also never die off the earth, bitcoin will only reduce the number of circulating currency, so there is nothing much here that I see as issue or challenge in future.

[deisik]

We will never reach a stage at which there aren't enough coins in existence. There will always be a seller willing to let go of his coin(s) if a high enough price is being paid. It's just common sense

Common sense and the law of large numbers don't live well together

More specifically, we may in fact reach such a state when the volatility will be so high across the markets that you won't be able to reliably determine the price at any given moment. This is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future anyway, but technically, that would pretty much count as "not enough coins in existence" to satiate the demand

Ironically, the demand itself may not necessarily be very high at that point. It is the supply which must be low, exceptionally low at high prices. That seems to be a theoretical possibility with assets whose total supply cannot be increased. For example, it is not possible with gold because at higher prices gold production will expand quickly

We have seen that already happen in countries where coin scarcity has resulted in hefty premiums. South Korea's premium for Bitcoin was like $5000 over western spot prices during the previous bull run. Insane

For a currency that effectively means an ultimate failure as a means payment (i.e. as a currency, yeah). But that's totally okay for a speculative asset in the state of a bubble

[el kaka22]

I think altcoins play a role here that people are missing, yes bitcoin has only 21 million and maybe satoshi could be used thats correct but at the same time fore faster and cheaper transactions by the time 21 million bitcoin is not enough other coins will come into affect as well.

If we one day have something like a million dollar per bitcoin thing (I would expect not happening anytime soon anyway) we will have ethereums and litecoins and so forth that would be used for transaction as well, remember its harder to make someone start accepting bitcoin as a payment, after that its easy to add ethereum or whatever right next to it, someone who agrees to take bitcoin wouldn't mind accepting ethereum or litecoin neither. Hence I think this is a non-issue for at least another 20-30 years.

[shield132]

At first bitcoin wasn't meant for so massive usage, to be used all over the world, so this coin isn't ready for a lot of reasons: 21 Million supply, what to do with those ones that are lost and are still getting lost? We can do  nothing at the moment and believe me, when a lot of people start using it, we will lose far more than we already have.
Secondly - what about fees? Current fees aren't good for such usage, we need almost zero fee and that's not good news for miners.
In overall bitcoin can't change current currencies, at least at the moment this looks like that.

[deisik]

If we one day have something like a million dollar per bitcoin thing (I would expect not happening anytime soon anyway) we will have ethereums and litecoins and so forth that would be used for transaction as well, remember its harder to make someone start accepting bitcoin as a payment, after that its easy to add ethereum or whatever right next to it, someone who agrees to take bitcoin wouldn't mind accepting ethereum or litecoin neither. Hence I think this is a non-issue for at least another 20-30 years

We are already there

And have been there since at least 2015. Today, Bitcoin is used primarily as a very special store of value for the unbanked (or those who don't want to have anything to do with banks), while top altcoins (say, Litecoin) are used for transactions involving small amounts, i.e. anything which can be related to as daily activities (whatever those might be).

Bitcoin is simply not very suitable for this purpose because its transactions are too expensive and slow. But if you need to move real wealth around and don't care about the fees (which is typically the case in such circumstances), it is still a good choice (probably the best if the wealth in question is in the millions)

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin is simply not very suitable for this purpose because its transactions are too expensive and slow.

The average credit card transaction charges a fee of 3%. On a $100 bill, that's $3. You can send $100 of bitcoin for less than 3 cents, or 0.03%, 100x cheaper.

The average credit card transaction takes 3 business days (so up to 5 or even more actual days depending on weekends and holidays) for the money to reach the merchant. Up until then, it is essentially the same as an unconfirmed bitcoin transaction, and relatively easily reversed by calling your credit card company and claiming your card was hacked, stolen, cloned, scammed, etc. A bitcoin transaction can be irreversible within an hour.

If that still isn't good enough for you, then you can use Lightning for near fee-less and instant transfers.

[bryant.coleman]

Bitcoin is simply not very suitable for this purpose because its transactions are too expensive and slow.

The average credit card transaction charges a fee of 3%. On a $100 bill, that's $3. You can send $100 of bitcoin for less than 3 cents, or 0.03%, 100x cheaper.

The average credit card transaction takes 3 business days (so up to 5 or even more actual days depending on weekends and holidays) for the money to reach the merchant. Up until then, it is essentially the same as an unconfirmed bitcoin transaction, and relatively easily reversed by calling your credit card company and claiming your card was hacked, stolen, cloned, scammed, etc. A bitcoin transaction can be irreversible within an hour.

If that still isn't good enough for you, then you can use Lightning for near fee-less and instant transfers.

Credit card fee is 3%? In my country VISA/Master charges around 1.8%, with the merchants sometimes getting discounts. For many of them, it is easier than depositing the physical cash in a bank and then doing the paperwork, which in the end may cost even more. Bitcoin transaction fee may be very low. but then the merchant may need to spend additional amount to convert these coins to BTC. On top of that, the VAT/GST calculations may get too complicated and it may take a lot of time and effort to settle everything in the end. Cost is not the only concern for the merchants. They are also concerned about the time and effort that is required.

[ene1980]

if satoshi is to be pegged to 1 cent and to be used as global currency, you see why it is necessary to have it expanded, because circulating money of the world will be short of about 5900 trillion satoshis.

There is the biggest problem with all your calculation, you cannot peg Satoshi to 1 cent but with all the speculation that the price would go to a million dollars then you can say that 1 Satoshi is one cent and for that to happen it will take a very long time, i really want to be optimistic about the price of bitcoin reaching a million dollars, but realistically it is impossible to reach those valuation.  .

[NavI_027]

In all fairness, I find your title interesting to discuss with. Here are my insights why 21 million btc can't reach out every single people in this planet. These are the reasons IMO:

1) Not everyone of us like btc or crypto in general, there are exisiting people which hate it and refuse to use it (e.g. bankers)
2) Not all nations have the required technology capable of using crypto. In short, technological gap. Best scenario is the life of rural tribes all around the world.
3) Even though we assume that world's population is only to 21 million, each one of us might still don't have a chance to get ine because of losses due to forgotten private keys etc.
4) In this world, equality is just an ideal concept. There will be always top and bottom and it all started because of greed. Many got nothing, some got ample and few got plenty. (I hope you know what I mean)

[joniboini]

i really want to be optimistic about the price of bitcoin reaching a million dollars, but realistically it is impossible to reach those valuation.  .

Did you believe Bitcoin will reach $20k in 2009? Or did you even believe that a Bitcoin could worth more than a gram of gold? I'd be really surpassed if you say yes, but now you don't believe that Bitcoin will reach that numbers.

4) In this world, equality is just an ideal concept. There will be always top and bottom and it all started because of greed. Many got nothing, some got ample and few got plenty. (I hope you know what I mean)

Inequality will always exist, not only because some people are greedy and don't want others to get rich, but simply because people work on different jobs. You can't pay a CEO with the same amount you pay for a bounty hunter. There is no problem with 'inequality' unless it becomes too extreme. Not everyone would get the same amount of Bitcoin, just like how signature participants get different Bitcoin because their rank is different.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin transaction fee may be very low. but then the merchant may need to spend additional amount to convert these coins to BTC.

Converting to fiat (which I assume is what you meant) is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with the speed and price of a bitcoin transaction. No one is forcing the merchant to convert to fiat; that's entirely their choice. Still, most exchanges charge around 0.25% fees for trading to fiat, and most payment processors around 0.5 - 1%, so still less than credit cards.

On top of that, the VAT/GST calculations may get too complicated and it may take a lot of time and effort to settle everything in the end.

Taxes will be paid in fiat, and so tax calculations should be no more complicated than those for money accepted in fiat. Simply convert the BTC to the corresponding fiat value and continue as normal.

[slaman29]

I don't know much about economics but it seems to be that 1 Bitcoin is divisible into 100 million units. 80 Bitcoins is at least 1 satoshi per person if every person had bitcoin on this planet. And to my understanding, that is even more divisible by more when you use fractions of satoshi, which is already theoretically possible. So if it makes sense to me, it makes sense to normal people.

[deisik]

Bitcoin is simply not very suitable for this purpose because its transactions are too expensive and slow.

The average credit card transaction charges a fee of 3%. On a $100 bill, that's $3. You can send $100 of bitcoin for less than 3 cents, or 0.03%, 100x cheaper

I'm not sure where you got these numbers

What you say may in fact be true in respect to credit cards specifically or in some very special cases (which I doubt, by the way), but as I use regular payment cards (otherwise known as debit cards), I don't pay anything. Nada. Null. Zilch. And while it may in fact take a few days to settle these transactions inside the payment system, this doesn't in the least affect me as a customer as payments with these cards are instant

The average credit card transaction takes 3 business days (so up to 5 or even more actual days depending on weekends and holidays) for the money to reach the merchant. Up until then, it is essentially the same as an unconfirmed bitcoin transaction, and relatively easily reversed by calling your credit card company and claiming your card was hacked, stolen, cloned, scammed, etc

I don't really know what you refer to here

As you might already be aware, I live in Russia. Two days ago I made an order at iHerb, an American company, paying them with my payment card (which is in Russian rubles, just in case). They received my payment instantly (probably already in dollars). But since I forgot to apply some discount code (called promo code there), I canceled my order immediately and got a refund as fast as my first payment went through. Then I reordered and I didn't have to wait till my follow-up payment was accepted by iHerb. Technically, for me, all these payments and refunds went through in real time. So much for waiting 3 days (or whatever)

Converting to fiat (which I assume is what you meant) is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with the speed and price of a bitcoin transaction. No one is forcing the merchant to convert to fiat; that's entirely their choice

They are in fact forced as crypto is not universally accepted to make this conversion optional or unnecessary

[guoyu78]

At first bitcoin wasn't meant for so massive usage, to be used all over the world, so this coin isn't ready for a lot of reasons: 21 Million supply, what to do with those ones that are lost and are still getting lost? We can do  nothing at the moment and believe me, when a lot of people start using it, we will lose far more than we already have.
Secondly - what about fees? Current fees aren't good for such usage, we need almost zero fee and that's not good news for miners.
In overall bitcoin can't change current currencies, at least at the moment this looks like that.

I would not think that, because when bitcoin was created, it was created with limited supply fine, but I dint think it was created not to be used globally and I think one of its purpose is to serve as a global coin, even tough it is stated to serve as alternative, but something that is meant to serve as alternative as a breakdown of it, and that is the most important part of it, and I believe that if bitcoin is to serve as a global currency, it will be able to.

I think that even if it is limited to that 21 million in book, something or probably a provision has been made for it to get expanded when it gets to that stage where demands become more, but if bitcoin will not be used as a global currency, then there is absolutely no need to even expand it at all, we will just make do with what we have now which will serve for a long time.

[ene1980]

~snip
Did you believe Bitcoin will reach $20k in 2009? Or did you even believe that a Bitcoin could worth more than a gram of gold? I'd be really surpassed if you say yes, but now you don't believe that Bitcoin will reach that numbers.

I was not in bitcoin during 2009 and during that phase even Satoshi would not believe the price would catch up like that . For argument sake let the price of bitcoin reaches a million dollar and for that to happen the BTCitcoin market capital has to touch almost 16 trillion USD and do you think the technology has developed to include huge transaction volumes and how much transaction charges are you willing to pay if the price of BTCitcoin reaches a million dollar and hence i would say it is not a realistic argument now, if you have a better argument you can change my mind on that  .

[o_e_l_e_o]

What you say may in fact be true in respect to credit cards specifically or in some very special cases (which I doubt, by the way), but as I use regular payment cards (otherwise known as debit cards), I don't pay anything. Nada. Null. Zilch.

Credit card fees are paid by the merchant accepting the card, not by the individual paying with the card. This is not some big secret. Many smaller retailers don't accept card or have a minimum spend requirement to pay by card for this reason.

And while it may in fact take a few days to settle these transactions inside the payment system, this doesn't in the least affect me as a customer as payments with these cards are instant

No, but it does affect the retailer. If they need the money quickly, then bitcoin is far faster - in the region of hours rather than several days. Much like an unconfirmed transaction, until the credit card company processes the payment, the merchant can see it but not spend it.

As you might already be aware, I live in Russia. Two days ago I made an order at iHerb, an American company, paying them with my payment card (which is in Russian rubles, just in case). They received my payment instantly (probably already in dollars). But since I forgot to apply some discount code (called promo code there), I canceled my order immediately and got a refund as fast as my first payment went through.

They didn't receive your payment instantly. They received notification from your credit card company instantly. They won't receive the payment for several days. The fact that you could cancel it immediately is exactly my point; credit card transactions are just as easily, if not more easily, reversed than zero confirmation transactions. Both credit card transactions and bitcoin transactions can be broadcast instantly, but bitcoin transactions will confirm within minutes to hours, while credit card transactions will take days.

[South Park]

When we talk of bitcoin supply, we look at it as 21 million bitcoin, and people wonder how that can serve the whole 7 billion population, but we forgot that there are smaller units of bitcoin, we have the mbtc, we have the ubtc and we have the satoshi, and i will like to talk on the satoshi which i believe needs to be expanded to really serve the current economy.

SATOSHI,
This is the smallest units of bitcoin, and 1 bitcoin is equals to 100,000,000 satoshis, which means that the total satoshi that we have is 2100 thrillion satoshis.

The total circulating money of the world according to According to the Bank for International Settlements is 80 trillion dollars, the lowest denomination of usd is cent and 100 cent equals 1 dollar, so we have 8000 trillion cent circulating as money in the world, if satoshi is to be pegged to 1 cent and to be used as global currency, you see why it is necessary to have it expanded, because circulating money of the world will be short of about 5900 trillion satoshis.

You are worrying yourself over a problem we are nowhere close to have, only a few million people are using bitcoin and while the units themselves are not a problem during a time of high activity it can be difficult to get a confirmation, that is in what the developers have been focusing with the lightning network, but your argument is no different than those that claim that the gold we have is not enough to serve the world, if we ever found ourselves with that problem there are only two solutions a satoshi will have to be more valuable than one cent or the devs could add an even smaller unit than the satoshi.

[bryant.coleman]

Bitcoin transaction fee may be very low. but then the merchant may need to spend additional amount to convert these coins to BTC.

Converting to fiat (which I assume is what you meant) is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with the speed and price of a bitcoin transaction. No one is forcing the merchant to convert to fiat; that's entirely their choice. Still, most exchanges charge around 0.25% fees for trading to fiat, and most payment processors around 0.5 - 1%, so still less than credit cards.

On top of that, the VAT/GST calculations may get too complicated and it may take a lot of time and effort to settle everything in the end.

Taxes will be paid in fiat, and so tax calculations should be no more complicated than those for money accepted in fiat. Simply convert the BTC to the corresponding fiat value and continue as normal.

I am not sure whether it is as simple as it sounds. The 0.25% fee that you have mentioned is for trading. But once you convert your coins to fiat, you need to deposit the resulting fiat in your bank account. I am not sure how much it is going to cost, but I suspect that it is much more expensive than the exchange fees and on top of that this process can take a few weeks to complete.

I agree that no one is forcing the merchant to convert to fiat. But then, he need to take care of his expenses and for that he need fiat cash. What if the supplier doesn't accept BTC? He need to get his supplies on a regular basis, so that his shop is fully stocked. For that, the payments needs to be in fiat cash and the delay should not exceed a few days.

[deisik]

What you say may in fact be true in respect to credit cards specifically or in some very special cases (which I doubt, by the way), but as I use regular payment cards (otherwise known as debit cards), I don't pay anything. Nada. Null. Zilch.

Credit card fees are paid by the merchant accepting the card, not by the individual paying with the card. This is not some big secret. Many smaller retailers don't accept card or have a minimum spend requirement to pay by card for this reason

Why should I care as long as I'm not made to pay for it? In the worst case scenario I can just do by paying with cash

And while it may in fact take a few days to settle these transactions inside the payment system, this doesn't in the least affect me as a customer as payments with these cards are instant

No, but it does affect the retailer. If they need the money quickly, then bitcoin is far faster - in the region of hours rather than several days. Much like an unconfirmed transaction, until the credit card company processes the payment, the merchant can see it but not spend it

Let's hope Bitcoin will make them process these transactions faster

As you might already be aware, I live in Russia. Two days ago I made an order at iHerb, an American company, paying them with my payment card (which is in Russian rubles, just in case). They received my payment instantly (probably already in dollars). But since I forgot to apply some discount code (called promo code there), I canceled my order immediately and got a refund as fast as my first payment went through.

They didn't receive your payment instantly. They received notification from your credit card company instantly. They won't receive the payment for several days. The fact that you could cancel it immediately is exactly my point; credit card transactions are just as easily, if not more easily, reversed than zero confirmation transactions. Both credit card transactions and bitcoin transactions can be broadcast instantly, but bitcoin transactions will confirm within minutes to hours, while credit card transactions will take days

That essentially fortifies my point about merchants being ultimately irrelevant

I mean, as far as means of making payments are concerned. People are often asking themselves (well, this is my assumption as I don't really know what they are in fact asking themselves) why merchants are willing to pay exorbitant fees on payments made via payment cards (credit or otherwise) and they still refuse to accept cryptocurrencies which are by far less expensive in terms of transaction fees?

Long story short, this is a false dichotomy, and your explanation makes its falseness apparent. It is not merchants who have the say in these matters. It is buyers. So if buyers want to pay with credit cards (or otherwise), merchants will readily pay these excessive fees to Visa and its likes. And if they don't want to pay with cryptocurrencies, merchants will be reluctant to accept such payments either, even if they are cheaper and faster

[o_e_l_e_o]

But once you convert your coins to fiat, you need to deposit the resulting fiat in your bank account. I am not sure how much it is going to cost, but I suspect that it is much more expensive than the exchange fees and on top of that this process can take a few weeks to complete.

Then that is a problem with the fiat banking system. If you are paying fees to deposit fiat in your accounts, then you'll also be paying those fees when depositing fiat customers have paid you with.

Why should I care as long as I'm not made to pay for it?

Because your initial point was "bitcoin is too expensive". Bitcoin is actually far cheaper for merchants to use than credit cards. If more people understood this, then it could help adoption.

Let's hope Bitcoin will make them process these transactions faster

Yeah, it probably will. There is a new system being set up in the EU, which currently covers around 50% of fiat payment service providers, to process transactions instantly.

It is not merchants who have the say in these matters. It is buyers. So if buyers want to pay with credit cards (or otherwise), merchants will readily pay these excessive fees to Visa and its likes.

It goes both ways. If credit card companies suddenly put their processing fees up to 10%, you can bet merchants would either stop using them, or make prices more expensive for using credit cards, regardless of what the customer wanted. I do agree that merchants are unlikely to start accepting bitcoin out of the blue, because they need to know there is a demand for it, which is why I encourage everyone to approach any small or independent retailers you frequent and talk to them about accepting bitcoin. I've had a fair amount of success doing this.

[freedomgo]

If BTC will have its ultimate success in the future, 1 satoshi could be valued at 1 usd, that is possible as the bigger the adoption the higher the demand.
That's why some experts said that own at least 1 BTC and you will become a millionaire in the future, and that's what I'm trying to achieve because the sats that is less valuable now could be very valuable in the future.

Also, if BTC would not be able to serve the people, there will be Bitcoin forks in the future and as long as it's supported that will solve the problem, but I don't really think it is necessary in the long.

[audaciousbeing]

When we talk of bitcoin supply, we look at it as 21 million bitcoin, and people wonder how that can serve the whole 7 billion population, but we forgot that there are smaller units of bitcoin, we have the mbtc, we have the ubtc and we have the satoshi, and i will like to talk on the satoshi which i believe needs to be expanded to really serve the current economy.

SATOSHI,
This is the smallest units of bitcoin, and 1 bitcoin is equals to 100,000,000 satoshis, which means that the total satoshi that we have is 2100 thrillion satoshis.

The total circulating money of the world according to According to the Bank for International Settlements is 80 trillion dollars, the lowest denomination of usd is cent and 100 cent equals 1 dollar, so we have 8000 trillion cent circulating as money in the world, if satoshi is to be pegged to 1 cent and to be used as global currency, you see why it is necessary to have it expanded, because circulating money of the world will be short of about 5900 trillion satoshis.

You have made some valid explanation and down to the last unit of bitcoin which a lot of people have misinterpreted that its going to be the one that is unlimited. However, you conclusion did not take into consideration two things,

1. You are attaching a definite value to one satoshi which is not. The value of a good is not on the the volume of currency but the real worth. There was a time in Zimbabwe where a pauper is a ''billionaire'' because of the currency crises in that part of the world. So in essence, if the currency is limited to that number of Satoshis, it then means they would only be more valuable in themselves.

2. The limit again is assuming the only crypto currency we have is bitcoin forgetting that there are other reputable and longstanding coins that can be used in place of bitcoin which then ultimately reduce the pressure on crypto and its limited units.

[imstillthebest]

You think it cant serve the whole word because the supply is only 21m but the number of world population is over billions but but the 21m supply does not mean that will remain on those 21m people because most of them are going to sell thier btc in which other unholder of btc can also hold a btc  . currently more btc are already mined out but many people have buy and sold btc

[Indamuck]

-There are more crypto coins than just bitcoin

-Realize that credit cards and cash will remain the dominant currency in the world, Be realistic and realize that bitcoin won't become the global currency

[bryant.coleman]

-There are more crypto coins than just bitcoin
-Realize that credit cards and cash will remain the dominant currency in the world, Be realistic and realize that bitcoin won't become the global currency

Agreed with both of your points, to a certain degree. You are right when you say that there are a large number of cryptocurrencies in existence, apart from Bitcoin. As per my calculations, the total number may exceed 10,000, although a large part is currently either dead or dormant. But the point to be noted here is that Bitcoin alone account for close to 70% of all the cryptocurrency market capitalization.

You are right on the second point as well. Fiat cash will remain supreme for sometime now and I don't expect Bitcoin to replace fiat currency in any of the UN member states. Our best hope is some micronation declaring Bitcoin as the official currency and having great success with it in the future. It may encourage the other nations to allow the usage of Bitcoin.

[jostorres]

But, is Bitcoin right for us to be making use of? I mean like you all keep on saying that the world will abandon Fiat and go for cryptocurrency. If you believe that then why do you still mention dollars and still comparing the price of BTC based on dollar and all that?

If we all decides to be making use of cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) it is not going to be worth the same thing as dollars, cause the worth will be more than the dollar. And I believe that there is enough Bitcoin for everyone that wishes to be investing in it or making use of it, cause people trade cryptocurrency daily and that means that as much as people continues to get involved the more the price for a Bitcoin will increase. Not everyone will be able to buy one Bitcoin , they will prefer to buy it by units. Just like some of us would do now, Bitcoin might be worth $10,000 but we can decide to buy $4,000 worth of it. It’s not a must you’re going to buy all of it.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you believe that then why do you still mention dollars

Because the majority of merchants, businesses, companies, services, etc. do not currently accept bitcoin, and so often we must (unfortunately) convert to fiat to spend our coins.

and still comparing the price of BTC based on dollar and all that?

Because the price fluctuates. There are very few places which offer goods or services at a flat bitcoin rate for an extended period of time. All services I use online update their rates in real time against the exchange rate to fiat, and the services I use in person generally either update their rates daily or generate an exact rate at the time of transaction.

These problems are both solved with widespread adoption. With widespread adoption, the need to convert back to fiat is reduced or removed as we can spend bitcoin directly with more merchants, and the price will reach a level of stability, which will reduce or remove the need to also think in terms of a variable fiat value.

[deisik]

But once you convert your coins to fiat, you need to deposit the resulting fiat in your bank account. I am not sure how much it is going to cost, but I suspect that it is much more expensive than the exchange fees and on top of that this process can take a few weeks to complete.

Then that is a problem with the fiat banking system. If you are paying fees to deposit fiat in your accounts, then you'll also be paying those fees when depositing fiat customers have paid you with.

Why should I care as long as I'm not made to pay for it?

Because your initial point was "bitcoin is too expensive". Bitcoin is actually far cheaper for merchants to use than credit cards. If more people understood this, then it could help adoption

Okay, let's rephrase myself

And put more emphasis on "Bitcoin is too expensive for the end users". Really, what difference does it make if it is cheaper for merchants but buyers are still not going to use it anyway and partly because it is too costly for them to transact with it (it is not the only reason but yet a significant one)? Further, I can't really grasp how understanding this could potentially help adoption. Will such understanding inexplicably make transactions cheaper? Care to explain?

It is not merchants who have the say in these matters. It is buyers. So if buyers want to pay with credit cards (or otherwise), merchants will readily pay these excessive fees to Visa and its likes.

It goes both ways. If credit card companies suddenly put their processing fees up to 10%, you can bet merchants would either stop using them, or make prices more expensive for using credit cards, regardless of what the customer wanted

They are not fools, and we shouldn't expect them to make rash moves that will cost them dear

[iMark]

You think it cant serve the whole word because the supply is only 21m but the number of world population is over billions but but the 21m supply does not mean that will remain on those 21m people because most of them are going to sell thier btc in which other unholder of btc can also hold a btc  . currently more btc are already mined out but many people have buy and sold btc

doesn't mean 1 person is 1 btc right? there is a smaller bitcoin fraction like satoshi mbtc and many other, yeah I realize that 21 million is a very small amount for all people in the world, but does that make prices higher and that's what many investors want?there are many other alternative coins after all?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Really, what difference does it make if it is cheaper for merchants but buyers are still not going to use it anyway and partly because it is too costly for them to transact with it

Because I reject the notion that it is "too expensive to transact with". With bitcoin, I can pay someone $100 for a couple of cents. I can pay someone $10,000 for a couple of cents. I can pay someone $1 million for a couple of cents. That is hardly "too expensive" for the buyer. Some fiat transactions are free for the buyer, sure, but some, such as large payments which need approval from your bank or cross border payments, will slap ridiculous fees on top, far more than that which is charged with bitcoin. For the merchant, there is just no comparison. It's free to open a bitcoin wallet and accept bitcoin, but you could end up paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars in fees in the fiat system.

That's without even touching on all the other benefits of bitcoin, such as being faster, protection from chargeback, privacy, no KYC, no third party telling you what you are and are not allowed to spend your money on, and so forth.

I think if more people realized the advantages of bitcoin over the fiat system, then yes, it would help adoption.

[deisik]

Really, what difference does it make if it is cheaper for merchants but buyers are still not going to use it anyway and partly because it is too costly for them to transact with it

Because I reject the notion that it is "too expensive to transact with". With bitcoin, I can pay someone $100 for a couple of cents. I can pay someone $10,000 for a couple of cents. I can pay someone $1 million for a couple of cents. That is hardly "too expensive" for the buyer

The devil is in paying precious attention to detail (not my phrase but I like it)

First, to begin with, you don't pay a few cents for a transaction unless you are willing to wait a couple days till your transaction finally gets confirmed (I've done that and it doesn't work good). Further, most everyday expenses are below 100 dollars per purchase even in the US (it is easy to figure out why), so even a few extra cents for a cup of tea may look or feel not as appealing as paying nothing above the price tag

Apart from that, those who send 1M dollars don't particularly care about transaction costs, while even with wire transfers there is an upper limit on fees, which rarely exceeds a few (dozen) dollars (pretty much like your few cents per Bitcoin transaction). And if you are not money-laundering or doing some other nasty stuff which may land you in jail, fiat transactions can be more attractive, especially if your goal is to move fiat, not coins

That's without even touching on all the other benefits of bitcoin, such as being faster, protection from chargeback, privacy, no KYC, no third party telling you what you are and are not allowed to spend your money on, and so forth

As a buyer and consumer, I would definitely prefer chargeback rather than protection from it

I think if more people realized the advantages of bitcoin over the fiat system, then yes, it would help adoption

Most people are living paycheck to paycheck and often in debt at that, so those advantages (even if they are real) are of no advantage to them (pardon the pun). And that is not going to change in the foreseeable future

[o_e_l_e_o]

First, to begin with, you don't pay a few cents for a transaction unless you are willing to wait a couple days till your transaction finally gets confirmed (I've done that and it doesn't work good).

That's just not true. I frequently pay transaction fees of a couple of cents and get confirmed within the hour or even quicker. And as I said before, an unconfirmed bitcoin transaction is still harder to reverse than an unconfirmed credit card transaction.

Further, most everyday expenses are below 100 dollars per purchase even in the US (it is easy to figure out why), so even a few extra cents for a cup of tea may look or feel not as appealing as paying nothing above the price tag

Well, for transactions like buying a cup of coffee you can use Lightning Network. Pretty much instant and feeless, but still with all the extra benefits bitcoin brings over fiat.

Apart from that, those who send 1M dollars don't particularly care about transaction costs, while even with wire transfers there is an upper limit on fees, which rarely exceeds a few (dozen) dollars (pretty much like your few cents per Bitcoin transaction).

There are far more fees to consider than just the transfer fee. If you want to move a million dollars internationally, then you are looking at bank fees, lawyer fees, transfer fees, exchange fees, commission fees, and so forth. These can easily add up to several thousands dollars lost. Bitcoin has none of these.

[deisik]

First, to begin with, you don't pay a few cents for a transaction unless you are willing to wait a couple days till your transaction finally gets confirmed (I've done that and it doesn't work good).

That's just not true. I frequently pay transaction fees of a couple of cents and get confirmed within the hour or even quicker. And as I said before, an unconfirmed bitcoin transaction is still harder to reverse than an unconfirmed credit card transaction

You had it coming

Further, most everyday expenses are below 100 dollars per purchase even in the US (it is easy to figure out why), so even a few extra cents for a cup of tea may look or feel not as appealing as paying nothing above the price tag

Well, for transactions like buying a cup of coffee you can use Lightning Network. Pretty much instant and feeless, but still with all the extra benefits bitcoin brings over fiat

Here we go again

Last time I checked 1ml.com (truth be told, I just looked into it), it didn't show any improvement at all in Lightning Network adoption. Actually, the network capacity went significantly down over the last few months. I remember its peak at over 1k bitcoins (still a minuscule amount itself), and now it's at 837 BTC. That gives us a strong push toward the conclusion that Lightning Network is as good as dead so far

Apart from that, those who send 1M dollars don't particularly care about transaction costs, while even with wire transfers there is an upper limit on fees, which rarely exceeds a few (dozen) dollars (pretty much like your few cents per Bitcoin transaction).

There are far more fees to consider than just the transfer fee. If you want to move a million dollars internationally, then you are looking at bank fees, lawyer fees, transfer fees, exchange fees, commission fees, and so forth. These can easily add up to several thousands dollars lost. Bitcoin has none of these

As long as you don't leave the crypto domain, Bitcoin is an excellent device to move around piles of wealth in a smooth and efficient manner. You can't argue with that (neither can I). But things change dramatically when you decide on cashing out, and then your expenses may skyrocket and easily add up to thousands of dollars spent on conversion and withdrawal fees. So it is a moot point given that you can't do without fiat in today's world. But if you try, the premiums you will have to pay will be extreme

And that is an underestimation

[o_e_l_e_o]

Last time I checked 1ml.com (truth be told, I just looked into it), it didn't show any improvement at all in Lightning Network adoption. Actually, the network capacity went significantly down over the last few months. I remember its peak at over 1k bitcoins (still a minuscule amount itself), and now it's at 837 BTC. That gives us a strong push toward the conclusion that Lightning Network is as good as dead so far

Not at all.

Yes, the capacity has dropped recently. No, that isn't a cause for concern. Over the first part of the year, lnbig.com funded and opened channels to every public node, causing the big increase in capacity. They recently started closing down channels to inactive nodes, which has caused the recent decrease. It's also possible people removed funds from channels to trade as bitcoin's price climbed from $4k to $12k.

Why is this not concerning? Two reasons. Firstly, the only numbers we are tracking here are public nodes. These public nodes are generally used to route your payment through to reach its final destination. We don't know how many private nodes there are, which include the most commonly used Lightning wallets such as Eclair. It is likely there are far more private nodes than there are public ones. Secondly, capacity is not the same as volume. Capacity is needed to route a transaction, but says nothing about the number of transactions or volume of BTC being moved through LN.

[deisik]

Why is this not concerning? Two reasons. Firstly, the only numbers we are tracking here are public nodes. These public nodes are generally used to route your payment through to reach its final destination. We don't know how many private nodes there are, which include the most commonly used Lightning wallets such as Eclair. It is likely there are far more private nodes than there are public ones. Secondly, capacity is not the same as volume. Capacity is needed to route a transaction, but says nothing about the number of transactions or volume of BTC being moved through LN

Why do I have a feeling that some bias is at work here?

So you basically assume that since we don't know the real number of Lightning Network nodes, this number must be huge. To me, this is a loose assumption. Further, even if you agree that capacity is not the same as volume (the point which I agree with too), it does in fact say nothing about the number of transactions or the amount of bitcoins being moved using this capacity. The meaning being that there can as easily be none (or next to none). Assuming otherwise, and otherwise being a multiple of that capacity, seems even more far fetched to me

The bottom line is that we don't know the real situation other than what we see at 1ml.com. But what we know for certain is that Lightning Network is not widely used where it is expected to be used, i.e. in places like cafés, pubs, bars, maybe even brothels, and similar institutions. This is what counts in the end as Lightning Network is supposed to fix the innate problems which prevent Bitcoin from being used as a means of payment (read, private nodes are completely inconsequential). But if it is still not used for that, how can Lightning Network actually help here?

[o_e_l_e_o]

But what we know for certain is that Lightning Network is not widely used where it is expected to be used

It isn't widely used yet. That doesn't mean it is somehow broken or dysfunctional. Lightning is pretty much still brand new in the grand scheme of things, and adoption takes time.

This is what counts in the end as Lightning Network is supposed to fix the innate problems which prevent Bitcoin from being used as a means of payment

It does. Lightning is still in beta, but can still be used now, and is instant and near feeless. It is working well. Adoption will come.

[deisik]

But what we know for certain is that Lightning Network is not widely used where it is expected to be used

It isn't widely used yet. That doesn't mean it is somehow broken or dysfunctional. Lightning is pretty much still brand new in the grand scheme of things, and adoption takes time

Well, this is not what I meant

The problem is not with Lightning itself but rather with "the grand scheme of things" as you put it. In other words, even if it is brutally efficient on its own (fees and all), it can't further something when there is nothing to further. You see, there are only 21M bitcoins and given that, why would folks want to spend their precious coins? No way if you ask me

In this manner, OP is technically right, though not for the reasons stated. Bitcoin is inherently deflationary (despite its total supply still increasing), and no Lightning Network is going to change that. Long story short, people don't spend gold, digital or otherwise. That's why it can't serve the world as it is more like the world is to serve Bitcoin

[scambust]

When we talk of bitcoin supply, we look at it as 21 million bitcoin, and people wonder how that can serve the whole 7 billion population, but we forgot that there are smaller units of bitcoin, we have the mbtc, we have the ubtc and we have the satoshi, and i will like to talk on the satoshi which i believe needs to be expanded to really serve the current economy.

SATOSHI,
This is the smallest units of bitcoin, and 1 bitcoin is equals to 100,000,000 satoshis, which means that the total satoshi that we have is 2100 thrillion satoshis.

The total circulating money of the world according to According to the Bank for International Settlements is 80 trillion dollars, the lowest denomination of usd is cent and 100 cent equals 1 dollar, so we have 8000 trillion cent circulating as money in the world, if satoshi is to be pegged to 1 cent and to be used as global currency, you see why it is necessary to have it expanded, because circulating money of the world will be short of about 5900 trillion satoshis.

That is why right now the Bitcoin community should start adopting mBTC or milli-bitcoin. 1 mBTC is $10.10 today. One satoshi is still less than one US cent so I think everyone can still own bitcoins, just in the lower decimals.

[o_e_l_e_o]

You see, there are only 21M bitcoins and given that, why would folks want to spend their precious coins? No way if you ask me

But people do spend their coins. I spend bitcoin several times a week. There are people who receive their salary I'm bitcoin, and so have no choice but to spend large amounts of their coins. The number of merchants accepting bitcoin is growing. Why would bitcoin credit card cards and payment processors even exist if there was zero demand for them? Just because you don't want to spend your coins (which is fine - totally your choice), doesn't mean everyone else shares that view.

Adoption is what drives growth. Without adoption, there is only baseless speculation. Speculating gives surges to $20k, sure, but it also gives huge drops to $3k. Adoption gives sustainable proce growth. Once adoption grows enough, the price will stabilise, and holders like yourself will be more likely to start using bitcoin as it was intended - as a currency.

[muhhentuhhen]

You think it cant serve the whole word because the supply is only 21m but the number of world population is over billions but but the 21m supply does not mean that will remain on those 21m people because most of them are going to sell thier btc in which other unholder of btc can also hold a btc  . currently more btc are already mined out but many people have buy and sold btc

doesn't mean 1 person is 1 btc right? there is a smaller bitcoin fraction like satoshi mbtc and many other, yeah I realize that 21 million is a very small amount for all people in the world, but does that make prices higher and that's what many investors want?there are many other alternative coins after all?

To avoid the threat of inflationary depreciation, the creators of Bitcoin initially laid down the principle of a limited number of virtual coins. Their total number will never exceed 21 million. So, people start thinking that it will be not enough for the whole of mankind. It is not true.
First, the price and value of Bitcoin will be growing all the time, and secondly, each BTC can be split to Satoshi.

[deisik]

You see, there are only 21M bitcoins and given that, why would folks want to spend their precious coins? No way if you ask me

But people do spend their coins. I spend bitcoin several times a week. There are people who receive their salary I'm bitcoin, and so have no choice but to spend large amounts of their coins. The number of merchants accepting bitcoin is growing. Why would bitcoin credit card cards and payment processors even exist if there was zero demand for them? Just because you don't want to spend your coins (which is fine - totally your choice), doesn't mean everyone else shares that view

Let me guess

People who receive their salary in bitcoins, first have to convert the coins to dollars (or whatever) before they can actually spend them. In this way I also spend some coins every week, then buy back when the price turns sufficiently around (a lifehack, you can live off that difference if your volume is high enough). The same story goes with Bitcoin credit card cards and payment processors - merchants are still accepting fiat only, end of story. If that relates to you as adoption, I think you have to reconsider your perspective

Further, you can assess almost anything either by its presence as well as absence or by the presence as well as absence of something else. As we see that Bitcoin's volatility doesn't subside (in fact, it has been at pretty high if not to say record levels recently), there is no plausible reason to believe or expect that the real adoption is indeed rising. And while I totally agree with you that the only way to stabilize prices is to make speculation irrelevant (the thing I've been telling here for years), the reality can't be ignored unless you deliberately choose so

And the next bottom line in this series of posts is that whenever given a choice, people will hoard their coins and spend fiat instead (as per famous Gresham's Law). Obviously, if you don't have that choice, Bitcoin becomes your only option and recourse. But that's not the case with most people apart from completely unbanked ones and deprived of a fiat income source at that. Hence no way people are going to spend Bitcoin en masse

[o_e_l_e_o]

If that relates to you as adoption, I think you have to reconsider your perspective

I wasn't using that as an argument to say adoption is widespread; I was using that as argument that people spend their bitcoins. And I spend bitcoin directly with merchants who accept them several times a week. Incidentally, one of these merchants is a local small business who I spoke to about using bitcoin several times, and now they do. If you want to see adoption, then go out and create demand for it.

And the next bottom line in this series of posts is that whenever given a choice, people will hoard their coins and spend fiat instead (as per famous Gresham's Law).

Totally incorrect. If given the choice, I would pay with bitcoin 10 times out of 10.

I think the issue here is that you are assuming that everyone is a holder like you, who is only interested in accumulating more. There are also plenty of people like me who are keen to spend their coins and support bitcoin's growth whenever possible.

[carter34]

From the discussion above, I think the world shouldn't be in chaos for bitcoin to spend. One reason for now is that there is no general adoption yet.
Two, even if bitcoin or cryptocurrency is replacing fiat, bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency existing. Meaning other crypto will be adopted and made relevant to support, follow the crypto usage and circulation.
Three, then we know that bitcoin has many other smaller units , 100,000,000 satoshi gives us just one bitcoin

[deisik]

If that relates to you as adoption, I think you have to reconsider your perspective

I wasn't using that as an argument to say adoption is widespread; I was using that as argument that people spend their bitcoins

It is a difference that makes the difference, right?

The point being that even if you didn't mean it that way, it still resonated like adoption is anything including what actually constitutes a fiat payment. More specifically, you may think like you are paying with crypto while your coins simply get converted to fiat in the process. And how is it different from you converting crypto to fiat yourself and then spending the proceeds? I don't know about you, but to me, conceptually, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other

And I spend bitcoin directly with merchants who accept them several times a week. Incidentally, one of these merchants is a local small business who I spoke to about using bitcoin several times, and now they do. If you want to see adoption, then go out and create demand for it

Yes, I understand your pains

But you can't really expect people to go out and demand cryptocurrency payments. People want adoption, I mean real adoption, but they don't want to do anything to that effect themselves, i.e. to actually promote such adoption. If things were different, we would have already been there by now. But since we are not, that instantly sends us back to square one (read, no adoption of crypto as a full-fledged and self-sufficient means of payment)

And the next bottom line in this series of posts is that whenever given a choice, people will hoard their coins and spend fiat instead (as per famous Gresham's Law).

Totally incorrect. If given the choice, I would pay with bitcoin 10 times out of 10.

I think the issue here is that you are assuming that everyone is a holder like you, who is only interested in accumulating more. There are also plenty of people like me who are keen to spend their coins and support bitcoin's growth whenever possible

I'm not a holder, and far from being one

I'm more of a trader type (if that makes any difference in your internal hierarchy of the cryptocurrency folk), so crypto for me is like capital. Well, it is indeed working capital for me and spending it is a big fat no. If I didn't have a fiat option, I would be forced to spend coins, of course (as I sometimes still do in the way described above), but other than that, it is the last thing that I would willingly do

[Vishnu.Reang]

That is why right now the Bitcoin community should start adopting mBTC or milli-bitcoin. 1 mBTC is $10.10 today. One satoshi is still less than one US cent so I think everyone can still own bitcoins, just in the lower decimals.

I'd go for mBTC. Satoshi is having very low value now and I don't want it to become the unit in which the prices are denominated. But we need to create a name for mBTC, just like we have Satoshi. And we need to create a unique, short name. There have been proposals to rename mBTC as BitCent and BitPenny, but I don't like those names. Let's have something unique.

[NavI_027]

[snip]

I'd go for mBTC. Satoshi is having very low value now and I don't want it to become the unit in which the prices are denominated. But we need to create a name for mBTC, just like we have Satoshi. And we need to create a unique, short name. There have been proposals to rename mBTC as BitCent and BitPenny, but I don't like those names. Let's have something unique.

Guys why some of you are eager to change how we call bitcoin? Is really a big deal and an important thing to discussed with? Actually, for me, "bitcoin (btc)" was already okay enough. For me it doesn't really matter since converting of units are not so hard to do so .

[deisik]

[snip]

I'd go for mBTC. Satoshi is having very low value now and I don't want it to become the unit in which the prices are denominated. But we need to create a name for mBTC, just like we have Satoshi. And we need to create a unique, short name. There have been proposals to rename mBTC as BitCent and BitPenny, but I don't like those names. Let's have something unique.

Guys why some of you are eager to change how we call bitcoin? Is really a big deal and an important thing to discussed with? Actually, for me, "bitcoin (btc)" was already okay enough. For me it doesn't really matter since converting of units are not so hard to do so

This is not the first time this question is raised

If you look through topics created 4-5 years ago, you will find quite a few suggesting to divide Bitcoin further (as if it could help its price), as well as discussing different names for different subunits of a whole bitcoin. Does it make any sense? I guess not much as the lowest sensible denomination would still be defined and determined by the amount of fees required to confirm a Bitcoin payment within a reasonable timeframe. And that, as of now, is about a few thousand satoshi, which turns the whole idea into an exercise in stupidity and futility

[o_e_l_e_o]

People want adoption, I mean real adoption, but they don't want to do anything to that effect themselves, i.e. to actually promote such adoption. If things were different, we would have already been there by now. But since we are not, that instantly sends us back to square one (read, no adoption of crypto as a full-fledged and self-sufficient means of payment)

Not having a complete bitcoin ecosystem for everyone in the country from salary through to buying groceries is not the same as being back at square one and having no adoption. Adoption is gradual and takes time. I've gone from never spending bitcoin to spending it at 1, and then 2, and then 3, and then more merchants. I can earn bitcoin without touching fiat, pay in bitcoin without touching fiat, and I know at least 2 of the merchants I use pay some of their staff (at least partly) in bitcoin. That seems pretty self-sufficient to me, and certainly isn't "square one" in terms of adoption.

Unfortunately I agree that the majority of people don't actually want to put in any effort. I've lost count of the number of times on this forum people have asked "where can I spend bitcoin", but have never actually approached a single merchant or vendor and asked to pay them in bitcoin. Create a demand for it, and merchants will start accepting it!

If I didn't have a fiat option, I would be forced to spend coins, of course (as I sometimes still do in the way described above), but other than that, it is the last thing that I would willingly do.

I love spending bitcoin. I love knowing that there isn't some faceless bank tracking everything I buy, and using it to build a profile of me (and probably handing that information over to the government). I love knowing that I'm never going to have a payment declined because my bank don't like what I'm buying, or have for some reason decided I'm not allowed to spend my own money how I want. I'll spend bitcoin wherever possible.

[deisik]

People want adoption, I mean real adoption, but they don't want to do anything to that effect themselves, i.e. to actually promote such adoption. If things were different, we would have already been there by now. But since we are not, that instantly sends us back to square one (read, no adoption of crypto as a full-fledged and self-sufficient means of payment)

Not having a complete bitcoin ecosystem for everyone in the country from salary through to buying groceries is not the same as being back at square one and having no adoption. Adoption is gradual and takes time. I've gone from never spending bitcoin to spending it at 1, and then 2, and then 3, and then more merchants. I can earn bitcoin without touching fiat, pay in bitcoin without touching fiat, and I know at least 2 of the merchants I use pay some of their staff (at least partly) in bitcoin. That seems pretty self-sufficient to me, and certainly isn't "square one" in terms of adoption

Okay, let's call it square two

Yeah, I know it is still better than none (or just one), but we still have 62 more to pass. The point is, one swallow doesn't make a summer (two swallows don't make it either, just in case). It is mass adoption that counts (the grand scheme of things, in your terms), and I don't see us moving in that direction, slowly or otherwise. Personally, I can go as far as to say that Bitcoin has failed as a means of payment, even though it doesn't mean that it failed in general as you can't seriously consider something worth 10k per unit a failure. In essence, that means Bitcoin is not to be spent, it is to be hoarded or used as a hedge (dealer's choice). This is the direction we are moving in

Unfortunately I agree that the majority of people don't actually want to put in any effort. I've lost count of the number of times on this forum people have asked "where can I spend bitcoin", but have never actually approached a single merchant or vendor and asked to pay them in bitcoin. Create a demand for it, and merchants will start accepting it!

See? I can definitely feel your pain

If I didn't have a fiat option, I would be forced to spend coins, of course (as I sometimes still do in the way described above), but other than that, it is the last thing that I would willingly do.

I love spending bitcoin. I love knowing that there isn't some faceless bank tracking everything I buy, and using it to build a profile of me (and probably handing that information over to the government). I love knowing that I'm never going to have a payment declined because my bank don't like what I'm buying, or have for some reason decided I'm not allowed to spend my own money how I want. I'll spend bitcoin wherever possible

I'm totally cool with that but for most of us it is just a welcome bonus of sorts. In other words, it is not something extremely important that our entire life depends on or turns around. Being able to cash out is, though

[davinchi]

Adoption of lightning network and how it works are totally different stuff.

The adoption might be low but at the same time it works the way it was suppose to work and I fully support the work put into it. Right now, we are talking about a system where you can send bitcoin for cents and considering its a billion dollar transaction community that is a big upgrade to what we have right now which is a lot of money sent.

You can still order your cup of coffee with couple cents on transaction fee but we can't never know how long it will take, maybe it will be 10 minutes, maybe it will be 6 hours, it all depends on how clogged the blockchain is at that moment. Hence lightning network is really a must in the future, it may take time but there are places that doesn't use segwit yet, so it will take a long time.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It is mass adoption that counts (the grand scheme of things, in your terms), and I don't see us moving in that direction, slowly or otherwise.

We are going to have to agree to disagree again. It's difficult to measure "adoption", but we can look at surrogate markers like number of unique addresses, number of transactions per day, hashrate, and so forth, all of which are on a relatively steady upward trend. There are sites which attempt to create lists of merchants which accept crypto, such as coinmap.org. Obviously, they will miss huge numbers of merchants, but even then, the number on that site is growing by around 50 a week.

I'm totally cool with that but for most of us it is just a welcome bonus of sorts.

At the moment, maybe it's just a bonus. But governments around the world are moving ever more strongly towards blanket surveillance and monitoring of the population. They already freeze accounts and seize the money of people who speak out against them or cause them too many headaches. Perhaps you might find that being in control of your own money becomes more attractive in the future.

[STT]

you can still divide satoshi in to smaller units called millisatoshi.

I think off chain we wont be using Bitcoin, we wont ever have purely one type of currency.    This system now is the peak of one currency type dominating the world, the only other system that has been as dominant as Dollar is gold and that was only indirectly by reference or exchange of each local currency unit being either fixed or varied rates in ratio to gold.
    People see this trend of one currency dominance since ww2 not peaking but increasing and continuing even while we transition to Bitcoin.  I'm going to say I'm quite certain nobody is going to dominate quite as much as Dollar did ever again, computers allow us to vary the world and with lower costs and better efficiency.  Diversification is the most likely turning point here not more of the same of the last 60 years.

1 bitcoin is equals to 100,000,000 satoshis, which means that the total satoshi that we have is 2100 thrillion satoshis.

So its alot, its a simple point but a good one even if you come to the wrong conclusion.   Again for the same point I said above, Bitcoin doesnt need to describe every value in every country of the world.   BTC is transactional, it only really needs to serve its purpose as conveying value online securely and for that moment in time and its done a stellar job of maintaining that standard even if the value has varied considerably.

We dont need Bitcoin to replace the store of value in a banks vaults not even virtually do we need it to do that job.   There is always going to be dozens of asset types with various characteristics.   It wont always be decentralised just like we are still using websites now, there will be places that contain and describe value locally.



I'll post this up because its ancient and its been a fair reflection of varied asset value for a while, I think its going to keep being true in future.     The price might be $ on this chart but the asset itself is the value really, there is no notes attached.  The $ in this case just helps to clarify value for comparison, in great many cases it never goes near to being a cash transaction.
     I think we have a common misunderstanding of accounting perhaps, not really a Bitcoin problem as gold is also accused of not being sufficient to describe cash transactions.  The value of gold will rise surely in greater usage and also people will never be hauling round gold bars, Bitcoin being easier to transact doesnt I think make it any more likely in that way.

[bryant.coleman]

This is not the first time this question is raised

If you look through topics created 4-5 years ago, you will find quite a few suggesting to divide Bitcoin further (as if it could help its price), as well as discussing different names for different subunits of a whole bitcoin. Does it make any sense? I guess not much as the lowest sensible denomination would still be defined and determined by the amount of fees required to confirm a Bitcoin payment within a reasonable timeframe. And that, as of now, is about a few thousand satoshi, which turns the whole idea into an exercise in stupidity and futility

The question is being raised again and again, because Bitcoin is having a disadvantage with both its name and its sub-units. First let's take the name. The "coin" part gives an impression that it can't be further subdivided, when in reality nothing can be farther from the truth. Especially the newer users are getting confused by this name.

Now coming to the units, one Bitcoin is being subdivided in to 100 million Satoshis. There is nothing in between. mBTC is an informal unit, and it doesn't have a name of its own. A few names were suggested for mBTC, but there was no consensus. And we need smaller units badly now, as the exchange rates have surged past the $10,000 per coin level. Even mBTC may be too big for practical purposes now.

[deisik]

It is mass adoption that counts (the grand scheme of things, in your terms), and I don't see us moving in that direction, slowly or otherwise.

We are going to have to agree to disagree again. It's difficult to measure "adoption", but we can look at surrogate markers like number of unique addresses, number of transactions per day, hashrate, and so forth, all of which are on a relatively steady upward trend

They may well be

So I have to take your word for it as I don't know if they really do. Regardless, do these markers really show the expansion in adoption? All of them can as well point in the opposite direction unless we agree adoption equals speculation. If not, all these numbers rising can be easily attributed to speculation expanding, which you should in fact expect given the half-year Bitcoin rally as of recent. You can't seriously ascribe the explosive growth from low 3k to high 13k within just a few months to adoption spreading like weed. Most certainly, what we see is the same old-school speculation at work here

There are sites which attempt to create lists of merchants which accept crypto, such as coinmap.org. Obviously, they will miss huge numbers of merchants, but even then, the number on that site is growing by around 50 a week

And here we go again (one more time)

How many of these merchants are in fact accepting crypto? If next to none, then this is not adoption. Well, we could indeed consider it half-adoption (for the lack of a better term) if people were actually paying with crypto there (as this is still a good start anyway). But we don't know that. Just adding the payment option is quasi-adoption at best. You can call it a required condition or prerequisite for future adoption but that in itself doesn't guarantee it just like Lighting Network doesn't guarantee it either

I'm totally cool with that but for most of us it is just a welcome bonus of sorts.

At the moment, maybe it's just a bonus. But governments around the world are moving ever more strongly towards blanket surveillance and monitoring of the population. They already freeze accounts and seize the money of people who speak out against them or cause them too many headaches. Perhaps you might find that being in control of your own money becomes more attractive in the future

Personally, I'm already in that future but it doesn't magically turn Bitcoin into a means of payment. There is a huge distance (and difference) between that and using Bitcoin as a store of value or a hedge (but I repeat myself)

[o_e_l_e_o]

You can't seriously ascribe the explosive growth from low 3k to high 13k within just a few months to adoption spreading like weed.

I agree with you there. The recent bull run was purely speculative, much like the big 2017 bull run. I would actually much prefer these bull runs not to happen, and just see a much slower but steadier and sustained price rise over several years, which would be based on growing adoption as opposed to pure speculation. These huge runs and crashes usually end in a bunch of a newbies losing a ton of money and rage-quitting bitcoin altogether.

How many of these merchants are in fact accepting crypto?

Impossible to say. As I mentioned above, 2 merchants I use are accepting crypto directly without a payment processor, and are using some of that bitcoin to pay some of their staff's wages. I accept merchants are like this are in the minority, but they do exist, and both of these merchants only started doing this in the last year.

Yes, we have a long way to go, but I do think we are heading in the right direction.

[deisik]

You can't seriously ascribe the explosive growth from low 3k to high 13k within just a few months to adoption spreading like weed.

I agree with you there. The recent bull run was purely speculative, much like the big 2017 bull run. I would actually much prefer these bull runs not to happen, and just see a much slower but steadier and sustained price rise over several years, which would be based on growing adoption as opposed to pure speculation. These huge runs and crashes usually end in a bunch of a newbies losing a ton of money and rage-quitting bitcoin altogether

So there is no reason to disagree?

Okay then. Anyway, it is a vicious circle of sorts, in fact, it is even a double vicious circle. It is kinda self-explanatory that merchants are not inclined to accept a highly volatile currency as a means of payment but prices won't become stable unless and until speculation is massively subdued and overshadowed by adoption, i.e. when most coins are used for buying and selling goods. But there is another circle of vice which is less apparent but that doesn't make it less ugly. In fact, it makes the first circle far worse as it just adds more injury to injury

The second circle is, volatile prices discourage people from spending their coins as it makes no sense from an economic perspective. What makes sense, though, is relentless speculation by riding volatility waves. Obviously, most coins end up on exchanges, not in the wallets of merchants. This, in turn, means merchants are disincentivized further from accepting crypto as payment since there is no demand for such payments from the buyers. So the coins end up being speculated, not circulated, which adds more fuel to the furnace of volatility. This closes the vicious circle

Yes, we have a long way to go, but I do think we are heading in the right direction

Just like you can't force love, you can't force people to spend their bitcoins in a "productive" way. Economically, you would be better off exchanging bitcoins to fiat, then spending some part of the money and buying back if prices drop or exchange more if prices soar (and then buy back when the prices finally drop). You simply can't beat that, and no amount of proselytizing is going to change this simple reality

Now coming to the units, one Bitcoin is being subdivided in to 100 million Satoshis. There is nothing in between. mBTC is an informal unit, and it doesn't have a name of its own. A few names were suggested for mBTC, but there was no consensus. And we need smaller units badly now, as the exchange rates have surged past the $10,000 per coin level. Even mBTC may be too big for practical purposes now

Personally, I don't feel like we need these subunits as anything less than a few thousand satoshi (otherwise known as dust) is not collectible anyway

[Alert31]

How can you say that 21 Million bitcoin is not enough? It will circulate in blochchain system through buy and sell. And because of limited supply with higher demand,the value of bitcoin will keep on increasing as the time goes by. So, we don,t need to worry that the 21 Million bitcoin cannot serve the whole world because it is more than enough. The value is very important and I think Satoshi who made it know it already that's why he created bitcoin in a limited supply.

[bryant.coleman]

Now coming to the units, one Bitcoin is being subdivided in to 100 million Satoshis. There is nothing in between. mBTC is an informal unit, and it doesn't have a name of its own. A few names were suggested for mBTC, but there was no consensus. And we need smaller units badly now, as the exchange rates have surged past the $10,000 per coin level. Even mBTC may be too big for practical purposes now

Personally, I don't feel like we need these subunits as anything less than a few thousand satoshi (otherwise known as dust) is not collectible anyway

Well.. I was saying that we don't need finer subunits, but we need coarser ones. Right now the transaction fee is in the vicinity of BTC0.0001, so I agree that amounts lower than that are not practical to collect. What I was saying was, suppose if we want to pay for coffee at Barista, then the bill may come to BTC0.0005 or something like that. It is not very convenient to use so many decimal places. If we use mBTC instead of BTC, then it will come to 0.5 mBTC, which is more easier to calculate.

But as I pointed out, mBTC is not a formal sub-unit for Bitcoin and it doesn't have an official name. And suggestions such as mBits and Bitfraction doesn't sound good. We need some unique name for mBTC. Since Satoshi is already taken, I would suggest "Theymos".

1 Bitcoin = 1,000 Theymos = 100,000,000 Satoshi

[rose9696]

But how can bitcoin make one smaller coin while it is unregulated?
The satoshi unit is only a unit of calculation but it is completely impossible to convert to money. This is a big obstacle.

[Janation]

Let's hope Bitcoin will make them process these transactions faster

Yes, and mass adoption of crypto everywhere will help to do it faster then now.

Why mass adoption?

The reason why the transaction is getting slower is that a lot of cryptocurrencies are being transacted all over the internet. With the mass adoption and the blockchain not ready for millions and millions of transactions will not help, it will just increase the problem though I don't think that is the problem today since it is already improved in the past year.

[deisik]

Now coming to the units, one Bitcoin is being subdivided in to 100 million Satoshis. There is nothing in between. mBTC is an informal unit, and it doesn't have a name of its own. A few names were suggested for mBTC, but there was no consensus. And we need smaller units badly now, as the exchange rates have surged past the $10,000 per coin level. Even mBTC may be too big for practical purposes now

Personally, I don't feel like we need these subunits as anything less than a few thousand satoshi (otherwise known as dust) is not collectible anyway

Well.. I was saying that we don't need finer subunits, but we need coarser ones. Right now the transaction fee is in the vicinity of BTC0.0001, so I agree that amounts lower than that are not practical to collect. What I was saying was, suppose if we want to pay for coffee at Barista, then the bill may come to BTC0.0005 or something like that. It is not very convenient to use so many decimal places. If we use mBTC instead of BTC, then it will come to 0.5 mBTC, which is more easier to calculate

This will only add to confusion

Right now paying for a cup of coffee with Bitcoin is not worth it as you will have to pay insane fees which would be quite comparable to the price of that coffee (if not exceed it). But if Lightning Network gets widespread adoption in this field (and Bitcoin price multiplies), then a few dozen satoshi should be a common price for such things. Thus there is no need for these subunits. They will only confuse people

1 Bitcoin = 1,000 Theymos = 100,000,000 Satoshi

Theymos may not be happy at all. If anything, 1000 bitcoins should be equal to 1 theymos

[barbara44]

Theymos should definitely not be involved in this, he is the owner of the biggest bitcoin related forum in the world I will give him that but people already gave too much money to him to make this website better which I am afraid not gonna happen anytime soon so maybe we should name it something more technical instead of emotional. Mbit is not that because it is easy to say and it may not be formal like satoshi but we can just make it formal by collectively call it that and we actually do that right now.

So, putting up another name for something we have all already named in the past and have been using for years doesn't make any sense, we already figured that out years ago. However I would suggest making satoshi more known, like saying a thousand satoshi or 100 thousand satoshi should be more common.

[Daffadile]

The more diluted and the more people that buy and use and keep bitcoin the more it will be worth so therefore divisions of bitcoin will be worth more and you can now break bitcoin into smaller pieces and still keep the same value as if it were a whole bitcoin. If there are 10 people with bitcoin that is 0.10 btc each if there is only 1 person with bitcoin it is 1 btc. This is not realistic though since it is not taking into account supply and demand and movement or dilution or attraction of the currency but it is more the theory that counts I think.

[bryant.coleman]

This will only add to confusion

Right now paying for a cup of coffee with Bitcoin is not worth it as you will have to pay insane fees which would be quite comparable to the price of that coffee (if not exceed it). But if Lightning Network gets widespread adoption in this field (and Bitcoin price multiplies), then a few dozen satoshi should be a common price for such things. Thus there is no need for these subunits. They will only confuse people

1 Bitcoin = 1,000 Theymos = 100,000,000 Satoshi

Theymos may not be happy at all. If anything, 1000 bitcoins should be equal to 1 theymos

Yes... fee is a big concern. I still remember the transactions from December 2017, when I was forced to pay almost $50 as the transaction fee. I had the misfortune of doing quite a few transactions when the tx fee was at its peak. Imagine paying for a cup of coffee with Bitcoin at that time. If the coffee costs $3, you need to pay a total of $53 (including the transaction fee) and then wait for 1-2 hours to get the transaction confirmed.

If you keep the prices in Satoshi, then a cup of coffee having a price of $3 (BTC0.0003) would be priced as 30,000 Satoshis. A pizza can cost a few hundred thousand Satoshis. It is still convenient to use Satoshis than Bitcoin (with 4 decimal places). Perhaps you are right. We should stick to Satoshi instead of mBTC.

BTW, Theymos should be happy. Under the current plan, 1 Theymos = 100,000 Satoshi.  

[deisik]

If you keep the prices in Satoshi, then a cup of coffee having a price of $3 (BTC0.0003) would be priced as 30,000 Satoshis. A pizza can cost a few hundred thousand Satoshis. It is still convenient to use Satoshis than Bitcoin (with 4 decimal places). Perhaps you are right. We should stick to Satoshi instead of mBTC

Yeah, satoshi seem to be perfectly fine with me

If Satoshi comes to town, I mean Bitcoin becomes so widespread that you can actually go out and buy a cup of coffee with it just like you do with your dollar (euro or whatever) in every place and at every corner, the Bitcoin price should already be in the many millions (dollars or whatever). So you would in fact be able to drop by and buy a cup of coffee literally for a few satoshi (and then we may start to discuss satoshi subunits)

BTW, Theymos should be happy. Under the current plan, 1 Theymos = 100,000 Satoshi

You'd better ask him first

[guoyu78]

But how can bitcoin make one smaller coin while it is unregulated?
The satoshi unit is only a unit of calculation but it is completely impossible to convert to money. This is a big obstacle.

You are seeing it as difficulty because you are still tying it to fiat and you are thinking the equivalent of what it would be in fiat, bitcoin is a currency on its own and it is meant to be spent as currency, I mean if you are buy a milk for 10 satoshi, you pay 10 satoshi without having to think of converting it to fiat, but when you want to start converting fiat to it or vice versa is where it becomes problem.

You have not seen the real currency usefulness of it because we still don’t have many merchants that are accepting it, if they were accepting, you would have seen many people actually spending bitcoin as though they are spending fiat to purchase things on line and in grocery store. When you see people hoping for regulation, it is because bitcoin needs to be accepting and satoshi being a small unit will be spent.

[Leonardo7]

Yes, the total supply of bitcoin can serve the world, if it was 5,000,000 TS. The sotashi will keep expanding or going up in price as more and more people start using it like we saw a huge price leap in 2017, that is how it works. soon thousands of dollars will just be able to buy a little fraction of satoshi. Not everyone in the world actually have real money, some just have substance and money keeps exchanging hands.

[fiulpro]

Well you know I think is as long as we divide the smallest unit of Bitcoins even smaller then you should understand that it will actually all go good .. we could see a good boon soon enough .. it actually could ward off all the problems that comes with bitcoins being not enough for everyone .
I think we could just bring mini Satoshis ...or something in the market .

[STT]

Yeah, satoshi seem to be perfectly fine with me

Both kinda confuse me and so long as BTC appreciates its Satoshi I prefer of the two I think as its the base unit, its a natural starting point and actually superior to people getting confused over owning a whole Bitcoin and immediately being put off by the price as if they must deal in single whole units.    Obviously we know better but I'm talking about the common perception and ergonomics of propagation of a new currency standard, satoshi is cheap as hell which might explain why the Yen and Japan have adopted BTC a bit more freely.

I think we could just bring mini Satoshis ...or something in the market .

I'd rather we just keep it simple.  Companies can keep fractions of a SAT on their balance sheet internally if they like.    I dont think SAT being worth too much is a problem for a while.

[ralle14]

Well you know I think is as long as we divide the smallest unit of Bitcoins even smaller then you should understand that it will actually all go good .. we could see a good boon soon enough .. it actually could ward off all the problems that comes with bitcoins being not enough for everyone .
I think we could just bring mini Satoshis ...or something in the market .

Even if there's no solution in the future, dividing bitcoins to satoshis is already a lot it only comes down to the price of Bitcoin to know if the supply we currently have is still sufficient for everyone.

I'd rather we just keep it simple.  Companies can keep fractions of a SAT on their balance sheet internally if they like.    I dont think SAT being worth too much is a problem for a while.

I agree we could just use decimals if Satoshis becomes expensive similar to what we have now with mbtc.

[FlightyPouch]

Yes, the total supply of bitcoin can serve the world, if it was 5,000,000 TS. The sotashi will keep expanding or going up in price as more and more people start using it like we saw a huge price leap in 2017, that is how it works. soon thousands of dollars will just be able to buy a little fraction of satoshi. Not everyone in the world actually have real money, some just have substance and money keeps exchanging hands.

I don't think we even need to talk about the whole population of the world since not all of them are fond and willing to use bitcoin. Some hate them, some are thinking that it is a scam. They have their reasons but most likely, not all of the people can use this kind of technology. Despite that it is easy to use.

[Ayiranorea]

With comparison to the population over the entire world it is completely impossible to make it get supplied to the entire population if there a massive adoption throughout the world. By that time surely the price of bitcoin will increase, and maybe a Satoshi will get termed to be a bitcoin.

In this time we were supposed to think of providing value, we cannot value an asset beyond its purpose. When something is manipulated and given value it easily fails.

[SquallLeonhart]

With comparison to the population over the entire world it is completely impossible to make it get supplied to the entire population if there a massive adoption throughout the world. By that time surely the price of bitcoin will increase, and maybe a Satoshi will get termed to be a bitcoin.

In this time we were supposed to think of providing value, we cannot value an asset beyond its purpose. When something is manipulated and given value it easily fails.

There is need for adoption, and I think that I will prefer the adoption from the masses so that the distribution of bitcoin can go wide, there was a mate that saw problem with the distribution of bitcoin, because only the wealthy people can really accumulate bitcoin that much at this stage and even the masses would not be able to accumulate it, which means that even in the bitcoin world, it is still the rich people that control us and imagine what they would do when some group of people have so much bitcoin to themselves.

There is need for us to get adoption of bitcoin, this will really create a very good impact and all this issue of bitcoin not being able to meet the need will not arise because that time will come that the smallest of bitcoin is what will be used.