If you've spoken or written many fractional bitcoin values, you've noticed that all of the options – decimalized full bitcoin ("
BTC0.0017"), millibitcoin ("1.7 mBTC"), and microbitcoin ("1,700 µBTC") – can be a little awkward.
They're logical, yes, but unlike how people usually think about money: as countable whole numbers, with a short fractional portion that's often so trifling is can be ignored.
We early adopters who have a natural enthusiasm and familiarity for math/finance details can manage with the scientific-measurement milli-/micro- units. But the next wave of potential Bitcoin users, who lean more on approximations and folk rules-of-thumb, will have more problems.
A focused solution could be to popularize a short and simple new term for the microbitcoin unit (100 satoshi), to allow everyday economic values to be expressed in whole numbers (or whole thousands), now and for the foreseeable future.
The term should be something that's easy to say and easy to abbreviate. Something that alludes to 'bitcoin' and 'bit' without overloading those terms. Something that's unambiguous-by-design, and resistant to likely causes of confusion from similarly spelled or said terms.
It should be something that can be incrementally adopted, as needed, alongside existing units - rather than requiring a big consensus or centralized decision, or a discontinuous definitional break with the past.
To meet those goals, last week I proposed a new unit name called a "zibcoin", or "zib", synonymous with microbitcoin/µBTC (100 satoshi).
In a nutshell, it gives:
BTC1 = 1,000,000 zib = 100,000,000 satoshi
BTC0.000001 = 1 zib = 100 satoshi
BTC0.00000001 = 0.01 zib = 1 satoshi
For reference at today's USD exchange rate ($575/BTC) and also adding dogecoin for comparison ($669/MegaDoge):
$1 = 1,739.13 zib = BTC0.00173913 = 1,494.77 doge
$10 = 17,391.30 zib = BTC0.0173913 = 14,947.68 doge
$100 = 173,913.04 zib = BTC0.17391304 = 149,476.83 doge
Of course, given usual practices rounding monetary values, those zib values would more likely be said as "1700 zib", "17k zib", and "173k zib".
A longer case for the term is made at:
Medium:
Ƶibcoin: Your New Favorite AltcoinOther supporting materials and Q&A/news can be found at:
http://zibcoin.orgTwitter:
@zibcoinA forum thread promoting zibcoin in the mock style of an altcoin – "The world's first altcoin that's 100% binary-compatible with Bitcoin!" - is at:
[ANN] [ZBC] Zibcoin: Bitcoin for everyone. Redeem your zibcoins now!To get started, just try using "zib" when quoting small bitcoin values.
These threads and the zibcoin.org website will make it easy for people seeing the term/abbreviation to figure out its meaning.
It will either seem natural and better than millibitcoin/microbitcoin after a few tries, or not. Software and services will follow what people adopt.
There's no need for big up-front consensus or 'official' decision... this is an anarchic distributed project, stuff happens & thrives or withers via the sum over time of many individual decisions, and through slow-moving shared language/culture.
