New Nocoiner narrative, "Bitcoin is not scarce".

[arcmetal]

I just noticed that she is confusing two terms.

She thinks that "scarcity" is liquidity (or rather non-liquidity).

In her comments if you replace every mention of "scarcity" with "non-liquidity", then it can sort of makes sense.

The rest is just bat-shit crazy.

[figmentofmyass]

My initial thought is that she is an idiot who doesn't understand math.  I think in reality, she is carrying water for the fiat loving, anti-freedom political class who sees bitcoin eating away at her power.

she literally wrote a book advocating for QE and helicopter money.



her message is calculated---and it is not intended for people like us.

she's intent on whipping crypto twitter users into a frenzy and ridiculing them publicly, not having an honest conversation about bitcoin in relation to modern monetary policies.

[magneto]

WTF?

Why does it matter how many decimal places there are with BTC? How does that affect the immutable fact that bitcoin issuance will never exceed 21 million?

Is she saying that since gold can be subdivided down to individual atoms, it is not scarce?

Please. This is elementary maths. She's embarrassing herself.

[Smartprofit]

Because according to her, Bitcoin's divisbility up to 8 decimal places will make Bitcoin "not scarce". We have also seen trolls in the forum say it. Tell these trolls that a whole pizza, divided to 8 slices of that same pizza, then further divided to 16 slices, is still that same whole pizza.

This is a very strange statement. 

The number of bitcoins is capped at 21,000,000 (in fact, there are even fewer bitcoins in circulation).  If my friend has 10 bitcoins and I only have 10 satoshi, this is no reason for me to say that bitcoin is not a scarce asset.  Although, of course, any amount of satoshi I have is better than nothing. 

Perhaps someone was poorly taught math at school.  Most importantly, such misinformation is sometimes published in reputable media outlets (read by a large number of people).

[Wind_FURY]

My initial thought is that she is an idiot who doesn't understand math.  I think in reality, she is carrying water for the fiat loving, anti-freedom political class who sees bitcoin eating away at her power.

she literally wrote a book advocating for QE and helicopter money.



her message is calculated---and it is not intended for people like us.

She probably agrees with the ideas of Keynesian Economics. No harm there, I would respect her views to be fair.

she's intent on whipping crypto twitter users into a frenzy and ridiculing them publicly, not having an honest conversation about bitcoin in relation to modern monetary policies.

BUT running a narrative based on false premises? I believe she deserves the jeer and mockery. I believe it's fair. Did she actually believe everyone would take it without derision?

[dothebeats]

I do get her point, though she must realize that there are enforcement criteria across the whole network that must be followed before such implementations come live. This isn’t your centralized network wherein most decisions are passed without the community being consulted, so these ridiculous ideas won’t get passed unless and until the community accepts it. Also, 21 million remains 21 million in the end, it’ll just get more divisible. The limit as to how much you can divide bitcoins would be defined by the specifications of the network.

[figmentofmyass]

she's intent on whipping crypto twitter users into a frenzy and ridiculing them publicly, not having an honest conversation about bitcoin in relation to modern monetary policies.

BUT running a narrative based on false premises? I believe she deserves the jeer and mockery. I believe it's fair. Did she actually believe everyone would take it without derision?

bitcoiners think they're publicly mocking her, but in reality she controls the narrative. she is the influencer with a captive audience of nocoiners, projecting the idea that we are totally irrational.

a bunch of rabid bitcoiners yelling on twitter does not help our case---she is very good at twisting things into a narrative where bitcoin investors are not only an irrational cult, but straight up detestable people too.









......not that i think any of this matters per se in the long run, but the people getting all worked up on twitter are playing right into her hand. this type of antagonization does not put bitcoin into a positive light.

i just wish people would take a more orderly, academic approach to debunking bad arguments than raging out on twitter and yelling things like "have fun being poor!" at her.

[thecodebear]

I don't know who that lady is, but the "bitcoin is not scarce" lie is not a new narrative, it's been around for quite a while being pushed by people who don't understand the most basic things about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Usually it is in the form "there are constantly new cryptocurrencies being created so Bitcoin isn't scarce" idiocy. But this, "subdivision makes Bitcoin not scarce" thing is just as stupid and shows a complete lack of logic or ability to reason with quantities.


If she was right about this, then I could bake a pizza, then cut it up into 8 pieces, and magically have 8 full sized pizzas! It's a basic lack of understanding of how quantities work.

There are many people who come up with incredibly stupid ideas that adhere to no logic, simply so they can "back up" some point of view they have about something. This is clearly an instance of that.

[Khaos77]

It is an absolute shame the majority of the populace can't grasp bitcoin is inflated to the right of the decimal instead of the left.
Bitcoin at the 8th decimal (satoshi) currently the smallest allowed by bitcoin source code, but changeable at programmer discretion
1.00000000 bitcoin = 100000000 units of bitcoin can be sold  
This means your so called limited 21 million bitcoin is really
2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin , which is not a scarce # in any way

At any time they can claim 8 places to the right is not enough , and move to more places to the right , and clueless bitcoiners, will say it makes no difference as the 21 million limit to left has not changed, and that is where they make fools of you.
But it does make a difference as it artificially increases the number of bitcoin units that can be sold.
So moving to a 12th place, inflates the bitcoin supply even further from 2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin
to 21 Quintillion sell-able units of bitcoin
If you can't recognize that is an insanely high increase in supply, please call your grade school math teachers and let them know they failed you, because you are a hopeless math challenged moron. (like Stupid_Fury)  

In the virtual world you can do the above nonsense, as you lose nothing by more division,
all a unit of bitcoin can do is be transferred between addresses, that is it, division has no effect on that.
In the Physical world, dividing a pizza by even as little as 1000X makes it worth nothing, as you probably can't even taste it at such a small size, and it definitely won't have enough calories to make any difference for you .
Physical verses Virtual world rules, Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

[maye5104]

This point of view is so strange and illogical. Bitcoin is always compared to gold. Technically gold can be divided into atoms, does this mean that gold isn't scarce too?

[thecodebear]

It is an absolute shame the majority of the populace can't grasp bitcoin is inflated to the right of the decimal instead of the left.
Bitcoin at the 8th decimal (satoshi) currently the smallest allowed by bitcoin source code, but changeable at programmer discretion
1.00000000 bitcoin = 100000000 units of bitcoin can be sold  
This means your so called limited 21 million bitcoin is really
2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin , which is not a scarce # in any way

At any time they can claim 8 places to the right is not enough , and move to more places to the right , and clueless bitcoiners, will say it makes no difference as the 21 million limit to left has not changed, and that is where they make fools of you.
But it does make a difference as it artificially increases the number of bitcoin units that can be sold.
So moving to a 12th place, inflates the bitcoin supply even further from 2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin
to 21 Quintillion sell-able units of bitcoin
If you can't recognize that is an insanely high increase in supply, please call your grade school math teachers and let them know they failed you, because you are a hopeless math challenged moron. (like Stupid_Fury)  

In the virtual world you can do the above nonsense, as you lose nothing by more division,
all a unit of bitcoin can do is be transferred between addresses, that is it, division has no effect on that.
In the Physical world, dividing a pizza by even as little as 1000X makes it worth nothing, as you probably can't even taste it at such a small size, and it definitely won't have enough calories to make any difference for you .
Physical verses Virtual world rules, Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

I really hope this is just superb trolling and sarcasm haha. I mean, if you are being serious, you're just saying you fundamentally don't understand how numbers work at an extremely basic level. With your logic you are saying 1 = .1 = .01 = .001 = .0001 = .00001 etc.

If I have one pizza and cut it in 8 pieces. Then I have another same sized pizza and cut it in 80 pieces...according to your logic the second pizza has magically become 10 times larger than the first pizza.

You seem to base your argument on some idea that numbers behave fundamentally differently when you are talking about digital quantities as compared to physical quantities. This is of course not the case because numbers follow the same mathematics no matter what representation you apply to them (1 dog + 1 dog is 2 dogs just like 1 book + 1 book is 2 books, the numbers are what affect the outcome, not the thing they represent which is just a label). 1 Pizza cut into 8 pieces is not 8 times as much pizza as 1 pizza uncut. 100 cents sitting digitally in a bank account is not 100 times as much as one dollar sitting digitally in a bank account, they're both equal to 1 dollar. 100 million satoshis is not equal to 100 million bitcoin, it's equal to 1 bitcoin. If you added another decimal place to to make 1 billion units within a bitcoin it would still be equal to one bitcoin, it would just be divisible into smaller pieces. You seem to not understand what the definition of a fraction is. Fractions =/= whole numbers. Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

[Walterhank]

I have been hearing a lot about bitcoin scarcity and people have indicated that it is due to Institutional investments leaving only 30% for the rest of the investors. So, what's your take on this?

[Wind_FURY]

It is an absolute shame the majority of the populace can't grasp bitcoin is inflated to the right of the decimal instead of the left.
Bitcoin at the 8th decimal (satoshi) currently the smallest allowed by bitcoin source code, but changeable at programmer discretion
1.00000000 bitcoin = 100000000 units of bitcoin can be sold  
This means your so called limited 21 million bitcoin is really
2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin , which is not a scarce # in any way

BUT how much do people actually OWN? Quadrillions of sell-able units are HODLed, and the protocol will not "print" more. Supply is limited, quadrillions of the supply are HODLed, and therefore SCARCE.

[pawanjain]

Did she ever write this "article"? I'm curious to see what technobabble she is going to throw in to justify this claim that makes no sense mathematically or logically.

Not to mention that she is basically changing the definition of "scarce" and with that logical nothing exists in the world that is scarce because everything can be divided to smaller units. For example we can split gold into grams, micro gram, nano gram, pico gram, molecules, atoms, sub atomic particles, sub sub atomic particles,... so it also isn't scarce!!!
One wonders what this logic does to fiat that is already inflationary and keeps being printed while also being divisible to smaller units!

 
Man, your posts are always amusing. I love reading your posts.

Also, one more point here is that the amount of transaction fees required for a transaction would definitely end up showing the real value of a whole bitcoin and it's units.
Consider a transaction of one whole bitcoin with transactions fees of lets say 1000 satoshis. Not a big deal right.
But what if these people use the same logic and divide the bitcoin. Let's say they are making a transaction of 0.0001 BTC.
They would still have to pay 1000 satoshis as the fees assuming the network congestion is same on both scenarios.
Don't start with the lightning network here. It's just an example on main chain.

Talking about scarcity. LOL  

[arcmetal]

It is an absolute shame the majority of the populace can't grasp bitcoin is inflated to the right of the decimal instead of the left.
Bitcoin at the 8th decimal (satoshi) currently the smallest allowed by bitcoin source code, but changeable at programmer discretion
1.00000000 bitcoin = 100000000 units of bitcoin can be sold  
This means your so called limited 21 million bitcoin is really
2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin , which is not a scarce # in any way

At any time they can claim 8 places to the right is not enough , and move to more places to the right , and clueless bitcoiners, will say it makes no difference as the 21 million limit to left has not changed, and that is where they make fools of you.
But it does make a difference as it artificially increases the number of bitcoin units that can be sold.
So moving to a 12th place, inflates the bitcoin supply even further from 2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin
to 21 Quintillion sell-able units of bitcoin
If you can't recognize that is an insanely high increase in supply, please call your grade school math teachers and let them know they failed you, because you are a hopeless math challenged moron. (like Stupid_Fury)  

In the virtual world you can do the above nonsense, as you lose nothing by more division,
all a unit of bitcoin can do is be transferred between addresses, that is it, division has no effect on that.
In the Physical world, dividing a pizza by even as little as 1000X makes it worth nothing, as you probably can't even taste it at such a small size, and it definitely won't have enough calories to make any difference for you .
Physical verses Virtual world rules, Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

I really hope this is just superb trolling and sarcasm haha. I mean, if you are being serious, you're just saying you fundamentally don't understand how numbers work at an extremely basic level. With your logic you are saying 1 = .1 = .01 = .001 = .0001 = .00001 etc.

If I have one pizza and cut it in 8 pieces. Then I have another same sized pizza and cut it in 80 pieces...according to your logic the second pizza has magically become 10 times larger than the first pizza.

You seem to base your argument on some idea that numbers behave fundamentally differently when you are talking about digital quantities as compared to physical quantities. This is of course not the case because numbers follow the same mathematics no matter what representation you apply to them (1 dog + 1 dog is 2 dogs just like 1 book + 1 book is 2 books, the numbers are what affect the outcome, not the thing they represent which is just a label). 1 Pizza cut into 8 pieces is not 8 times as much pizza as 1 pizza uncut. 100 cents sitting digitally in a bank account is not 100 times as much as one dollar sitting digitally in a bank account, they're both equal to 1 dollar. 100 million satoshis is not equal to 100 million bitcoin, it's equal to 1 bitcoin. If you added another decimal place to to make 1 billion units within a bitcoin it would still be equal to one bitcoin, it would just be divisible into smaller pieces. You seem to not understand what the definition of a fraction is. Fractions =/= whole numbers. Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

lol.  I also found Khaos77's post as rather funny.  It's got to be someone testing a joke of some kind.  Maybe he's a comedy writer.

Or, it could be that he has failed to see that this forum "bitcointalk.org" is filled, or at least in the beginning, was filled with mostly coders.  And they tend to have some basic skills in math, since it's needed to model the algorithms and math problems that fill the pages of code.  There really isn't any chance any of us coders will fall for such flawed logic.  Any Turing machine would crash given Khaos77's logic. 

I'd suggest he try the joke in some other forum, although it may be tough to find one with such a naive inkling.

[franky1]

WTF?

Why does it matter how many decimal places there are with BTC? How does that affect the immutable fact that bitcoin issuance will never exceed 21 million?

Is she saying that since gold can be subdivided down to individual atoms, it is not scarce?

Please. This is elementary maths. She's embarrassing herself.

in code. things are measured in satoshi's
yep look at a raw transaction and look at the values being moved. they are not being moved in decimals of bitcoin. but being moved in satoshis

the basket term known as a btc is of no more importance as the basket term of ubtc
raw tx data does not understand btc or ubtc or mbtc.
it only understands the smallest unit of measure. that has been branded satoshi

there is nothing stopping anyone branding 1000000000000 sats as a 'superbitcoin'(10kbitcoin) right this second. because it does not involve any hard code changes. its just human gui interface and human mind buzzword. same as btc mbtc and ubtc is

there is code that say that a block reward started at 5000000000 sat and that reward is halved every 210,000 blocks. where if you do the maths it roughly works out that when the reward cant be halved anymore there will be  2099999997690000 satoshi's released over 120~ years(34 block reward halvings)

whether you measure satoshis in baskets of ubtc, mbtc or btc. means nothing for the code.
the basket terms are just human buzzwords for easy math of understanding that 100m of the smallest measure is a basket called a btc. and there will eventually be ~2.1quad units of measure or 21m basket measures of btc

increasing the unit of measure at code. and then having to re calculate new basket amounts of 1000x more units of measure per basket. defeats the whole scarcity argument.

yep having 'coin' translate to 100,000,000,000 units and then having to do silly new rules for new bech32 tx format transactions to understand units of measure(shares) of things 1000 more quantity of sharable units. and further mushy math game play to round up/down when trying to pay legacy tx types will cause more shareable units. and alot more cludgy code

again. to save me multi posting the ignorant people that dont get it.
bitcoin code does not use decimals.(what your imagining is the graphic user interface. not the hard code consensus)
if you cant grasp units of measure at code level. and the real hard limits at code.. and cant grasp share-ability. then you cannot even understand scarcity

bitcoin code does not work top down from btc to decimals
it works from satoshis up to basket buzzwords like ubtc mbtc btc

heck even a few devs wanted to rearrange the baskets to 'tonal' terms. and a couple devs stil do think of value measures in tonal basket terms.

i personally been using 'bits'(ubtc) for a few years now.

i appreciate that for 12 years bitcoin(currency) has had hard rules that have fixed the approx end limit to be 2.1quadrillian sharable units. i appreciate for 12 years that a basket of btc was hard limited to 100000000 of those units of measure.

i appreciate the scarcity of 2.1quadrillian units of measure. but this topic is used as a jumping platform for certain people to try and stroke the sheep into thinking adding 1000x more sharable units wont break the rules
but seems some greyscale fangirls want to fool people into thinking that more sharable units is ok

[TedMosby]

...
Because according to her, Bitcoin's divisbility up to 8 decimal places will make Bitcoin "not scarce". We have also seen trolls in the forum say it. Tell these trolls that a whole pizza, divided to 8 slices of that same pizza, then further divided to 16 slices, is still that same whole pizza.

then you take the mozzarella cheese/pineapple/tomato from that pizza, and they still called it a pizza.
I have a question, what will happen when 0.00000001 BTC becomes very expensive that all people can't afford to buy the smallest unit of BTC.

[Khaos77]

It is an absolute shame the majority of the populace can't grasp bitcoin is inflated to the right of the decimal instead of the left.
Bitcoin at the 8th decimal (satoshi) currently the smallest allowed by bitcoin source code, but changeable at programmer discretion
1.00000000 bitcoin = 100000000 units of bitcoin can be sold  
This means your so called limited 21 million bitcoin is really
2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin , which is not a scarce # in any way

At any time they can claim 8 places to the right is not enough , and move to more places to the right , and clueless bitcoiners, will say it makes no difference as the 21 million limit to left has not changed, and that is where they make fools of you.
But it does make a difference as it artificially increases the number of bitcoin units that can be sold.
So moving to a 12th place, inflates the bitcoin supply even further from 2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin
to 21 Quintillion sell-able units of bitcoin
If you can't recognize that is an insanely high increase in supply, please call your grade school math teachers and let them know they failed you, because you are a hopeless math challenged moron. (like Stupid_Fury)  

In the virtual world you can do the above nonsense, as you lose nothing by more division,
all a unit of bitcoin can do is be transferred between addresses, that is it, division has no effect on that.
In the Physical world, dividing a pizza by even as little as 1000X makes it worth nothing, as you probably can't even taste it at such a small size, and it definitely won't have enough calories to make any difference for you .
Physical verses Virtual world rules, Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

I really hope this is just superb trolling and sarcasm haha. I mean, if you are being serious, you're just saying you fundamentally don't understand how numbers work at an extremely basic level. With your logic you are saying 1 = .1 = .01 = .001 = .0001 = .00001 etc.

If I have one pizza and cut it in 8 pieces. Then I have another same sized pizza and cut it in 80 pieces...according to your logic the second pizza has magically become 10 times larger than the first pizza.

You seem to base your argument on some idea that numbers behave fundamentally differently when you are talking about digital quantities as compared to physical quantities. This is of course not the case because numbers follow the same mathematics no matter what representation you apply to them (1 dog + 1 dog is 2 dogs just like 1 book + 1 book is 2 books, the numbers are what affect the outcome, not the thing they represent which is just a label). 1 Pizza cut into 8 pieces is not 8 times as much pizza as 1 pizza uncut. 100 cents sitting digitally in a bank account is not 100 times as much as one dollar sitting digitally in a bank account, they're both equal to 1 dollar. 100 million satoshis is not equal to 100 million bitcoin, it's equal to 1 bitcoin. If you added another decimal place to to make 1 billion units within a bitcoin it would still be equal to one bitcoin, it would just be divisible into smaller pieces. You seem to not understand what the definition of a fraction is. Fractions =/= whole numbers. Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

lol.  I also found Khaos77's post as rather funny.  It's got to be someone testing a joke of some kind.  Maybe he's a comedy writer.

Or, it could be that he has failed to see that this forum "bitcointalk.org" is filled, or at least in the beginning, was filled with mostly coders.  And they tend to have some basic skills in math, since it's needed to model the algorithms and math problems that fill the pages of code.  There really isn't any chance any of us coders will fall for such flawed logic.  Any Turing machine would crash given Khaos77's logic. 

I'd suggest he try the joke in some other forum, although it may be tough to find one with such a naive inkling.

@arcmetal  & @thecodebear

What is left to say , logic was placed right in front of you both and your stupidity blinds you to it.
Enjoy your false bitcoin religion nonsense as your Low IQs prove you are suited for it. 

[thecodebear]

It is an absolute shame the majority of the populace can't grasp bitcoin is inflated to the right of the decimal instead of the left.
Bitcoin at the 8th decimal (satoshi) currently the smallest allowed by bitcoin source code, but changeable at programmer discretion
1.00000000 bitcoin = 100000000 units of bitcoin can be sold  
This means your so called limited 21 million bitcoin is really
2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin , which is not a scarce # in any way

At any time they can claim 8 places to the right is not enough , and move to more places to the right , and clueless bitcoiners, will say it makes no difference as the 21 million limit to left has not changed, and that is where they make fools of you.
But it does make a difference as it artificially increases the number of bitcoin units that can be sold.
So moving to a 12th place, inflates the bitcoin supply even further from 2.1 quadrillion sell-able units of bitcoin
to 21 Quintillion sell-able units of bitcoin
If you can't recognize that is an insanely high increase in supply, please call your grade school math teachers and let them know they failed you, because you are a hopeless math challenged moron. (like Stupid_Fury)  

In the virtual world you can do the above nonsense, as you lose nothing by more division,
all a unit of bitcoin can do is be transferred between addresses, that is it, division has no effect on that.
In the Physical world, dividing a pizza by even as little as 1000X makes it worth nothing, as you probably can't even taste it at such a small size, and it definitely won't have enough calories to make any difference for you .
Physical verses Virtual world rules, Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

I really hope this is just superb trolling and sarcasm haha. I mean, if you are being serious, you're just saying you fundamentally don't understand how numbers work at an extremely basic level. With your logic you are saying 1 = .1 = .01 = .001 = .0001 = .00001 etc.

If I have one pizza and cut it in 8 pieces. Then I have another same sized pizza and cut it in 80 pieces...according to your logic the second pizza has magically become 10 times larger than the first pizza.

You seem to base your argument on some idea that numbers behave fundamentally differently when you are talking about digital quantities as compared to physical quantities. This is of course not the case because numbers follow the same mathematics no matter what representation you apply to them (1 dog + 1 dog is 2 dogs just like 1 book + 1 book is 2 books, the numbers are what affect the outcome, not the thing they represent which is just a label). 1 Pizza cut into 8 pieces is not 8 times as much pizza as 1 pizza uncut. 100 cents sitting digitally in a bank account is not 100 times as much as one dollar sitting digitally in a bank account, they're both equal to 1 dollar. 100 million satoshis is not equal to 100 million bitcoin, it's equal to 1 bitcoin. If you added another decimal place to to make 1 billion units within a bitcoin it would still be equal to one bitcoin, it would just be divisible into smaller pieces. You seem to not understand what the definition of a fraction is. Fractions =/= whole numbers. Learn the difference so you can understand simple truths.

lol.  I also found Khaos77's post as rather funny.  It's got to be someone testing a joke of some kind.  Maybe he's a comedy writer.

Or, it could be that he has failed to see that this forum "bitcointalk.org" is filled, or at least in the beginning, was filled with mostly coders.  And they tend to have some basic skills in math, since it's needed to model the algorithms and math problems that fill the pages of code.  There really isn't any chance any of us coders will fall for such flawed logic.  Any Turing machine would crash given Khaos77's logic. 

I'd suggest he try the joke in some other forum, although it may be tough to find one with such a naive inkling.

@arcmetal  & @thecodebear

What is left to say , logic was placed right in front of you both and your stupidity blinds you to it.
Enjoy your false bitcoin religion nonsense as your Low IQs prove you are suited for it. 

He's gotta be a troll. Nobody can be that stupid. So, good job trolling Khaos77 haha, you had us going for a bit! Had me thinking you didn't understand the most basic things about numbers haha.

[arcmetal]

...
Because according to her, Bitcoin's divisbility up to 8 decimal places will make Bitcoin "not scarce". We have also seen trolls in the forum say it. Tell these trolls that a whole pizza, divided to 8 slices of that same pizza, then further divided to 16 slices, is still that same whole pizza.

then you take the mozzarella cheese/pineapple/tomato from that pizza, and they still called it a pizza.
I have a question, what will happen when 0.00000001 BTC becomes very expensive that all people can't afford to buy the smallest unit of BTC.

This was answered long ago, but I can answer it here.

So, what happens if people can't afford a satoshi ? Then the code can be modified to add more decimal places.  That is, the smallest unit then, instead of 8 decimal places, would become 10, 12, decimal places, and so on.  The code allows for this.

And the general consensus of those running bitcoin (at least those that can understand the simple change, which is the majority anyways) will all accept such a change, since it doesn't devalue the coin.  In other words, this would be a trivial change, and of unimportant consequence.  When that happens, hardly anyone using bitcoin will notice.

Even with a satoshi becoming a penny, that would mean 0.000001 btc is one dollar, and one btc is $1,000,000.  This is still a long ways off.  And a long ways off before we'd have to worry about a satoshi becoming a dollar, or $10, or unaffordable.  But the issue would be forced since we'd need to allow for micro transactions.