Bitcoin's 21million total coin supply hinders it immensely

[Brangdon]

simply put, on a rarity scale compared to gold. 1 bitcoin is the equivalent to roughly £200k/$300k (rounded numbers so don't knit-pick)
[...]
which makes it harder to transmit under 20p (30c).

Doesn't that valuation mean 1 satoshi is worth £2*10^5 / 1*10^8 = £2*10^-3, or £0.002 or 0.2p ? I think you missed a factor of 100.

so i agree "Bitcoin's 21million total coin supply hinders it immensely"

If it becomes a problem, a soft-fork can add more precision. (There are 12 spare bits due to the 21 million BTC limit being smaller than what will fit in a 64-bit integer, and we can add more bits if we have to.)

when £1 ($1.50) is worth 5sat due to being as widely or more accepted than gold, we would be talking about decades not weeks. and at that time 1 loaf of bread, 2 litres of milk will cost in fiat terms over £$10 due to government fit printing (inflation), making under 20p/30c fiat amounts useless where nothing can be bought that cheap.

Inflation of fiat is irrelevant here. If a loaf of bread cost 2 satoshi, that would be a problem for Bitcoin even if 2 satoshi happened to be £500.

[Manfred Macx]

It seems to me that this discussion is similar to the official one where it was proposed that micro-BTC be the default unit https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3862

[madmadmax]

No matter the total supply every Bitcoin will always inevitable be worth more than 1USD, only an American would be egocentric enough to expect 1USD=1BTC (because BTC is only in the U.S. right?)

[molecular]

the obvious solution is bytecoin.  worth 8 times as much  

WordCoin!

or jump right ahead to QuadCoin!

[Bitcoin Magazine]

the solution is putting x number of satoshis into a wallet, and encrypting the Private Key in a CAST-5 hash where Px is the xth prime number

[SlipperySlope]

Fear.

Yet another sign we are near the bottom of this bubble collapse cycle. As for me, I am going to stuff some more fiat bills into my local Robocoin ATM today.

[Dimelord]

Fear.

Yet another sign we are near the bottom of this bubble collapse cycle. As for me, I am going to stuff some more fiat bills into my local Robocoin ATM today.

Lucky 

[RodeoX]

This why gold never caught on. There is only something like 150,000 tons of gold. So only 150,000 people can use gold. No wonder it's worthless.

[Wilikon]

Problem is exactly what you said..mainstream society, which is Most of Society is turned off by all these "microbits" and "satoshi", it's too irregular. I have friends who don't care about Bitcoin but know the basics about it, wanna know why they dont care? Because bitcoin is offputting with all it's math, and the 21million total limit makes it seem as if the currency itself wasn't designed to be thought of seriously.

The math isn't that complicated.  Sounds like the problem is with the public education system, not Bitcoin.  Instead of dumbing down Bitcoin, perhaps the sheeple need to wisen up.

Well said. Here is the proof
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/31/wave-retirements-hitting-hoover-dam-workforce-as-government-scrambles-to-fill/

[Wilikon]

The topic has never, ever been discussed before, congrats OP.
Some people will think mBit is a solution.
Others are happy with earning 0.0005 BTC

This "problem" gives hope and purpose to at least a few alt coins which will thrive in the future.

How do you call a fraction of a dogecoin? A puppycoin?

[serenitys]

What is a satoshi "worth" or how much of the whole is it - how does that work?

Don't throw shit, this is confusing and new  

I think you're American so right now you are used to the common names of some denominations of US coinage - cent, nickel, dime, quarter. You know that they go:

• cent - one hundredth of a dollar
• nickel - five hundredths of a dollar
• dime - ten hundredths (tenth) of a dollar
• quarter - twenty five hundredths of a dollar

This is so obvious to you that you probably never even really think about it that way.

Similarly there are one thousand millibits (mBTC) in a BTC, or one million microbits (uBTC). The absolute smallest amount of bitcoin that can be represented in the protocol right now is called a satoshi and it is BTC0.00000001.

A mBTC is always going to be one thousandth of a BTC in the same way that a ¢ is always going to be one hundredth of a $.

So whatever value one BTC has, a mBTC always has one thousandth of that value. For example, BTC1 is currently worth about $422 so mBTC1 is currently worth about $0.42.

The only reason why this seems hard is because you aren't familiar with it.

I believe that once the price of Bitcoin levels out in relation to common fiat currencies then we will settle on working in one denomination, whether that be the whole bitcoin, millibitcoin or microbitcoin.

The extra digits will be there but at the level chosen they will be so small as to not really be worth considering, like when you do a currency conversion to US dollar and end up with something like $123.527548262 - The $123.52 is the interesting part.

Thanks - and  You're right, American...

So provided I did comprehend the above like I thought I just did - it would go up in value but not denomination, like 25c is 25c even when the value of the dollar rises and falls. I get that much but I wasn't sure that this principle applied to the virtual currency or bitcoin per se.

Is there a calculator that makes it easier to make the exchanges with? I know the exchange site I went to calculated it but it was coinbase and the way that was set up was it wanted me to enter a btc amount and then it calculated it to usd amount for what I'd pay.

Is there one that does the opposite first - I can put in $10 or my own amount and it tells me the btc number and I can enter that in the coinbase?

While here, do yall recommend coinbase for a first purchase or is there one that's better to start with? I'm ready to do it but still need to bone up on the process part and the keys, where to do all that stuff.

Thanks again

[marcus_of_augustus]

Bitcoin is probably not meant to be used by the innumerate.

These days if you can count makes you one of the "elite".

[tvbcof]

Bitcoin is probably not meant to be used by the innumerate.

These days if you can count makes you one of the "elite".

Ah, come on...That's overstating it a bit.  Being able to do long division with a paper and pencil however...

(One might detect that I am an aging USian...)

[FalconFly]

IMHO the only major problem that would eventually arrive would be lost coins.

In all other types of currency, there's a rough track record of i.e cash in various denominations still "alive" and there's no limit for resupplying them when needed.

With Bitcoin, we only know the total number of actual (still accessible) coins can't reach 21 Million anymore due to all the coins already lost (how high that number may be, nobody knows for sure).

Since Bitcoins can "vanish" or become inaccessible for various reasons of the digital world (forgotten/non-recoverable passwords, lost paper wallets, hardware failure etc.), over time it will just keep shrinking in numbers.
I assume the most coins got lost already in the early days (i.e. people mined a relatively large number of coins but forgot about them due to low valuation and "no action" at that time or just lost them / no backup etc...)

[leopard2]

Bitcoin has a 21 total of 21million coins that could ever be produced.

That's 2,100,000,000,000,000 Satoshis (BTC0.00000001).
This is a non-issue.

It is a major issue to morons who flunked math class.  All others don't seem to struggle with this nonissue.

Majority of people are morons

We need to make their life easy so they swap their fiat for bitcoins

Definitely, a 1:100 or 1:1000 split would help a lot

[bountygiver]

Bitcoin has a 21 total of 21million coins that could ever be produced.

That's 2,100,000,000,000,000 Satoshis (BTC0.00000001).
This is a non-issue.

It is a major issue to morons who flunked math class.  All others don't seem to struggle with this nonissue.

Majority of people are morons

We need to make their life easy so they swap their fiat for bitcoins

Definitely, a 1:100 or 1:1000 split would help a lot

:/ and the morons are where the money's at (See mobile in app purchases)
Maybe we should just explain that there are how many satoshis will be created when explaining to them.

[solomon]

This argument always gets derailed by people who, ironically, don't understand that it has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with human psychology and spending habits.

[zolace]

IT wont hinder it as long as we have exchanges for bitcoin, since you can trade it for other coins that will become vauable as bitcoin.   

[btcpay86]

Bitcoin has a 21 total of 21million coins that could ever be produced.

That's 2,100,000,000,000,000 Satoshis (BTC0.00000001).

so, if the uBTC as a unit,  1 Satoshi = 0.01 uBTC, I think it is fit for financially. so, we suggest Bitcoin may change its unit to uBTC.

[herebittybittybitty]

"Bitcoin is doomed because people are too dumb for decimals."