Bitcoin Forum
March 29, 2024, 02:27:18 PM *
News: Latest Bitcoin Core release: 26.0 [Torrent]
 
   Home   Help Search Login Register More  
Poll
Question: Should "bits" become the standard for merchant pricing, wallets and general usage.
Bitcoin best as the common unit. 0.001234 is ok - 108 (14.1%)
milliBitcoins (thousandths) are best - 90 (11.7%)
Bits (millionths) are best - 570 (74.2%)
Total Voters: 768

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 [22] 23 24 25 26 27 »
  Print  
Author Topic: 1,000,000 bits = 1 bitcoin. Future-proofing Bitcoin for common usage? VOTE  (Read 57121 times)
logger
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 138
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 10:49:36 AM
 #421

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

Think of convenience... Any time a cashier or whoever tells you hoe much u owe, the would have to say a decimal number which can be awkward for those involved prikarily outside the sciences... In casual conversation, speaking of decimals seems awkward.
Every time a block is mined, a certain amount of BTC (called the subsidy) is created out of thin air and given to the miner. The subsidy halves every four years and will reach 0 in about 130 years.
Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction.
1711722438
Hero Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1711722438

View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Ignore
1711722438
Reply with quote  #2

1711722438
Report to moderator
logger
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 138
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 10:51:00 AM
 #422

Because the psychology of numbers influences the perceived value of said good. It's perfectly fine to criticize the word "bits", but I fear those critics are missing the point of this debate: we need to price goods as whole numbers, regardless of the naming convention.

In most crafts the laymen speak in terms of units such that the number is on an order of magnitude which moat people have intuition with (from my experience). It sorta awkward like forcing a chemist expressing small to express how much a small sample weighs in metric tons. While an interesting mind experience most currently involved with btc have done, it can be a little difficult and painful for casual use.
NotAtOld
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 200
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 11:04:58 AM
 #423

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

No one who's arguing against bits is against whole numbers, but just for using the already existing, logical connotations: mBTC and uBTC. And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.
teukon
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1246
Merit: 1002



View Profile
June 23, 2014, 11:17:04 AM
 #424

Because the psychology of numbers influences the perceived value of said good. It's perfectly fine to criticize the word "bits", but I fear those critics are missing the point of this debate: we need to price goods as whole numbers, regardless of the naming convention.

You have it backwards.  A study of the comments in this thread will reveal that a good number of the critics are distinguishing the term "bits" from the notion of switching to a different unit to avoid unintuitive decimal prices, and indeed generally support the latter.  However, the vast majority of pro-"bits" posts conflate these two ideas.  Here are some recent examples:

+1 for bits.
Using bitcoin is weird for small transactions like 0.00327

This is an excellent idea. It is a lot easier to wrap your brain around buying 1000 bits instead of a row of zeros following a decimal point.

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

As you can see, each poster supports "bits" because they dislike fractional prices.  They completely fail to see that the dichotomy is false.
illymoka
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 133
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 11:22:12 AM
 #425

And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

No, I do feel like telling you about people that don't get SI prefixes -- college freshman in general chemistry, in fact. I recall giving out a quiz last semester in which one of the answers had to be expressed in gigajoules. Only about a third of the class knew the conversion from joules. And this was the honors class!
illymoka
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 133
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 11:23:45 AM
 #426

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

No one who's arguing against bits is against whole numbers, but just for using the already existing, logical connotations: mBTC and uBTC. And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

This is why I firmly advocate the usage of millibitcoin and microbitcoin over this silly business of "bits". We need to encourage scientific literacy, not subvert it.
BurtW
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 2646
Merit: 1129

All paid signature campaigns should be banned.


View Profile WWW
June 23, 2014, 11:26:01 AM
 #427

And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

No, I do feel like telling you about people that don't get SI prefixes -- college freshman in general chemistry, in fact. I recall giving out a quiz last semester in which one of the answers had to be expressed in gigajoules. Only about a third of the class knew the conversion from joules. And this was the honors class!

Sad.

Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security.  Read all about it here:  http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/  Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
DooMAD
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 3738
Merit: 3081


Leave no FUD unchallenged


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 11:33:55 AM
 #428

Because the psychology of numbers influences the perceived value of said good. It's perfectly fine to criticize the word "bits", but I fear those critics are missing the point of this debate: we need to price goods as whole numbers, regardless of the naming convention.

You have it backwards.  A study of the comments in this thread will reveal that a good number of the critics are distinguishing the term "bits" from the notion of switching to a different unit to avoid unintuitive decimal prices, and indeed generally support the latter.  However, the vast majority of pro-"bits" posts conflate these two ideas.  Here are some recent examples:

+1 for bits.
Using bitcoin is weird for small transactions like 0.00327

This is an excellent idea. It is a lot easier to wrap your brain around buying 1000 bits instead of a row of zeros following a decimal point.

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

As you can see, each poster supports "bits" because they dislike fractional prices.  They completely fail to see that the dichotomy is false.


I love how the assumption is always that people who like the sounds of bits simply aren't clever enough to understand what you're saying.  It couldn't possibly be true that they just like the sound of bits and you're still a little disappointed that your preference didn't win, so it makes your ego feel a little less bruised if you work under the assumption that everyone else is stupid. 

Cry me a river and such.

..JAMBLER.io..Create Your Bitcoin Mixing
Business Now for   F R E E 
▄█████████████████████████████
█████████████████████████
████▀████████████████████
███▀█████▄█▀███▀▀▀██████
██▀█████▄█▄██████████████
██▄▄████▀▄▄▄▀▀▀▀▀▄▄██████
█████▄▄▄██████████▀▄████
█████▀▄█▄██████▀█▄█████
███████▀▄█▀█▄██▀█▄███████
█████████▄█▀▄█▀▄█████████
█████████████████████████
█████████████████████████
▀█████████████████████████████
█████████████████████████████████████████████████
.
      OUR      
PARTNERS

.
█████████████████████████████████████████████████
████▄
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
████▀
▄█████████████████████████████
████████▀▀█████▀▀████████
█████▀█████████████▀█████
████████████████████████
███████████████▄█████████
█████████████████████████
█████████████████████████
█████████████████████████
███████████████▀█████████
████████████████████████
█████▄█████████████▄█████
████████▄▄█████▄▄████████
▀█████████████████████████████
█████████████████████████████████████████████████
.
   INVEST   
BITCOIN

.
█████████████████████████████████████████████████
████▄
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
██
████▀
PalmerLaura
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 116
Merit: 10

IPSX: Distributed Network Layer


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 11:51:52 AM
 #429

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

No one who's arguing against bits is against whole numbers, but just for using the already existing, logical connotations: mBTC and uBTC. And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

College chemistry freshmen didn't know the prefix giga? I'm starting to think that all this bitcoin and innovation stuff is moot, as we are clearly stumbling into the future from Idiocracy!

BurtW
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 2646
Merit: 1129

All paid signature campaigns should be banned.


View Profile WWW
June 23, 2014, 11:58:01 AM
 #430

As you can see, each poster supports "bits" because they dislike fractional prices.  They completely fail to see that the dichotomy is false.
I agree that there are a lot of things being discussed in this thread - which is good.

Fractional pricing - almost everyone agrees this is bad.  From this one consensus comes many opinions on the next step.

Some like going to millibitcoin then microbitcoins when needed, other say jump to microbitcoins now.

Then it gets really interesting:  what to name millibitcions and/or microbitcoins (no need for nicknames, bits, zibs, millies, mikes, etc. etc.)

There are a lot of different opinions.  No one is being railroaded here.  It is all in great fun because the market will eventually decide this.


Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security.  Read all about it here:  http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/  Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
StatusSeeking
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 78
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 12:19:46 PM
 #431

College chemistry freshmen didn't know the prefix giga? I'm starting to think that all this bitcoin and innovation stuff is moot, as we are clearly stumbling into the future from Idiocracy!

I have this friend who got really strange results in his Bachelor's thesis because he got the decimal point wrong while entering a material constant into the simulation software Comsol Multiphysics. Decimal points are hard, even for chemistry or physics majors.
teukon
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1246
Merit: 1002



View Profile
June 23, 2014, 12:25:42 PM
 #432

Because the psychology of numbers influences the perceived value of said good. It's perfectly fine to criticize the word "bits", but I fear those critics are missing the point of this debate: we need to price goods as whole numbers, regardless of the naming convention.

You have it backwards.  A study of the comments in this thread will reveal that a good number of the critics are distinguishing the term "bits" from the notion of switching to a different unit to avoid unintuitive decimal prices, and indeed generally support the latter.  However, the vast majority of pro-"bits" posts conflate these two ideas.  Here are some recent examples:

+1 for bits.
Using bitcoin is weird for small transactions like 0.00327

This is an excellent idea. It is a lot easier to wrap your brain around buying 1000 bits instead of a row of zeros following a decimal point.

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

As you can see, each poster supports "bits" because they dislike fractional prices.  They completely fail to see that the dichotomy is false.


I love how the assumption is always that people who like the sounds of bits simply aren't clever enough to understand what you're saying.  It couldn't possibly be true that they just like the sound of bits and you're still a little disappointed that your preference didn't win, so it makes your ego feel a little less bruised if you work under the assumption that everyone else is stupid.  

Cry me a river and such.

I made no such assumption.  I made a single claim and supported it with no less than three very recent quotes from different posters.  Could you do this for posts along the lines of: "I voted for 'bits' because I like the sound of the word"?
BurtW
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 2646
Merit: 1129

All paid signature campaigns should be banned.


View Profile WWW
June 23, 2014, 12:29:19 PM
Last edit: June 23, 2014, 01:11:20 PM by BurtW
 #433

I made no such assumption.  I made a single claim and supported it with no less than three very recent quotes from different posters.  Could you do this for posts along the lines of: "I voted for 'bits' because I like the sound of the word"?
Here is one such post:  

I personally like "bits" as the nickname for microbitcoins for a variety of reasons which are all described above in my various posts on the subject.

Only two more to go.

Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security.  Read all about it here:  http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/  Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
JypsiCreme
Full Member
***
Offline Offline

Activity: 149
Merit: 100


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 12:40:40 PM
 #434

And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

No, I do feel like telling you about people that don't get SI prefixes -- college freshman in general chemistry, in fact. I recall giving out a quiz last semester in which one of the answers had to be expressed in gigajoules. Only about a third of the class knew the conversion from joules. And this was the honors class!


I'm with you. People only know the imperial measurements they do because they have to use them in daily life. Do you know what a bushel is? I bet a farm boy does. Don't dumb things down, let it be an opportunity for education
tigeRshoes
Newbie
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 49
Merit: 0


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 01:26:16 PM
 #435

And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

No, I do feel like telling you about people that don't get SI prefixes -- college freshman in general chemistry, in fact. I recall giving out a quiz last semester in which one of the answers had to be expressed in gigajoules. Only about a third of the class knew the conversion from joules. And this was the honors class!


Great, but I think there's a reason why energy flux (energy per square meter per second) isn't denoted as kg per cubic second.
mamarried
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 260
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 01:45:56 PM
 #436

everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes

not outside magic the gathering conventions
sifter
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Activity: 574
Merit: 500


CoinBooster Rep


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 02:04:37 PM
 #437

Hasn't coinbase allowed you to display your balance in bits?

CoinBooster.io - Earn up to 67mil satoshi per day. Claim every 5 minutes. NO POP UPS! HIGH ROI
Bitcointalk Official Thread
FlowerMatt
Member
**
Offline Offline

Activity: 64
Merit: 10


View Profile
June 23, 2014, 02:23:17 PM
 #438

Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.

No one who's arguing against bits is against whole numbers, but just for using the already existing, logical connotations: mBTC and uBTC. And don't tell me about people who don't get the decimal system - everyone knows kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes - milli and micro are just in the opposite direction.

The order of magnitude is good. But as we move towards computers becoming more and more relvant for the general public, we shouldn't put multiple meanings on such fundamental words.

BurtW
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 2646
Merit: 1129

All paid signature campaigns should be banned.


View Profile WWW
June 23, 2014, 03:37:08 PM
 #439

we shouldn't put multiple meanings on such fundamental words.
Let's think about this a bit.  Not putting multiple meaning on fundamental words is a bit drastic don't you think? 

You don't want to have to say "that strict stance really bit me in the ass"? 

Just my two bits.

Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security.  Read all about it here:  http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/  Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
phillipsjk
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1008
Merit: 1001

Let the chips fall where they may.


View Profile WWW
June 23, 2014, 04:30:52 PM
 #440

I suspect that as with many things, the Americans will use their quirky unit, while the rest of the world will simply use the metric system.

James' OpenPGP public key fingerprint: EB14 9E5B F80C 1F2D 3EBE  0A2F B3DE 81FF 7B9D 5160
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 [22] 23 24 25 26 27 »
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!