Switching to mBTC by default?

[ploum]

I don't have any trading experience but I was wondering if the fact that a BTC has so much value could impact the value itself.

Would someone pay 100$ for "one bitcoin"? How you could you use it for payment then. Every price would be 0.01BTC or similar.

I thought that, by the time BTC hit 10$ (or 100$), we could agree to switch to mBTC everywhere (clients, merchants, traders). That way, you would buy 10 mBTC for one $. It's physically the same but, psychologically, not at all.

The advantage of switching to mBTC is that the old BTC values are still valid. It will also give us more space to the unfounded criticism that "there are only 21 million of btc". Now, it would be "21 billion of mBTC", which looks more realistic.

So, what do you think?

[Stephen Gornick]

I thought that, by the time BTC hit 10$ (or 100$), we could agree to switch to mBTC everywhere (clients, merchants, traders).

This was from November:

When 1 Bitcoin is worth somewhere around $100 (in 2010 dollars), I think it'll be time for the client to switch to millicoins (e.g. .001 BTC), so if I'm buying a paperback book it costs 50 milliBTC  instead of  .05 BTC.

  - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1833.msg22646#msg22646

[Anth0n]

The market will take care of this when the issue arises!

[FreeMoney]

The market will take care of this when the issue arises!

For sure. If it's true that you can sell bitcoins for more $$ if you call them millibitcoins then smart people (there are some around here iirc) will buy from people who call them bitcoins and sell to people for more by calling them millibitcoins.

[Alex Beckenham]

we could agree to switch to mBTC everywhere (clients, merchants, traders).

This was from November:

...it'll be time for the client to switch to millicoins (e.g. .001 BTC)

Yes it doesn't need to be switched everywhere, it's just a matter of choosing whatever client software suits you.

Some people will continue to enter '0.05' into their bitcoin client program, while others will decide to run SuperClientmBTC (tm) which takes mBTC as input instead.

Both send the same amount behind the scenes.

[eMansipater]

The market will take care of this when the issue arises!

"The market" isn't someone else.  It's us.  The issue is naturally arising, and we can all come up with different ideas for what to do.  Hopefully the best ones will rise to the top, and enough people can realise that and make the transition in their vocabulary, so that everyone else isn't confused to bits.  No pun intended.

[carlerha]

I believe a solution like this would be nice:



the option of whether to display the combo box or not and its default value can be changed in settings, that way it'll be up to each
user and his/her preference how to handle all the zeros.




And something like this upon hitting "send":



This way, the user gets a chance to review the numbers.

[ryepdx]

I believe a solution like this would be nice:
...

Not a bad idea...

[error]

Don't think we need nBTC yet (our 8 decimal places get us to 0.00 µBTC) but otherwise I think it works.

[CydeWeys]

I definitely think that switching to mBTC (and even just renaming them to BTC some time down the line, so that 1 BTC = 10^5 base units instead of 10^8 base units) is a good idea.  It takes a lot of the psychological impact away.  For the record I was also strongly in favor of Berkshire-Hathaway's recent 50-for-1 split.

[mewantsbitcoins]

calerha, I think that is brilliant

[kwukduck]

Yep, looking good, would be a nice feature for scaling prices.

[2_Thumbs_Up]

It's slightly dangerous to be able to change the unit in the send pop-up though. You really want to minimize the risk of over-paying something by a factor of 1000. I say it's probably better if this is in the options menu.