Topic: A difference of opinions at the Bitcoin Foundation regarding the XBT proposal? - page 2. (Read 5043 times)

One important thing to note with regards to the OP, Mr. Jon Matonis seems to like to express his personal opinions without being careful to not sound like he is speaking in the name of the Foundation. So, whatever opinions he expressed in the said CoinBase article are his personal opinions and not necessarily that of the Financial Standards Working Group. While the group itself does not yet have an official recommendation, it seems to me (and this is my personal subjective perception) that XBT = 100 satoshis = 1 bit is the prevalent option both within the group and wider community.

I believe if we are going to have this worldwide currency and have people really start using it in every day life, it definitely cannot be expressed with 8 decimals. Reasons are technical, psychological, accounting related, all mentioned already.

It seems that there are some real obstacles within the Bitcoin system as it is at the moment. But I am honestly hoping that we will reach consensus on changing the system to be future-proof rather than sticking with the status quo thus crippling the growth of Bitcoin, potentially fatally.

As for the idea of having two units, one for ISO and another for display, I think this is a confusing half way solution that will make bitcoin different from other currencies and thus more difficult to understand and embrace. I can't stress enough: the number of people currently using bitcoin is a tiny tiny group which could very well be considered a beta testing group. There should be no worries of causing confusion by switching to bits (or bitcoins worth 100 satoshis each) as the main unit on all levels. Why? Because all the people who know what is going on will make the switch very easily, while all the people who don't know what's going on couldn't care less and it will make no difference to them.

My mother started using bitcoin recently. If her balance on Circle changes from 0.5 bitcoins to 500000.00 bitcoins while the displayed US dollar amount stays more or less the same, I guarantee you she will not even notice. And even if she does, she might ask me "How come I now have 500K bitcoins? Does it mean I'm now insanely rich?" And I'll say "no mom, they just changed the denomination unit" to which she will reply "ah, ok." End of story.

I don't even want to start thinking about explanations to new comers when they would start asking how come there is this big unit called XBT which I see on trading sites, but when I log into my account on Coinbase I see these bits.. What are the two? Why do we have both? And on this third site they are using some uXBT, and then I also saw somewhere amounts in milibitcoins, is that also bitcoin just with a different name? etc etc..... It's such a mess! It's already difficult as it is to explain to people some things about bitcoin, let's make it easier, please, not more difficult.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/54619107/Goldmund/hotlink/2-options.jpg

Actually, J. Allaire of Circle did refer to 2.1 quadrillion satoshi or [units] in several public speeches.
Besides, with 21 trillion units you can start working toward unity(equality) with $$ since high tens/~hundred of trillions is where world GDP is.
Why would this be a collapse-no, instead of artificial scarcity it would be seen as an adequate number of units and we will work from low value per 100 satoshi to higher.
I can predict that this alone will cause a dramatic increase in activity because people will perceive having much more [units].

Uhhh....yikes. That sounds like collapse...the exact opposite of what's happened the last 5 years.

How do you think this would sound to the CNBC TV quacks?

"There will only ever be 2.1 quadrillion satoshis in the world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers#Usage_of_names_of_large_numbers

Also, I can imagine the CNBC money-honeys not understanding "bits" and going on air to say:
"BREAKING NEWS: XBT has now been approved for bitcoin and 21 trillion is the new limit!"

Thanks.  Glad I could help.


Interesting.  Do you have a source for this?

sorry about "everybody", it was presumptious of me. I guess, I meant everybody who ever traded actual stocks on the stock market.

What I propose is simple: do a virtual 1:1,000,000 stock split of bitcoin (mathematically) to 21 trillion units, then call these units (each=100 satoshis) as you please (either "bitcoin" still-which I would prefer- or "bits" or even something else). What symbol to give them is largely irrelevant because they will be the winner due to greatly improved ease of use and adherence to two decimals after period standard for most currencies, which is much more familiar to people outside of the current bitcoin community.
However, after any stock split, you still call the stock by the same three-four digit symbol (hence AAPL for Apple) and full name, but the the number of shares/units changes, obviously. Nobody calls it redefining, but it is admittedly so in the narrowest sense (you redefine the number of outstanding shares that company has in a stock split).

From a practical point it is also simple: define a major unit as 100 satoshi (not 100,000,000) and make satoshi a minor unit at 1:100 of the major unit.

I guess I'm not part of EVERYBODY either. LOL

what difference bteween BTC and XBT?

I'm not part of EVERYBODY, it seems. It's not the first time I've been excluded, though.

And yes, if 1 Bitcoin = 100000000 units, but then 1 Bitcoin = 100 units, that's exactly what “redefining” means.

I like the m-mill / μ-micro idea. Very clever.

Thx for the input. Is the two decimal bits a better choice than the 8 decimal bitcoin? The advantages of two decimal places is obvious...the advantage to using bitcoins is you could prepend a micro symbol that doesn't case fold to a letter that could be interpreted as M for mega...Unicode has a separate SI prefix micro.

I agree. I think that redefining how we measure Bitcoin (in terms of terminology) would wreck havoc on bitcoin related commerce, as people would be confused as to exactly how much value is being asked for when someone is selling a certain product or when negotiating a price, this would result in people not wanting to deal in bitcoin 

don't need to redefine any word
AAPL was $700/share and after a stock split (1:7) it became $100/share with increase in unit numbers, but not value
Nobody is talking about changing the number of fundamental units (which are 2.1 quadrillion satoshis)
Just split bitcoin 1:1000000 and say that it (defined as XBT or XBI) is now only 100 satoshis, but you have 21 trillion of such "bitcoins" or "bits" or "whatever" (XBT or XBI)
The concept of a stock split is familiar to EVERYBODY

Do you serioulsy think redefining a word is an easy task? Considering how many people already talk about Bitcoin (maybe it's less than 1% of the world, it's still a big amount)

I certainly feel that XBT for 1 bitcoin is a better choice than XBI for 1 bit, mainly because the term "bitcoin" is far better established (one can even look it up in the dictionary).  Currency codes are very much a realm for formality, accuracy, unambiguity, and stability; XBI for one "bit" is simply not appropriate today given the youth and contention surrounding the term.  If the 100-satoshi unit is desired (e.g. for decimal point-related issues) and the working group wants to push this now then I think the only appropriate term to build around is "microbitcoin".  This is not the end of the world (The formal UK currency name is the cumbersome "Pound sterling" yet, GBP works and people get by with slang such as "pounds" or "quid" in everyday situations).

People are unlikely to write "0.000 98 XBT" or "980 XBI" in my opinion but they may well write "980 bits".


Just in case the working group hasn't seen it, here's an Old, short, Bitcoin Foundation discussion on the topic.


I quite like the µBTC idea.

Another thought: Perhaps a "µ" with a bar through it, "µ" say, would be easier to get given that "₥" for a mill already exists and is currency agnostic.  I could certainly see prices like "1500µ" (or "µ1500") being commonly read as "fifteen hundred bits" but also sometimes "fifteen hundred mikes" or "one point five mills".

I feel worth stressing a second time is that, given the current upset surrounding the 100-satoshi term, it might be wise to simply work on a currency code for the "bitcoin" unit for now, leaving the issue of the smaller unit to settle for a few years.

Disclaimer: While I've honestly tried to be unbiased and logical, it's no secret that I openly oppose the term "bit" for 100 satoshis.

Each country has 26 codes reserved for it, including island states with an economy smaller than that of Bitcoin's ecosystem. Some countries have used more than one, such as Turkey when they shifted the decimal 6 places. X-codes are a different case however, and yeah, it is not that much more useful to have 2 codes than one.

Only this matters. [An official ISO code] = 100 satoshis.

Don't think two ISO codes are possible. After all, it's the same currency.

Fixed that for you. It's 100%.

It is empirically proven that the human brain prefers to deal with positive integers.
This can be easily seen by when children are tought integers versus decimals in elementary school. Even some animals are capable of using integers, yet none are capable of using decimals.

An international currency like Bitcoin deserves to have the easiest conceivable system for measuring value, i.e. plain integers.


Existing financial traditions might differ; it is especially notable that western cultures prefer to have two decimal places to the right of the point, while arabic cultures prefer three decimal places. African cultures, on the other hand, use division by five, i.e. one decimal place.

Bitcoin oughts to have a system that allows each culture to establish their own currency units, while still having one common unit for all of them. My proposal is to use the smallest possible denomination for international exchange, while still allowing higher denominations for use in individual countries, according to their respective financial traditions.

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This option is only viable if we have consensus on what the [bracket expression] will substitute for.

I totally agree that the objective is [An official ISO code] = 100 satoshis.
and everything else is secondary. If you make the minor unit a 0.00000001 of the major unit (in proposed standard), then you accomplished nothing toward the ease of use/acceptance by a large % of the population. 90-99% of all people would not want to deal with eight numbers after period. People, however, will decide how to call the official unit in day-to day life.
CNY has nothing in common in pronunciation with renminbi/yuan.