Topic: A new notation for Bitcoin? (Read 2071 times)

Bump!

I thought I'd bump this one from back in the day because twice today on r/Bitcoin I've had reason to refer to this discussion and the idea of using a variant of scientific notation as a useful means of handling Bitcoin's price deflation working its way through the orders of magnitude...


Today, this would be something like:  '... ²¹100 ^btc = 1.00 btc, so ¹⁸2 is a cheap pizza, ¹⁷23 is a USD!

Isn't that potentially easier to read than the whole 0.000226398 malarkey, let alone when we've gone a couple more orders of magnitude?

I still don't see how we'd overcome the inertia and the need to understand a whole new way of seeing numbers but I like it as an idea. Anyone up for coding an Electrum GUI or something for this for fun?

Isn't this already true of my 1BTC roll-your-owns if nobody adds a private key, or if someone redeems a 1BTC coin and cleans it off?  The idea that someone could know that bitcoins are valuable but not know any way to spend them or that they are a strictly digital currency would be a bit of an oxymoron.  It would take an incredible coincidence for a willing scammer to meet a willing victim all to burn him out of 20 cents.  Someone who ends up learning the hard way that bitcoin is actually digital currency, not a new kind of metal, will have gotten a bargain on knowledge for 20 cents next time he sits down and Googles if he so happens to get burned accepting one without a sticker.

The only reason I wouldn't sticker them myself is I couldn't charge a price for it that would make it economically rational both for me to do so and for buyers to buy it.  But for someone willing to sticker them themselves, it would make a lot more sense.

Maybe you could set aside the bitcoin, but not actually put it on the coins? So if you make 100, then you would put 1 btc in a safe place. Then if sometime in the future somebody wants to redeem it for the 0.01 btc worth 500 usd, you can just raid the stash instead of buying new expensive bitcoins?

I'ld be more concerned about being the "issuer" of a coin marked 0.01 BTC  (where 0.01 BTC is worth about twenty cents today) which is [potentially going to be] floating around without any 0.01 BTCs on it.

I'm tempted to go make a batch of penny-like coins that are similar to Casascius Coins, but say "1 INTERNET".  In place of VIRES IN NUMERIS, they'd say 0.01 BITCOIN.

I wouldn't ever fund these, I'd just make them available for sale in rolls of 50.

By penny-like, they'd be copper-plated zinc coins just like US pennies, they'd just be worth 16 times as much... assuming they were loaded with BTC (which I wouldn't do, I'd just make them available as roll-your-owns, with the spot on the back for a private key).  They'd also have a bit larger diameter than a penny.  Their main purpose would be promotion of Bitcoin to others.

The only thing stopping me is I don't know that the majority of the community would be interested in calling 0.01 BTC an "internet" and possibly enough people dislike the term that maybe I'd get flamed for it.

OK, thanks all.

I've got to a stage now where I'd like to rewrite the OP from scratch utilising where we've got to so far and move this whole thread to a more permanent home (maybe to the general 'Bitcoin Discussion'?)

However, I'd like to give myself some time to do this right and I simply haven't got the time now so I'll need to leave it a few weeks.

Thanks again to all who added to this discussion to date.

Tf

Certainly an interesting idea. Only quarrel I have with it is that it seems to add another level of abstraction to the mess. As previously stated most people would probably be more inclined to simply counting decimals

Nobody will accept this, because it's too complicated lol

OK, I'm liking that.  It alludes to exponentiation whilst being different enough (both from 'mathematically correct' exponentiation and from a simple decimal) to be immediately recognisable.  As the 'native' way of writing power bitcoin I think this could work.

There's a disadvantage in that it's not as simple to do with a keyboard as just typing a character but my first impression is the advantages outweigh that.  We'd also need a way of verbalising it and of communicating ^btc numbers in plain text for instance for use in SMS where ^sup is not an option.  And maybe this same plain text representation would be usable in a spreadsheet in such a way that that a formula can separate out the elements to do calculations then express the result back in the plain text representation.  Ideas anyone?

In bitcoin wallets and on web pages with ^btc functionality there could be two textboxes with relative font sizes and positioning to reflect this visually so in order to type in ²¹1 one would just type in '211' with the cursor simply moving to the significand textbox after the first two typed digits.  Where a single digit exponent was required '01' could be used or just '1' then Tab to the next box.  I can see this working.

Fair cop guv   Consider me baited!  Thanks for pointing it out Stephen.  I had kinda guessed that was the case but as a general principle tend to prefer (especially as a newby) to tread as on eggshells and respond accordingly rather than to presume.  Also I was too excited about my take on this to research further into the Tonal angle right now so I appreciate the link.  As I said at the top of the OP I'm quite happy to be pointed to stuff showing how far behind the curve I am.  I'd rather that than feel obliged to digest the whole of the bitcointalk archive before feeling qualified to stick my neck out.

As for the 'advanced thinking' thing, I had not intended to imply I consider myself more 'advanced' than you folks here and I apologise if I came over that way.  One of the attractions for me is in 'being around' people from whom I can learn.  The 'need' I see for something along the lines of the 'power bitcoin' arises out of my personal preference for making life easier than having to count the number of zeroes (whether before or after the decimal point) to find out how big or small a number is.  And if I with my barely passable understanding of logarithmic and exponential principles could do with something simpler, couldn't the general public too?  Hence my 'offering'.

I won't stifle my creativity on the assumption that nothing I come up with is likely to be groundbreaking.  If only one in a thousand of my ideas actually ends up contributing something of substantial value won't it have been worth you putting up with my ramblings in the meantime?

Edit:  Since writing this I have seen from here that casascius is* one who sees bringing Tonal to Bitcoin as 'polluting' and as detrimental to the overall Bitcoin project.  My guess therefore is that he also might not be the most welcoming of the 'power bitcoin' idea.  Can't win 'em all!

* ...or was in early 2011.  I'd rather people didn't assume my point of view on anything is immovable and therefore won't assume the same of others.

I think it is important to make it just different enough that people do not confuse it. 19.10 btc is very different from 19.01 ^btc.

How about something like ²¹100 ^btc = 1.00 btc, so ²⁰5 is a cheap pizza, ¹⁹94 is a USD, etc?

I think he was baiting you.  This isn't the first time Bitcoiners have heard of Tonal Bitcoin.  It, um ...,  it ...   well ..., um., , I guess we're just not ready for such advanced thinking.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tonal_Bitcoin

Well spotted sire

I think the simplest solution would be for people to be get used to handling more than one exponent at a time.  I'm not sure if it's too much of an ask though (again getting me back to taking this idea out there for real-world responses).  It's true if not set for auto-normalisation the exponent would have to be bumped up by one - and if the preference was set to only work with one exponent at a time the others in the equation/formula could be converted too.

One of the things I like about the way I've proposed it is that it does indeed look like a decimal, the ^ being the sole marker.  I'm not saying I'd defend that position till the death if differentiation at the risk of feeling 'weird' was deemed to be a higher value than familiarity at the risk of confusion.  I'm not at first glance however enamoured by any of the three you've proposed:  The 'x' looks like a multiplication; the '#' is widely used in the US to denote a number in a list and the ';' is too easily confused with a ':' which means (especially with the numbers we're talking about) looks like the time in 24 hr clock.

Not that I'm intending to be dismissive but I'm not persuaded yet.

I certainly hadn't.  Do you have a preference?  Couldn't people use either interchangeably?

Are you sure about that? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-thomas/whats-halfway-between-1-and-9-kids-and-scientists-say-3_b_1982920.html

So it makes sense that if you go down from 19.100 you go to 19.099, but what if you go up? 18.99 + 18.01 --> 19.100, you can't keep 18 as the exponent.

Hrmm, I think having the dot makes it look too much like a regular decimal. Maybe you could use a different separator in your notation, like 'x' or '#', or ';' or something:

1.00 btc = 21x100 ^btc  -  18x9 ^btc + 18x1 ^btc = 19x10 ^btc
1.00 btc = 21#100 ^btc  -  18#99 ^btc + 17#1 ^btc = 19#10 ^btc
1.00 btc = 21;100 ^btc  -  18;09 ^btc + 18;1 ^btc = 18;19 ^btc

For subtracting (or using a negative number) you should put the - before the exponent, to be more clear you could add parenthesis:
21.10 ^btc - (21.10 ^btc) = 21.0 ^btc

Wait, have we determined how to represent 0 in this system? would it be 0.0 ^btc? or just 0 ^btc?

Thanks for the link casascius.  I've always had respect for those who think: "Why not put to one side everything that's been and see if something better can be had by starting anew?" (Why do you think I'm attracted to the concept Bitcoin )

Also, I enjoyed binary in school and still think hex is really neat.  In a way it's a shame we weren't evolved with eight fingers on each hand!

I guess by 'more pure' you mean it is a closer representation of the underlying bits?  I can see that it would be easier in terms of relating to the bits.  But that is taken care of by the software so I'm afraid I can't see how it helps in that respect.

I see the advantage of having the additional 6 units before needing to add a column meaning we can get to much larger numbers without anywhere near as many zeroes.  But I don't see how it's easier in terms of either usage - mental arithmetic in hex not being something most of us are used to - nor in terms of adoption (hex being rarely used nor understood outside of programming).  And it still doesn't get us away from the issue, on the assumption that Bitcoin gets reasonably widely adopted, that the vast majority of transactions will be in numbers smaller than one.

It may be that I just can't see the advantage because I'm too invested in my idea so if you would indulge me by elaborating on the pros of adopting a base-16 system I'm more than willing to listen

@ bitcoinbear

It's arbitrary!  Considerations include:

I have read somewhere that the Bitcoin code has already built in the means of subdividing the 'satoshi' by another 10^8 and in order to accommodate that I considered 16.1 ^btc as the smallest representation of 1 btc.  But then adding 'just' another potential 5 orders of magnitude gives it even more potential (calculations might be done on  for example prices per unit using numbers smaller than the minimum transaction unit as they are with fractions of cents/pennies these days).  It means for the foreseeable future even the tiniest bitcoin decimal still do not require the basic ^btc unit to be anything other than an integer thereby avoiding the potentially confusing need to use negative exponents (the bit preceding the dot)*.

Why 21.1 ^btc for one?  I sort-of like it.  Thinking about it there may be a personal history thing there because I used to be useless at my times tables and 3x7 happened to be one of the few I could remember and I think as a consequence I have an emotional attachment to the number 21   Of course I have no authority here in saying 'THIS IS WHAT IS' and would be quite happy see that change if justification (or preference by a number of others) were to come forward.

I will admit to this looking tidier!  But first I wanted the system to accommodate the 'next subdivision' (should that happen).  I think having a two digit exponent for the denominations currently in use starting around the 20 mark (if only slightly) would help with visual differentiation from numbers expressed in decimal.  Again, I have nothing substantive to support this.  The third reason (though 'reason' is a grand word for my train of thought on this aspect of it!) is almost to make the point that it doesn't matter because it is not the intention that people using 'power bitcoin' notation need ever to translate it in terms of the ultimate number of minsicule units being referred to.  As long as the 'conversion' back and forth from normal bitcoin notation is easy then that's enough as far as I can see.

Yup, you got it

I can't see why not.  And now that you've brought it up I why not leave flexibility in software so people can set their preference either to 'normalise' after every calculation (losing preceding zeroes) or to keep a bunch of calculations using a single exponent until reset manually.  Likewise with a preference to put in trailing zeroes (as you did with 20.100) if it helps.

Thanks all for your feedback by the way.  Whether this idea fizzles out when people stop posting to this thread or if it actually gains momentum is less important to me than the fun I'm having thinking it through and having others think it through and letting me know what you think.  As they say in London, Nice one

Tf

* I don't know whether it would be best to stick with the formal descriptors of 'exponent' for the number before the dot and 'significand' for the number after or to think up something more snappy - I have no preference.  Again I don't really have a preference between putting it at the beginning - e.g. -21.1 though I guess it would be more correct to use 21.-1  (both meaning minus 1 btc).  The latter looks a bit strange but I don't know.  Thoughts?

... as I guess it would not be a problem for a good majority of those already using Bitcoin.  Good job really!  It would be a shame if waiting on consensus for an alternative would hold up the project

As things are though, I see no reason to stop looking at other options.

I have an idea, why don't we just count bitcoins using the tonal number system.  It's way easier and more pure.

Read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_System

After reading it, read it again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_System

And again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_System

Ok, this sorta makes sense to me, but I am not seeing where the first part of the number comes from? Why is the range from 13.1 ^BTC to 28.2099999999999999 ^BTC?

Why not use the satoshi as the base, then the range would be from 1.1 ^BTC to 15.21 ^BTC, with 1.00 BTC = 8.100 ^BTC?

If I understand correctly, 1 USD is about 19.94 ^BTC right now?

When comparing prices, can you do things like: 1 USD was selling for 20.100 ^btc the other day, but now it is down to 20.094 ^btc?