Topic: A proposal: Forget about mBTC and switch directly to uBTC (instead of satoshis) (Read 2069 times)

integrity42,

After reading your replies here and on reddit, it has become clear to me that you have misinterpreted my proposal. Maybe that's my fault for not being clear.

My proposal is almost identical to the proposal to start using satoshis.


This is true, but there are a great many possible reasons for this, including that my post is virtually a duplicate title of the satoshis post, and posted after the satoshis post. Reddit often doesn't respond well to that.

Whether I presented the idea with the right timing and in the way that gets reddit to vote it to the front page of /r/Bitcoin should not be used a basis for an argument for or against this. Frankly, most of the people in that thread did not even understand my proposal. Some thought that I was insisting we use values like "0.00001 BTC" or something.

/u/DoxyDoxxx when defending my proposal was very well received on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1r3xl1/a_proposal_skip_mbtc_and_switch_directly_to/cdjfry8


I quite agree. Though you seem to have entirely missed the point, and this is where it becomes clear that you misunderstood my proposal.

I would never tell them that "1 dong = One hundredth of one one-millionth of one Bitcoin". I would only tell this to the couple of million users that are already using bitcoins as the unit they understand.

If you switch to satoshis right now, almost no sites represent bitcoin prices this way. You would be converting between bitcoins and satoshis for a long while until full satoshi adoption was complete. This would be a lot harder if you do it your way instead of mine.

I am saying that we do exactly what the satoshis post says, except we choose a unit that is 100 times larger.

So instead of saying "That car cost 150M satoshis" you would say "That car cost 1.5M microcoins".

That's it.

That's the only fundamental difference between my proposal and the satoshis proposal.


The proposal to switch to satoshis is a fairly big change. The switch to a smaller unit would be far easier for many people if we could allow them to continue to speak in terms of bitcoins (and even mBTC) as they already are. In other words, the proposal in the OP is compatible with existing measurements of Bitcoin, while still providing all of the benefits of using satoshis.

I am not "obsessed" with SI symmetry, I just recognize that conversion between satoshis and bitcoins and mBTC is quite a bit harder than it is between microcoins and bitcoins and mBTC.


This argument exactly as it is also applies to the idea to switch to satoshis and use them with SI units!

Again you are missing the point. Using uB as the default counting unit is virtually identical to the idea of using satoshis as the default unit, except for 2 decimal places.


To borrow your verbiage, what is your obsession with the base unit? Why do we have to use the satoshi when we could achieve the same benefits with microcoins, while gaining additional benefits by using microcoins, with virtually no downside?

What is the advantage of using satoshis over microcoins?

What is the disadvantage of using microcoins over satoshis?

I like the name Satoshi, so you can say I have 90 million satoshi's and feel good that you are a millionaire.

Satoshi is way too small, if it was the millionth piece of a bitcoin it would be okay. We do need a name rather than uBTC.

Ferroh,

Good job being incredibly obnoxious on the reddit post supporting using satoshi's.  You managed to say "I DISAGREE!" on almost every post.  You also might have noticed that the proposal to switch to satoshi's moved to the front page, while your proposal didn't make it anywhere. Perhaps you are, in fact,  the minority opinion.

Let me clear a few things up for you on why this may be:

- Your obsession with SI 'symmerty' is absurd and irrelevant to currencies. No currency in the world uses a large value as a base unit, then SI units to subdivide it.  None.  Zero.  Zilch.  For example, in vietman the dong is the smallest unit and 21,000 dong = $1.  It would be very easy for the vietnamese to adopt bitcoin if you tell them that 1 dong == 1 satoshi.   On the other hand, they'd be utterly confused if you told them that 1 dong = "One hundredth of one one-millionth of one Bitcoin"

By the same token.  Lets imagine that the base unit in Europe was something called a SUPEREuro, which was worth 1,000,000 Euro, and instead of printing 100 Euro notes, they printed 0.0001 SUPEREuro notes.  Do you see how absurd this is?   No amount of 'Well, we have to do it because SI UNITS!! HERP DERP!!" would *ever ever ever* convince people that its a good idea.  Same thing goes with mBTC and uBTC.

- BTC is *NOT* the base unit.  Satoshi's are the base unit.  This is stated directly in the code.  100M satoshi's equaling 1BTC was arbitrarily chosen by satoshi.  Infact there is a post on these very forums where satoshi advocates moving the decimal over as the value appreciates.   But he is clear that 1 satoshi is the base unit.    So, infact, if you like SI units so much, you should be using satoshi as the base.

Bitcent
Bitpenny
Bitquarter

Coincent
Coinpenny
Coinquarter

1 Satoshi is a microBitCent?

There was a time when I would have agreed with you.  I'd be more tempting to go straight to the satoshi, but good luck convincing anyone else of that.

Perhaps we ought to just call it something like a stock split and keep the name Bitcoin, or call it shares of Bitcoin, and move the decimal over 2 places.  So if you have 5, now you have 500 - then all the talking heads on CNBC will be able to reference the split and life will move on as normal.  If anything, buzz about a split might make it more attractive.

I don't have a clue what the microbitcoin should be called in everyday usage, but I agree that it would be a very good idea to make that the standard unit of currency. Plus, it means that satoshis, currently the smallest division of a bitcoin, would become 0.01 of the new currency unit, which mirrors most of the currencies people are familiar with.

This is not what I'm suggesting.

You would say "1000 microbits", or "1000 microcoins".

Not "1k micro bitcoins".

I don't like the idea to stick with a name like bitcoin and just changing it to micro. For the average Joe it is very confusing to talk about "kilo micro bitcoins".

Therefore it is ideal to switch to a completely different name to avoid confusion. It is very hard to convince the whole bitcoin community to switch to some arbitrary new name. And therefore at the moment the best idea is to just state everything in Satoshi or kSatoshi. Very easy and everyone can understand it.

What about BTM ? bitmillion

Gold was not used as currency at $1400 per ounce.

What happens when you want to price something that costs 0.000739 bitcoins? Writing 739 uB is a lot easier for the non-mathematician.

Many average users do not like the idea of spending $610 on one bitcoin, so this is a barrier to entry for the average joe.

A price of $0.61 for 1000 microbitcoins seems much more reasonable.

Also note that this thread is in response to this other thread that suggests satoshis as a base unit instead of microbitcoins: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/a-proposal-forget-about-mbtc-and-switch-directly-to-satoshis-323776

So you want bitcoins for mathematicians only? Change the format when we are allegedly at the tipping point of mass adoption?

Gold costs $1400 an ounce. People live with that. Nobody changed the default way gold is represented.

Its a problem that doesn't need solving.

Try this experiment:

1000 uB is 1/1000th of a bitcoin. Right?

Or you can write: 1K uB is 1/1000th of a bitcoin.

So 0.1K uB is 1/10000th of a bitcoin. With me so far?

Now try this for satoshis.

How many satoshis is 1/10000th of a bitcoin?

This solution continues to allow us to have symmetry, and allows scalability beyond subdividing a satoshi, and is backwards compatible with the use of uBTC and mBTC.

You may wish to give uBTC some special name (if not microbits or microcoins) so that this idea works just like the "skip to satoshis" idea.

One problem with the "skip to satoshis" idea is that satoshis are difficult to convert to bitcoins, and microbits are easy to convert to bitcoins. Abandoning bitcoins entirely is now being proposed by some people in favor of satoshis only, which will just confuse things further.

Notice that with SI prefixes for large numbers we have:


Suppose we call these uB for short.

All of the arguments for skipping to satoshis still applies, except that we now have:

1M uB = 1 BTC

instead of

100M satoshi = 1 BTC


We also have: 1K uB = 1 mBTC, and similar simple conversion between other SI prefixes, so those can still be used without breaking anything or adding unnecessary confusion.

Also note that we can still talk about satoshis (in the distant future) easily in terms of uB:

0.01 uB = 1 satoshi

So we have a natural "cent" like many currencies do, which is near the limit for how most people are able to reason about numbers after a decimal place.

And when we subdivide a satoshi then we can move from microcoins to nanocoins much more naturally, without having to explain why there is some arbitrary number of 100 million satoshis.


The current price is about $0.61 for 1000 uB.