Topic: Bitcoin is also a currency, why is its unit so different from the commonly used (Read 428 times)

It seems to me that this is the secret of bitcoin. It is in the fact that they began to use it in many places, they often talk about it, and as a result, its popularity and, accordingly, the price are growing.

Apart from the fact that you treat it like a regular foreign currency, do you feel it is different and has a reserve asset? I myself am not too bothered about the value having to be converted to something else, but essentially they have the same usability. My thinking is that if all physical goods are easily redeemed for BTC itself, converting to fiat only complicates matters. Although there are many crypto products today with numbers that are easy to imagine for life, I am not too fond of them because my own way of looking at crypto is becoming less and more ambiguous.

You see, you started with the wrong assumption, that somehow in every place on this earth things end either end with a fixed value or something like 1.5 or 5.5.
Since you mentioned Japan, look at the prices here, (random google search image)

So there are a lot of 278, 248, 186, 208, 321, 1558, 1068, 1238, 1198, which doesn't seem to be a problem for 120 million people.
Next, you're totally wrong about the flat prices for bread, let's take Europe for example, go into a carrefour and you're going to see prices like 1.35, 1.48, 2.64, 1.69 regularly, I've checked my last receipt from the supermarket, it was 67.01..lol!
We could go to the extreme examples, how do people manage to do it in Vietnam where everything is in the thousands?

It's a fake problem that wouldn't bother anyone longterm.
The bigger bump in the road is that not that many are interested in spending coins they believe will be worth 10 times more after the halving, again a fake issue since you can spend your coins and with the unused fiat replenish your stash, driving merchant adoptions since they see people spending.

To be fair, bitcoin is not used as a currency as much as it should be. Yes when we look at the volume and how much it gets sent and received per day, it may look like a big amount but most of it for investment purposes. So when you look at it that way, people do not care about the satoshi part of it and only care about how much it worths in fiat.

This is a sad reality, it should not be like that, and it should be seen as a good and loved thing, but at the end of the day we just need to accept that there is nothing we can do to change it. People will keep on using it as a way to invest and make money, hence won't care about the unit being different.

The maximum total supply of Bitcoin is 21 million. Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, designed the cryptocurrency essentially as digital gold and capped the Bitcoin maximum supply to mimic the finite quantity of physical gold. Becuase of this limited supply as well as the number of people using Bitcoin, that value of Bitcoin have increased and this has led to the use of Bitcoin in fractions as it now expensive to have one full Bitcoin. As the value goes up, the number of fractions in decimal keep increasing. Satoshi represents the fractional part of Bitcoin, but it not popularly being used as a unit of Bitcoin.

Honestly I do not think that it is that weird or different. The difference is that we have used x,xx method for so long that we are so used it, but why not have 8 zeros after the comma? What makes it so impossible? Bitcoin is a valuable one, meaning that 1 satoshi didn2t mean anything at all back in the day, instead it does mean something today, still very little but grew so much.

Compared to that dollar doesn't have that, it has the reverse, back in the day 1 dollar could buy you a house, then 100, then 1000, today you need like at least 60k for a proper condo, let alone a good house which would be around 100-150k and a great one would be at least 300-400k. So why need more than 99 cents, it worths nothing anyway.

I don't disagree, but at the moment saying that 1 bitcoin is $30,000 is far more meaningful than saying 1 sat is $0.0003 or 0.03 of a cent. For people trying to buy or sell bitcoin, rather than being faced with a decimal point and extra zeroes in the amount they are trying to trade, the would instead by faced with a decimal point and extra zeroes in the price they are trying to pay.

Perhaps instead, if we want bitcoin to be the base currency, then we should be measuring other currencies against it, rather than vice versa. How about we switch the units and say that $1 equals 3,300 sats. Also makes it far more obvious how much fiat is devaluing. 5 years ago 1 dollar used to buy 60 thousand sats. Now it only buys 3 thousand sats!

Historically, the units of a particular currency have always served as a more convenient representation of the units of weight of the commodity backing it. For example, one dollar was always equal to one ounce of silver, hence one cent was 1/100 ounce of silver. If I wanted to exchange my dollars for pounds of sterling, which, as the name suggests, represents pounds (of silver), I would have to pay 16 dollars for each pound of sterling, simply because 1 pound is 16 ounces. Unlike fiat currencies, which always require some sort of backing, bitcoin has value on its own and therefore doesn't need any weight representations and conversions. But to signify bitcoin is a divisible currency, there must be some units that will represent small values. Given that everything in the bitcoin code is measured in terms of satoshi, we can't escape usage of these units: they, like "bitcoin", have become a brand and therefore are widely recognized and accepted.

That is for sure mate. The price may seem to be stagnant right now but not the progress or the adoption rates. It will only keep on growing and this would help the value of btc grow too in the future. Maybe that is also the the time that more people will use btc a currency like what they are doing with their fiats. For now, people are only using their btc for hodling or as an investment asset.

Bitcoin is a currency but only a crypto. That means, it still have some difference as when compared to fiat currencies but this shouldn't be a big issue. Btc users are already used to, on how they see btc. There is no need for us to copy what we see in fiat currencies.

True, but that is today. Assuming that bitcoin gets more and more expensive in the future, we're going to use a lot more of the hundreds and thousands range of sats rather than millions; depending on what you're buying of course. Whereas with bitcoin, the decimal would just move further and further and would add more and more zeroes. Using sats this early is just for future proofing.

Yeap, I know the chances of sats being adopted as default is somewhat wishful thinking. One man can dream though!

This is so it came be broken down to a fraction of a fraction. Keep in mind bitcoin only has a finite about of coins to ever be minded unlike traditional fiat which can be continue to be printed limitlessly. Hopefully bitcoin continues to progress and becomes used as a currency more often so this way of being denominated is important for that factor.

The best way to write a number of bitcoins is to use exactly 8 digits of precision, that way you can either think in terms of BTC or sats by just focusing on the left or right side of the number.

Example:

I don't think the units matter that much. I don't like the 1μBTC unit, to be honest. I think that units should be made for convenience, and 1 of something should be clear, graspable, and also not totally worthless. 1 BTC is too much, but 1 μBTC is too little. I'm comfortable with mBTC, and with parts of Bitcoin (0.001, 0.002, etc). I know people who instead talk about 100,000 Satoshi, 200,000 Satoshi, etc., but I can't immediately guess how much this or that is. As long as people understand each other and use the denomination that helps them understand how much value they're talking about, I think it's all good.

I don't know. I agree that sats is easier for "spending money" levels of usage, and I prefer sats for amounts up to around 0.001 BTC, but beyond that then I prefer using BTC for the same reason that you have said, but in reverse. It is easier to say "point two five three eight bitcoin" than it is to say "twenty five million, three hundred and eighty thousand sats".

When we can't even convince people to actually hold their own coins in their own wallet, then good luck convincing them to make this narrative shift. Ultimately, given that the name of the entire ecosystem is the same name as the unit, then I can't see you ever disentangling the two. For example, talking about running Bitcoin Core, worked on by the bitcoin developers, to set up your own bitcoin node, to sync to the bitcoin network, to use to receive a bitcoin transaction, so you can hold a few million satoshis. Most people won't buy it.

I think the base unit will be bitcoin in the media and on exchanges forever, even if we do eventually reach such a price that most people talk about satoshis when transacting.

One bitcoin contains one hundred million satoshis. When it was created, Satoshi Nakamoto himself did not know how popular his bitcoin would be and therefore, I think, played it safe by including such a large number of bitcoin components. Given the limited number of bitcoins, this is a very far-sighted decision. In this regard, we can not worry that someone will not get his treasured part. In addition, it is also convenient when using it if it will have a very high price.

For me the surprising thing would be the opposite. BTC being an innovation that breaks radically with traditional currencies, it is normal that it is different in many aspects.

And I wouldn't say it's also a currency. It is a currency, it was devised and launched as a currency, but it has turned out to be such a good and valuable currency that many people buy it as a safe haven and as an investment.

I also like to speak only in terms of bitcoin or satoshis, all the middle terms I also find confusing.

Bitcoin has defied so many societal standards already. I don't see anything wrong if it is different from other currency conversion or  unit. As long as it is understood by many and do its function, then it's all good. One reason that I think why bitcoin is called 'bitcoin' despite how big or small its value is that it is much easier to comprehend and it doesn't bring up any confusion to the people who are using it and are planning to use it. It's convenient and comfortable to use. 

After all, we have the authority to view our portfolios the way we want to. So if you prefer other subunits of bitcoin, you can set it up yourself if that is what you preferred to use.

There are many units for Bitcoin

• [Did you know?] Bitcoin Table of Units
• Honestly I don't know and can't not remember all of sub-units. I remember two units which are enough for me: Bitcoin and satoshi

Lol pretty much. Bitcoin's default high unit price gets a lot of newbies to buy "cheaper" (shit) coins because of the "bitcoin is too expensive I can never get 1 full bitcoin" narrative. Using sats as default on almost all platforms fixes this.

That, and if we want to put more emphasis on bitcoin as 'money', paying "17k sats"(hopefully far lower in number in the future) is far better than paying "zero point zero zero zero seventeen BTC" for a cup of coffee. Using decimals is horrendous UX.

Obviously it's going to be extremely difficult because it's going to need mass consensus and a lot of organizing, with preferably with most platforms switching to sats at a certain exact day and time. But yea, tbh if I was a famous bitcoin personality(that's rich enough to not need to work a day of my life), I'd spend most of my time pushing this narrative. I think it's far more important than most people think.

@mk4 I'm now wondering if you're after a stock split like event - exchanges will be the ones that can make people change, and if you can buy a whole bitcoin derivative for a dollar (or less) there'll probably be a lot more excitement than someone spending a day's wage on 0.003BTC.


I think people will change it back but they'll normally get comfortable with the new numbers after a while.
If you're checking something daily (which is probably where you'd be more likely to change it back) it'd probably take you a few months to switch but then that's done and you've switched.


If arithmatic is involved anywhere, calculations will already be being done to convert sats to btc, at most it probably means deleting a line of code or removing a symbol (potentially a database reset too but probably not).

I think the main problem with doing this would probably be the rivalry it produces over what decimals to use.
The lightning network (purely as an example) uses pico, nano, micro and milli in it's specifier.
I would assume the satoshi came from the idea of bitcoin having at most 16 digits that way (the <21000000 being the first 8 that could possibly be represented up to).

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Electrum preinstalls with mbtc seleted, I don't know if that changed but I think we could expect it to become bits and then sats whenever their devs seem it appropriate (bitcoin core comes preloaded in btc still though afaik).

I think Satoshi had no idea how much could Bitcoin be worth, so instead of trying to guess how big the total supply will be, and how much subunits should Bitcoin have, he just divided Bitcoin into 100,000,000 parts, because with 21,000,000 coins that creates enough units to teoretically cover all the demand for units of account in the world.

I don't think anyone should try to force any standard Bitcoin unit, users should have an option if they want Bitcoin to be displayed in bitcoins, milibitcoins, microbitcoins, sats or any other units they prefer.

Yes. The main trading pairs are mostly against USDC/ETH now simply because of the liquidity on on-chain AMMs like Uniswap. Obviously BTC/altcoin can't be a trading pair on an on-chain AMM, so the default is USDC or ETH. People aren't fans of wrapped bitcoin(wBTC) for obvious reasons.

It is easy why we use Bitcoin and not Satoshi as standard, because at the beginning of Bitcoin you would even have to send a few tousand BTC to transfer any value.

Bitcoin though might be a currency, it is completely distinct from fiat currencies and as such, there isn't any reason for them to have a definitive unit of measurement as with fiat.
If we are to look at it:

Bitcoin is digital while fiat, is paper money.
Bitcoin operates a decentralized system, fiat is centralized.
Bitcoin belongs with blockchain, fiats operates with the CB and its degenerate banks.
New bitcoins are mint by mining, fiats are printed in the CB.
Bitcoin has got a finite number, some 21million BTC while, fiat can be printed as need be by the CB.
Bitcoin is highly volatile and fiat isn't.

And it keeps going on and on to give accounts as to why bitcoin shouldn't have a definitive unit to its value. In order to serve more better, the 21million BTC available, it has to be liable to some appreciation to ensure its least value has some validity to it in the far future.
Bitcoin is distinctive to fiat unit measurements and thats for the best!

Correct.

Correct, but it doesn't actually matter what Bitcoin Core uses on the back end. It uses sats, but we still have various wallets and services which display BTC, mBTC, μBTC, bits, sats, etc. A wallet or service can use whatever units they like.

That would put the market cap of bitcoin at 2.1 quadrillion dollars. The only way that could ever happen is if the dollar collapses due to hyperinflation (although such a suggestion doesn't seem nearly as a crazy as it would have 15-20 years ago).

Are they? I suppose it helps to hide the fact that the altcoin is collapsing when you measure it against another collapsing currency. Like when you look at BCash 3 years ago - it was $200 then and it's $200 now, but it was 0.05 BTC then and it's not even 0.007 BTC now. Fiat value hasn't changed, bitcoin value is down ~86%.

Personally, I prefer using either BTC or sats. All the units in the middle - mBTC, μBTC, bits - are unnecessary and confusing.

People will definitely need to adjust, but this is one of those things that it's better to change sooner than later, as it will be far harder in the future if we will need far more people to adjust. This needs to be done before bitcoin becomes a well-adopted payments asset.

As for pricing altcoins, they're mostly priced in USDC now. Done are the days where most if not all altcoins are priced vs BTC.

If they did so now, I'm of the opinion that a lot of users would still switch back to viewing the price in bitcoins rather than a fraction of it, as that has become the standard not just for Bitcoin, but for any cryptocurrency listed there.

Also, sats appear quite often in Bitcoin for peoplyto have become more familiar with it; for one it's the default standard for measuring feerate on transactions, so looking at the sats/byte or vbyte would give one an idea of how much cents of dollars they pay in relation to sats.

It is not very crazy to imagine considering the way that US dollar is being printed non-stop while not being backed by anything anymore. Soon we will have to stop measuring the value in fiat and start measuring it in goods instead.

I think this will happen..once Bitcoin adoption has grown exponentially and the value of a Satoshi has increased drastically. We know the bitcoins supply are dwindling for several reasons, so the availability of bitcoins will become problematic and people will have to resort to Satoshis to trade and to make payments for products and services. 

Imagine when a time will come where a Satoshi might be valued at $1 .......    (This sounds crazy, but a bitcoin valued at $60 000 also sounded crazy..back in 2010.)

Bitcoin broke all the traditions when it comes to currencies.
It has no physical form.
It has no central authority controlling it.
It has limited supply.
It is global.
and more.
Why shouldn't its unit be any different? Although it is not different  the way you think. The difference is that you can use any unit you like. For example I also like the satoshi unit and that's what you can use. For example something worth $1 is also worth 3300 sat.
In other words the difference is in the freedom to chose any unit you want. It is also reflected (to some extent) in wallet softwares.

Correct me if I'm wrong — but we don't even need to have a soft fork for sats to be the standard, right? All we need are the typical front-end app wallets(and things like CMC and CoinGecko) to collaborate and switch to sats as default. As Bitcoin Core already uses sats by default on the back-end anyway.

Yup everyone has that adrenaline of possessing one full coin. Just like mk4 stated, it’s easy to say I have 100 hundred doge or 1 doge. Even in case of decimal bitcoin everyone keeps calling it bitcoin because that’s what makes it everyone easier to understand. Micro, sats, are just being words these days.

May be due to decimal conversions and little difficult understanding of fiat conversion makes it difficult to use word sats. For example, give me $0.0003 in bitcoin?

Why, does it have to be the same? In the first place, Bitcoin is a world different from the US Dollar and other fiat currencies, even the antithesis to them, so I guess it is also good that its currency units are done in a different way. What is perhaps most important in this respect is that Bitcoin is divisible, which is very important in a functioning currency. A single BTC could be divided up to the 8^th decimal point.

I think all numerical values for bitcoin in bitcoin core (and the blockchain it downloads) are also represented in sats too.

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@OP your mention of it being 1/1000 reminded me of the Indian currency system that seems to also use sets of 1000 instead of the cent system (sets of 100) the dollar, euro and pound sterling use.

I've been somewhat of a huge advocate for using a small denominator as well. Specifically, sats. Yes, 1 sat is around like $0.0003, but it'll probably be fine in the long term.

People seem to be naturally attracted towards 'cheap' prices. The same reason why the likes of DOGE, SHIB, ADA have gotten so much attention from retail noobs — because of their decimal price.

Bitcoin is also a currency, why is its unit so different from the commonly used currency units?  

    For example: $1 = 100 cents. Not only the conversion ratio of the US dollar, but other currencies also have similar regulations.

    So,The same is true for the unit of Bitcoin:1μBTC=100Satoshi.

    1μBTC is equivalent to a unit of 1 USD. 1btc=30079 US dollars, this is not customary to use,
  
    converted to: 1μBTC≈0.03 US dollars,
  
    The same unit, the same habits, but a brighter future！

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Example: A bag of bread in a supermarket is labeled:   A, $2.
                                                                              
                                                                                B, 0.00006653 BTC.
                                                                                
                                                                                C, 66.53 µBTC.

        According to the degree to which the currency issued by each country can be continuously decomposed, it is customary to use the third digit from

the bottom as the main unit. For example: 1 USD, 1 Euro, 1 Chinese Yuan, etc.One of the prerequisites for the large-scale application of a standard is

that the unit should be unified and easy to conform to habits. Because it is necessary to consider the understanding and acceptance level of the vast

majority of people, such as the elderly, children, people with low education and so on. Using such a large unit as BTC, it is too troublesome to represent

some daily necessities.
      
         In addition, considering the total amount of Bitcoin issued, the world economy, and the global population, 1µBTC≈3USD in the near future is just

a new beginning。
          
         I believe it...