agree - the issue is to use bitcoins for its purpose ie low cost transactions. the yen is about 1% of the US dollar but people get their head around it. its the opposite to something being about 650 times one dollar but it is the same fundamental issue.
It's not the same issue, just a similar one. Here's the difference:
Imagine a can of coke is valued
0.99 $, and also imagine people would prefer to use the unit "kilodollar" (k$) for some insane reason.
Now, how would that can of coke be priced?
It's
0.00099 k$.
...or was it
0.00990 k$?
...or maybe
.000099 k$?
On the other hand, let's imagine people would prefer to use "millidollar" (m$) for some other insane reason.
Taking the same can of coke, how would the price look like?
It's
990 m$.
This cannot be mistaken as
9900 m$.
And it cannot be mistaken as
99 m$.
Have a look at the numbers above. As you can see, it is much much more difficult to count the post-decimal zeros than to just measure the length of the number. That's a big difference.
So, if we're in doubt, we should prefer to use a too small-sized unit rather than a too big-sized unit.
Currently, people use a too big-sized unit (BTC), which makes it necessary to count post-decimal zeros. This is inconvenient and error-prone.
Exactly, when I try to explain the decimals to people their eyes glaze over and they mentally check out. I mean, a bitcoin is currently worth a take-home paycheck for a lot of people, when you tell them that they lose interest immediately and that's in the U.S., if you want half the world to adopt it (that make far far far far far less money) 1 bitcoin is currently worth more than most of them will make in a YEAR, worldwide, the median household income is only about $10,000 (16.12BTC) and it's fairly lower in a lot of places... If you want people to adopt it as a currency, it needs to be easy to understand and not make people feel like they'll be bitcoin poor.
I guess I just won't bother."? I guess there might be, but it's presumably a fairly small demographic.
