Topic: Can bitcoin be divided beyond satoshis? (Read 2813 times)
Can bitcoin be divided beyond satoshis? no, beyond it, bitcoin is unable to divide more, satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin which is further undivided, someone will say it half a bitcoin but that digit is unable in the technology of bitcoin.
I dont think anything beyond satoshi is needed. 1 sat is quite low. But if btc goes beyond million, than may be something will be introduced like ibtc (0.001 btc) or nbtc (0.0001btc). Just my own way of thinking. However satoshi is well established unit and may be we should not spend single effort on it, now
So the bitcoins are Satoshi. It's just that bitocaine is measured in satos. As I understand it
Sorry to dig up an old topic but I had been thinking about this recently.
It would only take a 2 decimal place shift in the price of BTC before 1 satoshi is equal to approximately 1 cent. Arguably a long way off, however there are 2 reasons I think this should be taken more seriously:
1. Streaming money - Maybe 1c or 1sat isn't a small enough division to pay for 30 seconds on a song, half an hour of insurance etc.
2. 1c may seem like an insignificant sum of money for someone from a rich/developed country, however it may not be a sufficiently small division in use cases of people from poorer/developing countries.
Cheers
It would only take a 2 decimal place shift in the price of BTC before 1 satoshi is equal to approximately 1 cent. Arguably a long way off, however there are 2 reasons I think this should be taken more seriously:
1. Streaming money - Maybe 1c or 1sat isn't a small enough division to pay for 30 seconds on a song, half an hour of insurance etc.
2. 1c may seem like an insignificant sum of money for someone from a rich/developed country, however it may not be a sufficiently small division in use cases of people from poorer/developing countries.
Cheers
Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?
Now I think we do not need divided further because still only 74% mining has been completed and we do not know how much coin we are circulating and how much coin are lost. When 21 million will arrive to us and after that we can think about divide a satoshi further. 
Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?
I suppose it's possible but there is no point of doing that unless Bitcoin price increase .. a lot of course.
yeah. even if we can divided bitcoin further than 1 satoshi, no one will use that digit IMO because it's too small. I even rarely use 1 satoshi.
I think it's possible but it's not so easy to do and also it's so useless cause you anyway need a lot of satoshis to pay your fee for transaction.
Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?
I believe only the price of bitcoin will demand that.When there is a demand for trading less than one satoshi like calculating value of one satoshi greater than 1 cent and then we have to divide further.
Exactly. If bitcoin goes up to say, 10000 a coin, a satoshi will be significant, and will have to be factored in. I will admit that it will be a tiresome fix (all that code this far is designed for 8 decimal places, changing that will be a nightmare).
Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?
I believe only the price of bitcoin will demand that.When there is a demand for trading less than one satoshi like calculating value of one satoshi greater than 1 cent and then we have to divide further.
Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?
Only on off-chain ledgers. A transaction smaller than one satoshi will simply not be accepted by the network. Also, the value is so insignificant it's almost useless to track.
But, if the value of btc goes up to something epic, this may have to be considered..
As it is using an unsigned 64 bit integer to store the number of Satoshi's any extension to this would not at all be trivial (it would require quite a lot of code to be reworked and a huge amount of testing) so I can't see any such thing happening for many, many years (if ever).
Understand that it affects the entire system in regards to the txs (memory, protocol and storage). Perhaps people might recall the amount of work that was done to solve the Y2K problem?
(am guessing most here are too young to know about that - but it resulted in huge numbers of retired COBOL programmers coming out of retirement to earn huge amounts for a few years)
Those that say "Bitcoin's 8 decimal places can easily be extended" do not understand software engineering.
Understand that it affects the entire system in regards to the txs (memory, protocol and storage). Perhaps people might recall the amount of work that was done to solve the Y2K problem?
(am guessing most here are too young to know about that - but it resulted in huge numbers of retired COBOL programmers coming out of retirement to earn huge amounts for a few years)
Those that say "Bitcoin's 8 decimal places can easily be extended" do not understand software engineering.
I agree, Changing either the 8 decimals, very painful, or the total supply, creates uncertainty, is not something that will happen soon.
Look at how the needed increase in block size is going!!
Ahhhh, COBOL and Y2K, I remember that and ya know I am kinda glad COBOL is barely used anymore!
Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary! If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.
Without having to come to any agreement, just add mili/micro (or some other unit that is smaller) satoshi and the problem would be solved. I can see how it would be hard to reach an agreement on the name though.Otherwise it won't be needed. Now even if it does become the world's only currency, dividing the Satoshi into a million Laudas won't be needed: one more decimal will do the trick (to which we'll add 2 more for the sake of clarity).
If you do not use Laudas, I will stall consensus for all eternity!I will vote for Laudas!!
Can bitcoin be divided further than 0.00000001?
I don't think there is any official unit after SatoshiBut you can just add one more zero in front and create a new unit it's not a big deal but it's useless to divide bitcoin further. It would be like dividing 1¢ further to 0.001¢ or something like that.
Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.
Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary! If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.
It is 1 billionth of a bitcoin anyway. At $100,000 per bitcoin , 1 satoshi would be worth 1/100th of a cent. I think it would be generations before it would be necessary, and then only because so many coins would be lost.
At that price:
$2 100 000 000 000 market cap.
It could happen.
$2.1 trillion dollars market cap! That's unimaginable at the moment. Gold is only about $7 trillions. If this happens, bitcoin will definitely need to be scale-up a lot to meet the demands!
Yes, but I would like to know what is the limit of division? I heard BTC economy can run on 1 BTC only. What division level would be at for that??
it is all in the coding.
you can see 1 as 1 or 1.000 or 1.00000000000000 and treat it that way. so if there is a need because of the price or amount of bitcoin lost there can be changes in the code that implement further division.
Currently you are not able to divide it beyond as satoshi is the smallest introduced unit. However, if it ever becomes needed, additional units could be added that are smaller than a single satoshi (e.g. 1 000 000 Laudas = 1 Satoshi). I don't think that it will come to that though.
Good luck actually making it happen if it does somehow become necessary! If they can't reach agreement about anything else, I don't see people agreeing on spliting the Satoshi.
It is 1 billionth of a bitcoin anyway. At $100,000 per bitcoin , 1 satoshi would be worth 1/100th of a cent. I think it would be generations before it would be necessary, and then only because so many coins would be lost.
At that price:
$2 100 000 000 000 market cap.
It could happen.
Yes, but I would like to know what is the limit of division? I heard BTC economy can run on 1 BTC only. What division level would be at for that??
if the coins are still in satoshi control then they will be devided by him. but if they are now not in his control then who will divide them . i thinks there is no need to talk about this topic. i think we should think about the bitcoin and not about the satoshi.
Yes bitcoin can be divided beyond satoshis. But it would require a major hard fork. It doesn't justify the current price of bitcoin. Such major amendment in bitcoin protocol might only be required only when it's price rises very high.
It will take lots of time and price should be skyrocket to million marks per coin than only there will be need of getting smaller fraction than satoshi. But for now satoshi is fine and will be fine for next few decades.
The possibility of bitcoin to be divided beyond Satoshi is possible only if the price goes very high. Big price increase will cause a division.
Yes, if the value of bitcoin reached to millions of dollars then I think there will be an idea appear that satoshi should have to divide and a new term will be appeared which will be used for the sub particles of satoshi. Jump to: