That's 21 trillion dollars. Double the size of the US economy.
And not all of the economy is in dollars. Due to velocity of money, you don't need 21 trillion dollars floating around to do that.
We got plenty of digits for a LONG time.
Topic: Eight decimal places isn't enough... - page 2. (Read 8989 times)
And not all of the economy is in dollars. Due to velocity of money, you don't need 21 trillion dollars floating around to do that.
We got plenty of digits for a LONG time.
That's 21 trillion dollars. Double the size of the US economy.
The current software only allows division up to 8 decimal places. That's not a hard limit.
Even if it were, and this has been said many times elsewhere .00000001 BTC == $0.01 means that 1.0 BTC = $1 000 000.00
God, I hope that ever becomes a problem.
Even if it were, and this has been said many times elsewhere .00000001 BTC == $0.01 means that 1.0 BTC = $1 000 000.00
God, I hope that ever becomes a problem.
I keep hearing people say that since bitcoins are divisible down to the eighth decimal place, we can afford losing bitcoins since the rest will grow in value. But the maths doesn't bear this out.
With 21M bitcoins in existence, that means we have a maximum of 2,100,000,000,000,000 or ~2 quadrillion unique transaction units. It's like cents - you can't possibly sell a chocolate for less than a cent.
Given that people continue to lose bitcoins on a regular basis due to hard disk crashes, fires, laziness (especially in the early days when bitcoins are not worth that much), each bitcoin lost represents a loss of 100 million unique transactions. To make matters worse, if a truly rich person (in bitcoins) dies and leaves no will or whatever, we could end up losing tens of thousands of bitcoins over time equating to billions of unique transactions.
This kind of loss can't be made up over decades since bitcoins are not infinitely divisible. I think we need more than just eight decimal places to keep the current structure intact.
Another option is to assume a certain percentage of coins will be lost over time and therefore continue to generate the bitcoins even after 21M at a rate which more or less cancels out the loss. This might end up building in a small inflationary pressure over time, but it will be a predictable pressure and automatic - not subject to the whims and fancies of political entities.
With 21M bitcoins in existence, that means we have a maximum of 2,100,000,000,000,000 or ~2 quadrillion unique transaction units. It's like cents - you can't possibly sell a chocolate for less than a cent.
Given that people continue to lose bitcoins on a regular basis due to hard disk crashes, fires, laziness (especially in the early days when bitcoins are not worth that much), each bitcoin lost represents a loss of 100 million unique transactions. To make matters worse, if a truly rich person (in bitcoins) dies and leaves no will or whatever, we could end up losing tens of thousands of bitcoins over time equating to billions of unique transactions.
This kind of loss can't be made up over decades since bitcoins are not infinitely divisible. I think we need more than just eight decimal places to keep the current structure intact.
Another option is to assume a certain percentage of coins will be lost over time and therefore continue to generate the bitcoins even after 21M at a rate which more or less cancels out the loss. This might end up building in a small inflationary pressure over time, but it will be a predictable pressure and automatic - not subject to the whims and fancies of political entities.
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