So can we move the decimal at least 3 more places?
It needs to have a full 9 range to make any sense.
Topic: How will BitCoin survive as people die, wallets get lost, bitcoin grows, etc???? - page 2. (Read 1431 times)
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March 25, 2013, 12:29:03 PM
It needs to have a full 9 range to make any sense.
March 25, 2013, 12:24:56 PM
we can't easily move past the limit of 8 decimals without severely screwing up everything.
Can one of the dev's comment on this? I heard a ways back that increasing the number of decimals was trivial.
The software uses a 64 bit integer for each value. You can't make that bigger; you can't add any decimals to that. Although the protocol itself is simple enough to change (hell, you could make it add letters instead of numbers and smiley faces), the program that actually does the calculation won't work without a major rewrite.
You'd have to update every bitcoind implementation, linux, embedded, modified/customized copies, windows clients, website backend codes using it, etc.
As a friend said, "That would be a much bigger change than anything that has ever happened since Satoshi's original client was released".
2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
BTC limit = 21,000,000.000 000 00?
So can we move the decimal at least 3 more places?
March 25, 2013, 12:24:04 PM
I agree something needs to be done about this. True, you could always move the decimal point, but that doesn't really seem like a sound solution to me.
Barring chain size and block transaction size limits, it IS a sound solution. Infinite divisibility is one of the key features of bitcoin. Even when all but a fraction of a bitcoin are "lost", the remainder can be split to meet any demand.
I guess, but I still think there should be more places past the decimal. Unfortunately you'd probably have to create a whole new currency because changing the protocol like that would cause a major fork. We already experienced a little fork with the recent block size discrepancies. How hard would it be to create one that has an infinite amount of places past the decimal? I think it would be an interesting experiment.
March 25, 2013, 12:18:36 PM
I agree something needs to be done about this. True, you could always move the decimal point, but that doesn't really seem like a sound solution to me.
Barring chain size and block transaction size limits, it IS a sound solution. Infinite divisibility is one of the key features of bitcoin. Even when all but a fraction of a bitcoin are "lost", the remainder can be split to meet any demand.
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March 25, 2013, 12:16:47 PM
we can't easily move past the limit of 8 decimals without severely screwing up everything.
Can one of the dev's comment on this? I heard a ways back that increasing the number of decimals was trivial.
The software uses a 64 bit integer for each value. You can't make that bigger; you can't add any decimals to that. Although the protocol itself is simple enough to change (hell, you could make it add letters instead of numbers and smiley faces), the program that actually does the calculation won't work without a major rewrite.
You'd have to update every bitcoind implementation, linux, embedded, modified/customized copies, windows clients, website backend codes using it, etc.
As a friend said, "That would be a much bigger change than anything that has ever happened since Satoshi's original client was released".
March 25, 2013, 12:13:22 PM
I agree something needs to be done about this. True, you could always move the decimal point, but that doesn't really seem like a sound solution to me.
March 25, 2013, 12:12:14 PM
we can't easily move past the limit of 8 decimals without severely screwing up everything.
Can one of the dev's comment on this? I heard a ways back that increasing the number of decimals was trivial.
That's where I was getting at Matthew. I have been doing my research. Part of that research is posting on the NEWBIES forum, where it's full of Newbies who ask the basics. I'm not on the General board asking basic things with people who have thousands of posts.
March 25, 2013, 12:09:17 PM
we can't easily move past the limit of 8 decimals without severely screwing up everything.
Can one of the dev's comment on this? I heard a ways back that increasing the number of decimals was trivial.
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March 25, 2013, 12:07:07 PM
Bitcoin will survive off the living, not the dead. That's how all public company stocks work.
As for your numbers, do some research. It's 21,000,000 coins and we can't easily move past the limit of 8 decimals without severely screwing up everything.
As for your numbers, do some research. It's 21,000,000 coins and we can't easily move past the limit of 8 decimals without severely screwing up everything.
March 25, 2013, 12:04:30 PM
If we get to the point of there only being 1 Million BitCoins available, how many "units" of currency can that break down to with all the decimal places? Can it provide enough liquidity? Sorry if it's a silly question.
Another big question:
A. How would people be WILLING to accept a currency that, by visual glance, LOOKS ridiculous if we get to the point that a Pizza costs .0000000001 BTC? Or a Car that costs .0000001 BTC? (obviously just examples only). Will people be willing to learn that stuff? I know we'll have things like mBTC and uBTC etc etc, but do you think the learning curve will be too steep for people, especially since we can go many many decimal places down the line? It's not "easy" in the sense of we just have cents with the dollar, and then we have commas to easily distinguish when we've gotten into thousands, millions, etc. I know it might seem like a silly question, but I think it's a serious one too. Is it "too much" for people to handle? Heck, I think Bitcoin is really cool, and I even kinda find it annoying that a pizza might cost .0000000001 BTC someday.
Another big question:
A. How would people be WILLING to accept a currency that, by visual glance, LOOKS ridiculous if we get to the point that a Pizza costs .0000000001 BTC? Or a Car that costs .0000001 BTC? (obviously just examples only). Will people be willing to learn that stuff? I know we'll have things like mBTC and uBTC etc etc, but do you think the learning curve will be too steep for people, especially since we can go many many decimal places down the line? It's not "easy" in the sense of we just have cents with the dollar, and then we have commas to easily distinguish when we've gotten into thousands, millions, etc. I know it might seem like a silly question, but I think it's a serious one too. Is it "too much" for people to handle? Heck, I think Bitcoin is really cool, and I even kinda find it annoying that a pizza might cost .0000000001 BTC someday.
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