Topic: Introduction of new BTC units to reflect present day prices to increase adoption (Read 224 times)

I always get dissed for saying it should change and it should. But it's too late now.

If it were possible the only sensible option is straight to Satoshis. After all these years I still can't be bothered to figured out how much something is if it's priced in mbtc. Bits would be hopeless.

People can handle numbers with large amounts of zeroes after them. They have a lot more trouble with zeroes before them. I still find myself double checking the amount of them every time.

Why to fix things which aren't broken? I think that adding new units isn't needed at all. It just would make things more complicated and add more confusion. I still can't remember how much mBTC or bits is worth and every time when I see these units used, I always have to use converter to convert it into BTC or Satoshi. More units would have same effect. Personally, for BTC and Satoshis is enough. I don't know what problem to use Satoshi for smaller values of BTC.
Take a look at fiat - it don't have 10-20 different units. Basically, it's just full units (dollars, euros, pounds) and smaller units - cents or pennies.

Bits would be a perfect way to express bitcoins. They are 100 satoshis and for a dollar, it's about 114 bits now.
It's quite easier to talk about whole numbers than on many decimal places. And our fees are too easier to explain it bits. And with the price rise bit would be perfectly usable.

These ideas are voiced on this forum quite regularly, and I suggest you do to some search if this topic is really interesting to you, as there's a huge amount of good discussion about it.

I personally believe that BTC units have very little impact on its adoption, people can get used to any numbers - in some countries they deal with hundreds and thousands, in other they usually deal with tens or single digit numbers. It's such a small detail compared to other problems, I wouldn't worry about it.

As for more units for different digits - just no. This would only create more confusion, especially if those units are arbitrary like 0.0001 BTC. The world, aside from America, uses metric system, so mBTC is very intuitive for most people, and together with satoshis that's all we need.

I don't we think more subdecimal units at the moment. Satoshis are good enough for the actual use of BTC in day-to-day transactions. Also most people refer to the US dollar value of BTC when paying so it doesn't make much sense to add more "units" in the current situation.

As the price raises to maybe 100k dollars it might be a good start to add more denominations.

I think you are running the risk of making things much more complicated by introducing a bunch of unnecessary terms. There is no need to have a name and abbreviation for every multiple of 10.

I use different denominations depending on the values I am talking about. Sats mostly just for fees and small Lightning payments, BTC for almost everything else.

There is an argument to be made for mBTC, for dealing with those values which are awkward in either BTC or Sats. $10 at the moment is 0.00114600 BTC or 114,600 sats. It is also 1.146 mBTC. I can understand why that is simpler to work in, particularly if you are communicating a price verbally as opposed to written down.

In the future as bitcoin continues to grow and the price heads upwards, I suspect Sats will become the default denomination for most things.

since what unit is used to represent the amount is a matter of user preference then instead of forcing a certain unit a multi unit system should be encouraged. for example when you go on a website and want to make a payment they should show you the amount in whatever default value (like bitcoin) then have a dropdown that you could select a different unit from (like mili or micro or satoshi) and see the same value in that unit. same with the wallets, they should support showing amounts in different units.

Same thoughts here. Trying to force new units on people isn't going to work, and it's why the whole "bits" experiment failed. So far, the only units that have caught on are BTC and satoshis. The market has spoken -- I'm fine with that.


Bitcoin will be adopted either way because of its strong monetary properties and network effect. This isn't worth worrying about.

I thought this idea had died years ago, and I'd hoped it did.

In my humble opinion, bitcoin should be denominated in either btc or satoshis, that's it.  Anything else requires a mental calculation that is completely unnecessary and would probably be confusing to the average person. 

To support my assertion, I'd point out that things like "Bits" and mBTC aren't used in practice all that much, at least not that I've seen.  Units of measurement ought to be kept simple and their number kept to a minimum.  I've taken enough science courses in my life to know that there are way, WAY too many units to describe a property such as weight.  It's like all the scientists wanted to plant their own flag and the result is that we have grams, pounds, stones, grains, troy ounces, tons, and a whole lot more, and there are just as many conversion factors as there are units, and it's a mess.  We don't need such a mess when describing an amount of bitcoin.

Would you really rather have someone ask you to send 31.3mBTC or 0.0313btc?  I would suggest that the latter is much easier to interpret for the average person.

0.0001 (1e-4) BTC

• 0.10 millibitcoin
• 100 microbitcoin

Either one works fine for me.

0.00001 (1e-5)

• 0.01 millibitcoin
• 10 microbitcoin

Again, either one works for me.

Don't need a special name for $10
Don't need a special name for 10 microbitcoin

Don't need a special name for $100
Don't need a special name for 100 microbitcoin.

It's a good idea, and actually "bitpip" is a very memorable name. Getting this idea to gain some traction is going to be a challenge though for sure.

As it stands, the numbering convention is very un-user friendly for anybody who is not technical. Having to include all the decimal places when denoting amounts looks ugly and scares people at way.

Perhaps one day when 1 satoshi is closer to equaling 1 cent ( if my maths is correct Bitcoin would need to hit $1 million dollars for this) we will have a level playing field, but I expect we're a long way away from this, and in the interim a proper memorable and friendly numbering system needs to be created and adopted.

I quite underestimated how hard it is to convince people to adopt a different, smaller unit rather than BTC. I was a bit of a fan of Jimmy Song's BIP proposal of using the "bits" denomination in the past, but unfortunately, it didn't get enough traction to actually have an impact. https://twitter.com/jimmysong/status/944411282874294273

With that said, I'm personally for using a smaller unit. It's just more natural to use a denomination that's worth like $1-100, rather than using "bitcoins" that's priced at the upper thousands. And don't get me started on the unit bias that's the cause of a lot of people investing in "cheaper" coins like freakin XRP. Just my 2 satoshis.

What makes adoption easier? Making something relatable. In this case, I'm talking about labelling two new, much needed Bitcoin units to accommodate present and future prices of goods and services relative to the US dollar and other fiat currencies. When the price of one BTC hovers near $10,000 USD, we have no unit worth 0.0001 (1e-4) BTC for an optimal conversion for the general public. If the price of Bitcoin gets to $100,000 USD one day, we also have no unit worth 0.00001 (1e-5), which is optimal for that price level. I understand that it's because the metric system simply does not have units for those values. I think these are the two most important units in driving adoption worldwide, because if people can more easily understand and convert prices from their native currency into a unit of Bitcoin, they may be more likely to actually use bitcoin. People have spent their entire lifetime learning how much stuff costs in their native currency, and so the closer the unit, the better.

I made a couple excel spreadsheets of the current units alongside common purchases in USD and how much that would be in each BTC denomination, and I realized it's quite unfriendly for the general public right now. For 1e-4 and 1e-5 units, I think it makes the most sense to use what's used in foreign exchange markets. A 'pip' is used for the fourth decimal when trading fiat currencies, which is 0.0001. Furthermore, a fractional pip is known as a 'pipette' and is used for the fifth decimal, 0.00001. See my excel charts for a better picture.

When I searched for discussions about either of these units/denominations after I had my thoughts and ideas, I only found this old thread from 2011 which got absolutely nowhere: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-naming-convetions-0001-pip-17988. It is good news that I'm not the first person to spontaneously think about this, because if multiple people are having the same thoughts and ideas, it may be a sound course of action.

Lastly, I saw here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units that someone suggested we call 1e-7 a Finney, but it's not established, so I didn't include it in my charts.

Thanks for reading, would love some feedback on this idea.

https://i.imgur.com/TYJvkhk.png

https://i.imgur.com/uN4cOCB.png