This is probably a dumb idea, but it occurred to me this morning and I thought I'd throw it out there so that people can bash it.
There has been some discussion that 21,000,000 bitcoins will lead to a price so high that the decimals become a pain to work with. For example, if BTC reaches $500,000USD each, a value meal would run you .00001BTC. Yeah, of course we could just call it "10 millibits". It just seems ineloquent. What if we just moved the decimal back by a couple places. This could probably be done with relative ease in the software. It could be implemented on a certain block #. Then there could be 2,100,000,000 "two point one billion" bitcoins. Every bitcoin already in existence would be 100x more bitcoins but would have the same value:
Before the split you would have: 1BTC = $500,000USD
After the split you would have: 100BTC = $500,000USD
The value of a bitcoin would go from: 1BTC = $500,000
To: 1BTC = $5,000
I confess that it would be confusing for many people temporarily, but the confusion would pass and the system would become easier to use. This would in effect be like a stock split. It would also probably help the value increase even more as people like the idea of buying one whole unit of something, more people would buy a small amount.
I am NOT arguing that 21,000,000 is not enough BTC for commerce. I fully understand the infinite divisibility of BTC. My argument is that the human mind would prefer to work with INTEGERS and not with decimals or millibits. Comments?
There has been some discussion that 21,000,000 bitcoins will lead to a price so high that the decimals become a pain to work with. For example, if BTC reaches $500,000USD each, a value meal would run you .00001BTC. Yeah, of course we could just call it "10 millibits". It just seems ineloquent. What if we just moved the decimal back by a couple places. This could probably be done with relative ease in the software. It could be implemented on a certain block #. Then there could be 2,100,000,000 "two point one billion" bitcoins. Every bitcoin already in existence would be 100x more bitcoins but would have the same value:
Before the split you would have: 1BTC = $500,000USD
After the split you would have: 100BTC = $500,000USD
The value of a bitcoin would go from: 1BTC = $500,000
To: 1BTC = $5,000
I confess that it would be confusing for many people temporarily, but the confusion would pass and the system would become easier to use. This would in effect be like a stock split. It would also probably help the value increase even more as people like the idea of buying one whole unit of something, more people would buy a small amount.
I am NOT arguing that 21,000,000 is not enough BTC for commerce. I fully understand the infinite divisibility of BTC. My argument is that the human mind would prefer to work with INTEGERS and not with decimals or millibits. Comments?
No, at 1 BTC = $500,000 USD, you would just buy a burger for 500 satoshi, you don't have to use decimal
