I’m one of the early Bitcoin entrepreneurs and have posted my first project announcements on this forum back in 2012. I’ve been an active participant of the community growth process, taking Bitcoin from nothing to where it is today. As someone who introduces new people to crypto as a daily full time activity, I can clearly see a few small things that act as major barriers for Bitcoin adoption and can be improved.
The main one is the need to deal with super small fractional numbers. First-time buyers get pretty disappointed when they learn that they can’t buy a whole Bitcoin. And 0.015 of something does not feel like a serious investment. It is also always a challenge for wallet developers to make an interface that is user-friendly and displays ultra small fractional numbers at the same time. With Bitcoin continuing its climb, this issue will only get worse.
Today, I am excited to introduce a project designed to solve this, and a number of other adoption issues as a side effect.
Meet SATO: the smallest unit of Bitcoin tokenized as an ERC-20 asset.
What is Satoshi (SATO)
- SATO token represent 1/100,000,000 of a Bitcoin, also known as Satoshi or sat, following Nakamoto's suggestion for Bitcoin fractionalization
- Improves Bitcoin accessibility by offering whole-number ownership and human-readable amounts
- Enhances user experience by eliminating the need to deal with multiple decimal places
- Reduces psychological barriers for new users entering the cryptocurrency space
Bitcointalk History Is The Inspiration
On this very forum Satoshi himself recognized early on that further development of Bitcoin may require it to become more divisible:
Eventually at most only 21 million coins for 6.8 billion people in the world if it really gets huge. But don’t worry, there are another 6 decimal places that aren’t shown, for a total of 8 decimal places internally. It shows 1.00 but internally it’s 1.00000000. If there’s massive deflation in the future, the software could show more decimal places.
Shortly after, another user named “ribuck”, suggested the idea of commemorating Satoshi by using his name for the small fractions of Bitcoin currency. Years later the community embraced the idea and it became a de-facto standard name for 1/100000000, the smallest fraction of a Bitcoin.
Benefits
Human-readable Numbers
The need to count zeroes and deal with micro amounts introduces a lot of friction to Bitcoin's useability. New users perceive assets as more valuable if they own whole numbers. Receiving 1,362 Satoshis (SATO) is a much nicer first-timer experience than 0.00001362 BTC.
No Rounding Losses
Significant amounts of Bitcoin are lost by users due to inadequate rounding of balances by wallet and exchange services. 0.00014 BTC often becomes 0.0001 and 0.00004 goes to the exchange balance. Transitioning to whole numbers would help avoid such mistakes.
Small Balance Abandonment
It is also pretty common among Bitcoin users to abandon or neglect wallets with perceptually insignificant balances, such as 0.0023 BTC, while the dollar equivalent of such balance can often buy you a pair of new shoes. 230,000 SATO equivalent is much less likely to be abandoned.
Lower Transaction fees
EVM-based blockchains enable lower transaction fees compared to the original Bitcoin blockchain, particularly for mass distribution use cases, such as airdrops and reward claims. A ~$0.01 per transfer fee unlocks day-to-day retail and p2p use cases.
DeFi Ecosystem
ERC-20 standard brings Bitcoin to the whole spectrum of DeFi ecosystem services. Satoshi (SATO) can be bridged to any other blockchain using existing ERC-20 bridges.
Recognized Unit of Account
The “Satoshi” is already widely recognized by the crypto community as a unit of account, meaning 0.00000001 BTC. Now you can use it in your wallets.
Security and Transparency
Each SATO is backed by 1/100,000,000 of a Bitcoin (using WBTC). The wrapping and unwrapping process is facilitated by a simple smart contract, ensuring transparency and minimizing security risks. Anyone can audit the reserves on-chain via blockchain explorer.
The Satoshi (SATO) token is live today on major blockchains including Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum One, and Polygon.
Try it out: https://getsatoshi.org/
Litepaper
For an in-depth understanding of SATO, please refer to our Litepaper.
Join the Community
- Website: getsatoshi.org
- Email: hello [at] getsatoshi.org
- Twitter: @sato_token
- Telegram: @satotoken