Topic: The usage of the "bits" denomination with bitcoin (Read 319 times)

I don't think unit bias is the only factor at play here. It may not even be the primary factor.

It has to do with latecomers feeling like they "missed the boat." They've been hearing about Bitcoin for years and feel the early adopter days are already over and the biggest gains already realized. They're looking for the next big money-making opportunity, specifically something that is not Bitcoin. These types of investors are buying based on greed and aren't paying attention to the fundamental reasons why Bitcoin is superior. I don't think changing decimals around is going to change their perspective.

One bitcoin will always be one bitcoin, but the one is formed based on fractions of mbtc, bits or Satoshi. When market of bitcoin increases every single satoshi gets valued. It is a must to give importance to denomination, because in the falling days we're gonna spend bitcoin directly, by that time we'll be in need for low denominations.

Well, if Bitcoin will reach moon - something like $50 000 or  $100 000, then probably these smaller units will be used more widely, but I don't believe that bits, mBTC or Satoshi can become main denomination of Bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin always will remain to be 1 Bitcoin.

New people that will buy in might wont, especially if Bitcoin was listed in bits on exchanges and on marketcap sites.

This is definitely one of the reasons, hence the BIP proposal. It's just not user-friendly to be talking about decimals of BTC rather than using something like "5 bits" or something.

Because the current number of people in the cryptocurrency space won't be the same like a year from now. We're going to expect new people.

It's obviously definitely not to confuse. Backread on Bardman's reply.

If you think about it clearly, it's not solely for more people to buy in compared to alts. Read the other past replies on this thread.

I think it would. I know a good number of people who bought in on XRP because it's "cheaper". Stupid argument I know. Good criticisms though.

Right now? Sure. But in the future assuming Bitcoin's price increases a lot? It's going to make more sense.

This is definitely one of the reasons, but I'm pretty sure unit bias is also one factor. How significant of a factor though? Idk.

True. It's a not so good idea for now, but in the future I think it'll be inevitable assuming if bitcoin would be actually widely used for payments. I can definitely see that there's going to be a lot of problems and confusion though.

Couldn't give you merits sorry. I'm out of sMerits. 

no, actually the main reason why they buy those things is that they think (because of false advertisement) that these altcoin's low prices is similar to the low price that bitcoin once had. in other words the mentality is that bitcoin was $0.5 once and is now $8000 so if they buy an altcoin worth $0.5 now they can turn it into $8000 in a couple of years.
that is basically 90% of the spam you see during the pump of each of these altcoins with things such as "flippening" fooling newbies into thinking that is possible...

someone ho has trouble understanding that bitcoin is divisible and they can buy 0.000125BTC with $1 instead of being forced to buy 1BTC for $8000 is also going to have trouble with a lot of other things including not understanding why their 125  bits is worth 90 cents today compared to yesterday. they may also start thinking if they had 1000000 bits they have a ton of bitcoin because they wouldn't know how the unit conversion works.

don't get me wrong, i am all for using smaller units. i have suggested it in the past myself, but i don't say we should do it because newbies have trouble with the unit conversion and don't think bitcoin is divisible. instead i say it because usage of smaller fractions is becoming more and more common with price rise. for example at $20k, $1 is equal to 0.00005 and that is not pretty and hard to read out loud but 5000 satoshi is better.

I think that soon a small part of bitcoin, the so-called satoshi, will be used more and more widely. After all, the price of bitcoin will grow every year and therefore not everyone will be able to afford it.

Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with use of full BTC. Wide use of these small units would change anything in my opinion because it's not important factor. I doubt that significant numbrr of people bought some altcoins/tokens just because they can't afford to buy one full Bitcoin.
I think that small units of BTC is already used widely enough, offcourse mainly in specific niches like mBTC in gambling or Satoshis in faucets.
I don't know what use of bits, mBTC or Satoshi would change in such case. 123571 Satoshi sounds same stupid. It will be same stupid saying some random numbers in USD, like $12 821.54.

this has been discussed to death already and i think chances of adoption are low.

in my opinion, jimmy song and the proponents of smaller denominations like bits or mBTC are wrong. i don't think "fixing" unit bias would prevent people from investing in altcoins as intended. and if it did, it would be disastrous for bitcoin's price. the altcoin market basically removes endless thousands of BTC from circulation, including from fiat exchanges (as people buy BTC to then buy alts). altcoins have always been super bullish for bitcoin's price. in turn, i think bitcoin's speculative price dynamics are a huge source of adoption.

i say, don't fix what ain't broke.

This is one of the most stupid issues in the crypto world. Somewhere in 2017 people were making different rankings with coins that are under $1. The most retarded thing was that people completely ignored its market cap and truely believed that if there is $1bln market cap with a shitcoin with couple cents price then it have more chances to x10 rather than  the same shitcoin with smaller MC.
Those cases are pretty stupid and you shouldn't try to determine any trends basing on them. So I would say that current stance of BTC is still fine.

Bits would be the optimum unit to use for bitcoin. As the lowest we could get is satoshi, we cannot take fees anything less than a satoshi (at least to date).
And bitcoin as you said is too big number to look at.
Another option could be to assume the supply of bitcoin to be x1000000 times more of current time and consider 1 bit as 1 bitcoin. That way we can further decrease the value of a satoshi or can we?

People would always choose where they would gain a bigger profit. Some of them choose altcoins over Bitcoin because they focus on day trading and holding believing that with smaller capital, they could gain a higher profit.
In addition, it would be impossible to replace Bitcoin in most platforms because its the most trusted coin though there are also smaller currencies which have good potential.

I don't see how this is going to happen, everyone is using Bitcoins, and no one would want to introduce other units of BTC on their platform, because it would create confusion - people will be looking for BTC but will instead see some "bits" and will probably think that it's some altcoin.

Also, I prefer mBTC as the next smaller unit, because currently it has convenient price in range of single digit dollars, so it's sufficient for dealing both with values equal to hundreds of dollars and fractions of a dollar.

What I mean to say is that not all of the alt-coins are going to be pump and it wouldn't matter if they would buy a whole crypto or just do it partial.
Bits are being used in gambling sites like bustabit,
And as a crypto user we already know what sat's is so why would we even use or change how we use it like if you see BTC0.001 we would already know that it is 100k sats,
Why would we even need to change it to actually 100,000 sats this would just confuse the users .

Well, for normal average people, for sure, I mean even for us, saying 0.00123571 BTC sounds stupid. It's clear that it works to a certain extent, ICO's usually can benefit from it, people think small supply coins are better. In reality it's the same, small supply = high price / high supply = low price. However, in terms of marketcap they will be the same.

This can help a little but don't expect that people will massively get into bitcoin just because we are to use "bits" or "satoshis" as it does not matter in the long run people will still look at the full value of 1 bitcoin against what he has in his fiat wallet. In the first place, I do not see this as the hindrance at all...I have not heard anybody complaining that we are not massively using satoshis or nay unit of the bitcoin for that matter. People are gonna buy bitcoin if they think they can gain something out of it. They may get emotional about talking about the many idealism that bitcoin can be carrying but at the end of the day it is what they can get that matters most.

Honestly, I think the reason why people buy alts or any other crypto is due to the potential amount of money they can earn from it. It doesn't matter of it is close to a dollar amount or not. People will grab anything as long as there is profit. Product/marketing has something to do with demand, if people can see a potential in any crypto, the price doesn't mattet even if you only own a fraction of it.

Nope. Take a look at coinmarketcap. Alts are still rising with bitcoin as expected. As with BTC value, take a quick look at BNB and XRP's charts.

Nope. Name a product/platform besides faucets, and Samourai wallet and LN wallets that actually uses sats and bits as default.

It doesn't matter how many alt-coins they bought if the value of it just keeps on decreasing.
We all ready use Sat's or Bits to buy partial BTC and for me it is still a good investment rather than having so many whole alt-coin that just keep on dropping low .
And just to be clear Sats and Bits are widely used .

So I just recently remembered Jimmy Song's BIP Proposal: Utilization of bits denomination in 2017; and I wanted to hear Bitcointalk's opinions on this topic.

I think one of the main reasons why people like to buy in on other coins/tokens(e.g. XRP, XLM, TRX, ADA) instead of BTC is that their prices are only in the cents range to a few dollars, compared to bitcoin which is currently at the 4 digit range(and probably soon back to 5). It isn't implausible to think that a good number of people might have been turned away from bitcoin and instead bought in on other coins and tokens due to the fact that they couldn't buy one full bitcoin, while they could buy dozens, hundreds, or thousands of the other coins. Basically, unit bias.

What if "bits" was widely used instead? Or probably sats in the future. I honestly only see a positive impact. Do you think it would benefit bitcoin?

Link to Bitcoin units/denominations: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units#Table_of_all_units

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Topic will be self-moderated for obvious reasons.