Topic: We will have dollar parity all over again (Read 2601 times)

+1 we should aim at mBTC really fast.. I'll try to use this term as much as possible in the future !

8 bits in a byte yes, but the 8 digits we are talking about represent a decimal number. 8 digits needs 27bits (with room to spare & 28 if you want it unsigned).

Agree 9 would have been better (and would have fit inside 32 bits). nano bit is very cool name

could have made the whole thing 18 digits and multiplied everything thing by 10! I'm not sure the satoshi is going to be small enough!

You're right, I misunderstood you.


I'm pretty sure we aren't going to be redefining 1 BTC.  I also see no problem with millibits(or mBTC if you prefer) and microbits.  Once we hit $100, $1 will be worth 10 millibits.  If we hit a million dollars per btc, $1 will be worth 1 microbit or 100 satoshis.

These prefixes are only 3 digits apart and two of them can cover the entire range of subbitcoin values.  Satoshi can be used if we get much higher than a million a piece, although that isn't really necessary since 1 satoshi is equal to 0.01 microbits.

Are milli- and micro so difficult to work with that you think it is easier to redefine what a bitcoin is?

Maybe something like a "bitcent"? If the price ever goes to over $10000/BTC, then I think we just don't need to worry about this anymore, as people will adapt, in a variety of ways.

No, you're looking at it from the wrong side. The fact that we call 100,000,000 satoshis "1 BTC" is arbitrary. What I'm saying above amounts to suggesting that we start calling 100,000 satoshis "1 BTC". Then what we currently call "1 BTC" would indeed be a "kilo coin" in the revised nomenclature.

I shouldn't say that the original selection of 100,000,000 satoshis = 1 BTC was arbitrary... It needed to yield numbers that were reasonable to work with while bitcoin was small in order to encourage adoption. Humans hate dealing with numbers that are too big or too small. But that sweet spot changes as bitcoin grows. I think the nomenclature needs to be such that the amounts we deal with day-to-day are generally within 3 or 4 orders of magnitude of the base unit.

I think it's pretty simple to just announce the change to the world as you would with a stock.  I.e., a stock split, then just move the decimal place after the announcement.

"Bitcoin shares split 1,000x"

Then again, some idiots would spin that as "ZOMG BITCOIN IS INFLATING LOOK AT ALL THE BITCOINS NOW!!!!"

What do we do in the mean time?

"Ok sir, a gallon of milk, six apples, a loaf of bread, and a tin of sardines... your total comes to 0.0134 BTC."

I don't know about you, but I foresee this as an issue. The guy could just denominate his prices in cBTC and say "That will be 13.40 cBTC."

I know its semantics, but I think the easier the transition into Bitcoins is for people, the better.

I think you're thinking too much, one thing at a time...

The renaming is already planned for when 1 satoshi = 1$

microbits sounds nifty.

also used in some scifi/cyber-/cypherpunk novels afai remember. Quite prophetic.

+1, get ahead of the curve dont follow behind it.

Hard to make an accurate prediction, as it basically depends on crowd think, and too many events we have no control over.

In one scenario I've imagined, the citizens of some country with a long history of unstable currency, like Argentina for example, decide to ignore the official currency and use Bitcoin.  Then maybe people from some other countries join in when their currency experiences hyperinflation.  Maybe we get some positive press about a thriving economy in various places where people are refusing to use the official national currency.

Maybe people everywhere start thinking of Bitcoin as a backup currency for when their national currency fails.

Then maybe the Eurozone collapses, and one or two countries just decide to do away with central banks and their old currencies, and just make Bitcoin their official currency.

As with the adoption of the metric system, the U.S. may be the last country stupidly clinging to their dollar when everyone else has already switched over.

That's just one possible scenario.

i wonder how long it would be before we get there

Sorry. Computers think in groups of 8. Just the way life is.

I recently did some research on Bitcoin units, and it seems that many Bitcoin users don't like naming every factor of 10.  The BitDime and BitCent are not popular names, perhaps partly because they are just USD units with "Bit" added as a prefix.  This is a global currency, so we need to listen to the opinions of those whose first language is not English.

The most popular subdivisions seem to be:

.001 BTC = 1 mBTC = 1 millibitcoin, a few have suggested nick naming it "BitMil".

.000001 BTC = 1 uBTC = 1 microbitcoin, a few have suggested nick naming it "BitMicro".

.00000001 BTC = 1 Satoshi.

I personally wish the original protocol had used 9 decimal places, because I like the name "nano" for the smallest unit.  It just sounds cool to me.  Maybe someday it will.

I recently started tracking my holdings in Quicken using their multi-currency feature.  They allow you to add currencies not in their list.  I set it up using BTC, but that didn't work when I needed to enter a transaction fee of BTC 0.0005.  Quicken only uses two digits past the decimal.

So now I'm tracking things in mBTC.  They required a 3-character code, so I used MBC.  It's working great so far, as the typical transaction fee is 0.5 MBC.  I'm looking forward to the day when I have to switch to UBC, not because some jerk sent me 1 Satoshi, but because ill be very rich when we get to that point!

There are SI standard prefixes for a reason.  Arbitrarily changing kilo to mean a multiplier of 1/100000000 instead of a multiplier of 1000 would not be productive.

Why so it does. I switched to mBTC and now instead of lamenting how few coins I have left, I am now overjoyed that I have thousands!

I know for a fact nothing has changed, but the chimp brain is strong in this one!

I like thinking in mBTC. SealsWithClubs already does that.

So we can start using mBTC s the default when we refer to a quantity of "bitcoin", and then just use something like "kilo coin" to refer to the 100,000,000 satoshis quantity (1 full/current btc).

This...a Satoshi would be like our current Bitcoin. We would just have Satoshicents, mSTS, etc.

don't you mean dollar parity with the Satoshi. I'm sure you did. Just clarifying it for others

I also like mBTC.  It will be good for a while and many smaller things are price-able in it.  Larger price, then BTC.