Topic: What's in a Satoshi? (Read 315 times)

Strange question. Any system should have the limits of its use. 1 Satoshi or 1 cent is only part of the system. Why a train can't enter the bridge if the weight exceeds the maximum allowable for travel over this bridge? Any system has a project documentation. It has a clear purpose of use and within the boundary values violates the first and foremost purpose of the system.

Exactly, satoshi is a part of the crypto currency that divided in to smallest amount of bitcoin in the other words ( cents. ) Anyways, ( for the OP ) if you have, let say 1 dollar if you divided it in to smallest amount you can call it "cents" it's like the bitcoin "satoshi" when you divided also in the smallest amount.

Satoshi is the structural part of the crypto currency, which is one hundred millionth bitcoin. Such small units facilitate transactions with BTC. The overall structural component of 1 bitcoin (BTK) is equivalent to 1000 millibits (MBTC), 1,000,000 microbits (μBTC) or 100,000,000 Satoshi. The exact figures are not known, but it is estimated that Nakamoto may have 1 million BTC, and this is equivalent to 100,000,000,000,000 Satoshi.
Despite the fact that bitcoins and satoshs are not part of the main currency pair, they can be converted into other currencies and purchased at the expense of these other units. There are exchangers that allow individuals to make transactions. This includes transferring dollars, pounds or other supported currencies to the account of one of the exchanges, where this balance can be used to buy or sell bitcoins and, ultimately, convert them to other monetary units. As in the case of exchange rates between classic values, the value of BTC will fluctuate depending on supply and demand. 

29 reply saying the same thing , the first one did respond to the question , did you even read posts before relying , satoshi bla bla bla .... somehow everyone knows what is satoshi now

Besides it is not like this cannot be changed very easily in bitcoin if the need ever arose, this is not possible with dollars I have read that some countries are not coining their lower denomination coins since it will be more expensive to create them than the value they represent, but with bitcoin everything you need is a change in the code and suddenly everyone could use units lower than a satoshi.

Each bitcoin is separable to the eighth decimal place, so each bitcoin can be part into 100,000,000 units. Every unit of bitcoin, or 0.00000001 bitcoin, is known as a satoshi. A Satoshi is the littlest unit of Bitcoin.

This is just like someone asking why is cent the smallest division of dollars. That’s a crazy question to ask. I will just say that you should take it as dollar, the smallest division of dollar is cents, so that’s the same thing in Bitcoin, the smallest division is satoshi.

And what would be the value of that divided Satoshis? If something is not worthy, do not have any value then why do we need to do it? Instead of adding terms or other things further,  just think of another way we can improve bitcoin. But if you really want, you can make some suggestions then post it here and let the people interested with it think of other terms.

When you have a dollar then the smallest division is cents. So we have here our bitcoin which is the whole amount, then its division is called satoshi.
Dollar= cents/ division
Bitcoin= satoshi/ division
I hope i give you my brief explenation for satoshi.

The true reason for the smallest increment of bitcoin being 0.00000001 is not known, it was decided that this would represent the 'cent' , its like asking why dollars are only divisible up to the second decimal, it was simply made that way.

Can it be subject to change, it'd be very surprising, considering the amounts of satoshis available to the public (21 000 000 bitcoins having 100 000 000 satoshis each ) i don't even think that they considered changing it one day due to the very high amount of satoshis available.

Each bitcoin is divisible to the 8th decimal place, so each bitcoin can be split into 100,000,000 units. Each unit of bitcoin, or 0.00000001 bitcoin, is called a satoshi. A Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin.

You cannot send less than 1 satoshi

It is by design. Satoshi Nakamoto decided that Bitcoin should be divided. I think he foresee that the prices would become much higher.

Dividing a coin infinite times can not be feasible, there should be some limit. Otherwise it will be very hard for current computer systems to process those data.

Satoshie is a bit of bitcoins, like dollars we cents and on bitcoin we ahave satoshie. For example you 0.00030000 of bitcoins so you have 30,000 of satoshies. This is the smallest part of bitcoin.

Agree, satoshi is the smallest fraction to unify a coin's value. Bitcoin will be valuable because it consists of millions of satoshi.
it's very important everyone can get some satoshi then save it to get a bigger price.

Think I remember reading that "finney" was also proposed, but eventually satoshi was settled upon. A fitting tribute, I'd say. One reason I always preferred just using Bitcoin and satoshi as opposed to the mBTC and bit denomination is that... 1 satoshi would also mean one mbit. Confusing.

If you look at the wiki on Lightining Network, that was published even at least as early as mid-last year, it already made it possible to make micropayments in sub-satoshi values. Presumably, this would be something people might think about should Bitcoin reach the utopian 1 million dollar mark, since 1 satoshi would meet parity with 1 US cent OR Bitcoin becomes the standard currency no longer denominated (or at least no longer psychologically equated) in fiat value.

if satoshi will be divided infinite times, it will be negligible.  that's why, i think, the reason why satoshi is the smallest is because it will be nonsense to put up or name an exponential value that is lesser than satoshi because it will be so small, zero or approximately equal to zero.

1 bitcoin is 100 000 000 satoshi (cryptocent)
So as dollar has cents, and euro has eurocents.

Simple we need to have some basic unit of account, if it is needed the code of bitcoin can be changed to allow even smaller units, that is not a problem, but you need to have a limit so you can express the value of bitcoin, and it is obvious that satoshi thought that bitcoin could become really valuable in the future because even if 1 BTC was worth 1 million dollars a satoshi will be worth 1 cent.

Just so you know - Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean that this cannot be changed in the future.
If the price of Bitcoin will reach some crazy amount in 5,10,15 years - then AFAIK it is possible to divide bitcoin more
and introduce unit even smaller than one satoshi - it should be perfectly doable. Just don't expect it will happen soon, if ever.

In my own thought satoshi is a smallest division of bitcoin or in other world we called it a penny centavo of bitcoin,because its derived from the family name of the founder and we called the father of all bitcoin Mr.Nakamoto Satoshi.Satoshi,is smallest variable of bitcoin that so important in the world of  crypto currency especially when counting the price value of bitcoin into smallest procedure.

To divide bitcoins an (almost) infinite number of times would require their representation as a floating point number.
If you don't know how that differs from an integer, then ask a maths teacher to point you to a book explaining real numbers.
Although computer chips from different manufacturers ought to get the same answer when subtracting one small floating point number from another, such as 0.0002 - 0.00000001, they sometimes don't quite match, due usually to different ways of rounding between a computer representation and a human readable decimal representation.  Try looking up the "Pentium Bug".

Setting a fixed 10^-8 minimum fraction allows such to be represented with integers for which all 64 bit arithmatic logic processors will get exactly the right answer.  For example 2000 satoshi - 1 satoshi = 1999 satoshi.  The purpose of bitcoin is to have worldwide money with which all the computers in the world can exactly agree that valid transactions are valid, and that fraudulent ones are not.  This can only be guaranteed by representation of bitcoin not with real numbers but with integer counting of satoshi.  It was presumably decided very early on not to count "bit cents" worth 0.01 bitcoins and use those as a minimum unit because it was not small enough for envisaged use cases such as kW-seconds electric car recharging bills.   Also real money with metal coins already struggles to make small enough metal pieces for half-penny coins, so there was no reason to copy what physical currency did.

Ask me about pegged coloured coin sidechains and sharding if you want more (possibly minority opinion) ideas for spending very tiny bitcoin quantities, possibly smaller than nanobitcoins, without clogging up the main international blockchain.

Well i thin k that in this world you can't find services or product with a value smaller then one satoshi, the value would be to small to matter in the economic world. It is similar with fiat.

well i think that's how currencies are, at least there should be a minimum. But your suggestion isn't bad though, an infinite division won't be bad. But have thought about the name we will give? give a name:)

A satoshi is the smallest amount a bitcoin can be devided 0.00000001 BTC. it is named after the creator of bitcoin. Now the reason bitcoin can not be devided to an infinite time is that bitcoin is coded into machines. Machines that have a maximum amount of bits
So the information coded on it must be quantified. That's you can not devide bitcoin to infinitie anount of times.

One Satoshi is 0.00000001 Bitcoins. I think this is just an unofficial name for the smallest unit possible in Bitcoin. As far as the reason why a Bitcoin can only be divided down to 8 decimal places, I think that’s just the way the creators set it up. I don’t know if it could be changed at this point, but if so, it would have to come from the Bitcoin Foundation to make that determination.

Satoshi is the smalles amount or division of a bitcoin , satoshi is like a cents something like that with out this cents we don't have a penny , satoshi is kind of important it help us to give some income or extra income to be precise.

satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin. it was a hundred million of 1 bitcoin. it can't be 1 bitcoin if missing 1 satoshi. 1.00000000 bitcoin 0.00000001 satoshi. this is how it written. like a dollar bill has penny

Satoshi is a bitcoin it is a divided of bitcoin to be an equal part to cents and token

Satoshi is a smallest fraction of a bitcoin that can currently be sent 1 BTC, that is a hundredth of a million BTC .In future ,however the protocol may be updated to allow further subdivision should they needed. It was a monetary unit .

Bitcoin is represented by a number in a PC, those numbers follow certain formats, like int or float or double. Those formats have a fixed number of decimals. The smallest decimal in Bitcoins representation is called a Satoshi.

A Satoshi is currently the smallest amount that the Bitcoin protocol can handle.

Second layer applications can use a different representation of Bitcoin which might allow Satoshis to be divided.
Bitcoin protocol might be updated in the future to allow the same.

Satoshi is a bitcoin. It called satoshi when it above One Bitcoin, like in dollor, if you have one dollor, its called one dollor, and if you divide one dollor to two, it calls, cent, thats what i said in satoshi, its the same.

Why is 1 satoshi the smallest division of a Bitcoin, and why is it important that 1 satoshi cannot be divided any further? Could there be a viable system where 1 coin can be divided infinite times?