Topic: Which of these bitcoin units do you NOT want to use? (Read 7229 times)

Ad-hominem attacks aren't valid reasoning, either.

What's your point, actually?

Well done, you've so well managed to justify irrational quasi-religious nonsense with your own illogical twists that in the process you've dug yourself in so deep you're locked in a psychotic delusion.

Any further attempt at rational discourse here is simply a waste of time.

This example use case illustrated how it is difficult to establish "bit" because it is already established that small amounts of bitcoin are satoshis. Looking forward, this means that establishing "bit" will always be an up-hill battle because satoshi isn't magically going to go away.


Yes, "bit" is what makes the issues.


You quoted it, but you didn't even notice that it implies that the speaker is already familiar with satoshis and confused by "bits".


A quick glance at teukon's recent posts reveals that you are talking bullshit.


The weaknesses of "bits" won't go away by ignoring them.


Remember how this discussion started? You were making the initial claim that "bits" is easier to use:


To which I responded:


Causing you to ask for use cases:


Because you were making the initial claim, the burden of proof is on you!

Everything should go except this format: 0.000001 and it should be called zero point zero zero zero zero zero one.

I am using satoshi and not mbtc.

That's not the issue. We're not debating over which is more established. We're looking forward and debating what may be.


Yes of course they do, but bitcoin is not at issue, and in most contexts neither is satoshi.


Yes that's right, very well spotted. Let's make that obvious point no. 1.


You might even notice I was the one who quoted it.


Now you're just being silly. Have you ever actually looked at the bits proposal? Do you know what you are talking about?


Sorry but this is all just quasi-religious, irrational nonsense. If you can't come up with a use case just say so.

Except that satoshis are the smallest denomination and thus will unavoidably appear in the system.

One of the two units (bit/satoshi) is causing confusion, but we can't remove satoshi because the smallest denomination needs to have a name; "bit", on the other hand, is superfluous.


Edit: Oops, I didn't notice teukon's reply. It's much better.

Not at all.  "satoshi" is a much better established term than "bit" in this context.  When people want to refer to an amount of bitcoin in a nomenclature thread they almost invariably use "BTC" or "satoshis" for simplicity/clarity.  People argue about the name to give "0.000 001 BTC" or "100 satoshis".  Also, notice the order used here: "1 bit = 1 satoshi", not "1 satoshi = 1 bit".

"satoshi" was not pushed in the way that "bit" was.  The first suggestion that "satoshi" might refer to 0.000 000 01 BTC was made over 3 years ago and slowly and naturally became adopted because it was a useful term which resonated with those that would use it.  There were no leagues of "satoshis" threads where people denounced the term, came up with various alternatives.  There was no crowd of SI proponents claiming "10 nans" to be superior.

A few months later, the first suggestion that the term "Bit" might represent 1 µBTC was made.  In this case, the term naturally died out, only to be resurrected by an evangelical Reddit thread and an advertising campaign launched by a small number of (either linguistically foolish or intentionally destructive) people.  Rather than the gradual emergence of a new useful term brought about by need, we've been treated to a year of flamewars, causing many to avoid the 100-satoshi unit altogether.

"satoshi" is to "bits" as free-market is to central planning or evolution is to intelligent design.  Arguing a peership between the two is just laughable.

That guy says "I thought 1 bit = 1 satoshi. I guess i stand corrected" so you could equally argue satoshis were the problem.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2l0u3g/just_joined_the_21_million_club_and_it_feels_good/clqeqxn

Satoshis and Bitcoins for me.

oops I diverged again into the bigger picture, not specific to your website/faucet, I take it all back.

The purpose of language is to be understood. I need to use vocabulary that is accepted by the largest percentage of the community.

Given the poll results, "bit" is okay with ~55%, "satoshi" is okay with ~75%. To get these numbers you just compare the total number of participants with how many of them did not click the respective checkbox.

If this trend ever reverses, then I will immediately switch to "bit". But right now I see no reason to do so.



My use case is explaining Bitcoin to newbies:

With satoshis, all I need to explain is that 100 million satoshis = 1 bitcoin.

With bits, I need to explain that...

• ...100 satoshis = 1 bit, and...
• ...1 million bits = 1 bitcoin.

I very much care about reducing complexity from my website, so every bit matters.

I like satoshi.

The Japanese analogy is a good one, because it reminds me of when WW2 was over, a few Japanese refused to believe they had lost and kept on fighting, just as you are clutching at your belief, (good on you), but it is clear from signals in the wider community that you are fighting for a lost cause. That's not to say you can't call it whatever you like, just don't think the majority will be there with you.

On usability, if you want to argue that, put up some use cases to demonstrate your point.

Nice pun.

But I don't miss the (decimal) point. And the Japanese population (126 million people) don't miss it either. The Yen is doing fine without any decimal places / decimal point.


Anyhow, neither of you two answered my question: Do you think introducing a decimal point makes the currency any easier to use (compared to plain integers)?
Because ease of use should be our goal here, isn't it?




You totally missed the point of this poll: There was no intention to denounce anything.

The basic idea was to ask a separate yes/no question for each unit, as opposed to just asking for the favourite option as all previous polls did.
Obviously, not everyone's favourite option can be realised, so looking for secondary choices can help reach consensus.

The only reason why the poll was negatively worded ("...do you NOT want..."), was to incentivise participants to agree with as many units as possible by asking them to actively check the box for every unit they dislike.
This should make it easier to find consensus.



100% agreed.

A bottom-up system like sat/ksat/Msat is much better than the top-down approach BTC/mBTC/µBTC.
As said above, multiples are more intuitive than fractions.



I don't see a need to have a nickname for 100 sats.

Do we have a nickname for 100 dollars? No, or at least, not that popular.
Do we have a nickname for 1000 dollars? Yes, 1000 dollars = 1 grand.

So when giving nicknames to multiples of satoshi, it appears to me that it is a better fit to go for 1000 sats, rather than 100 sats, for example:

1000 dollars = 1 grand
1000 satoshis = 1 grantoshi

I am fairly sure the part 'bit' in these names has not been chosen because it signifies 100 satoshis, but rather because it is the 3 first letters of the word bitcoin and also indication of some kind of cute humbleness. So it is a bit ( pun intended ) disingenious to count this as a vote for anything. If anything it is yet another indication of the biggest problem with 'bit' as how it has a million meanings in peoples heads and about 999999 of those are stronger than the meaning for 100 satoshis and it is an uphill battle all the way if anybody tries to change that situation.

I am not at all against the concept of taking 100 satoshis as an important unit. However the word 'bit' just sucks royally in this specific meaning and these polls are an indication that instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole maybe somebody could come up with a better name.

I believe the unit mBTC is in much heavier use and more importantly in spontanious use. It is however quite impossible trying to count exacly how much more heavier use for example because googling for the word 'bit' does not give you any useful links or linkcounts at all. By the way that is another indication that choosing the word 'bit' for anything significant is a poor one in this age when we should think about search engine behaviour as an quite important argument as well.

Try for example google for 'USD/bit' and tell me what you can find when starting from google as the exchange ratio between USD and 'bit's. That should be an easy task if 'bit' is in such wide use as you say in popular bitcoin exchanges. Let's see how easy you find that job and whether you think choosing the word 'bit' seems sensible choise of as a keyword to you even after you have tried this googling task.  

Yes, but in those examples, "bit" is short for one Bitcoin, not a microBitcoin.


The short forms for MilliBitcoins and MicroBitcoins are largely solved, but have little traction:

• 1 mBTC (0.001BTC) is one Mill (or thousandth). This term is used for calculating property tax. Also used to refer to 1/1000^th of an inch.
  
• 1 µBTC (0.001mBTC) is one Mike (short for micro (metric prefix for one millionth)). (Common male name, sometimes used in the military as slang for minutes)

I dunno but I love to use btc

me too. If you are a newbie, you have to look for what it meant. Bits is great.