Topic: Why I'm switching to mXBT — and why you should too (Read 24635 times)

Bump, and bookmark

I'm down to start talking in mXBT, for all the reasons stated and more.

The only way it's gonna stick, though, is if you start using it casually in all of your posts, not just in this thread. Only once it becomes pervasive on bitcointalk will it start spreading to other sites. Let's do this!!!

Did this gain any traction?

Why don't you tie it in with world bitcoin day.

I am totally over BTC, long live mBTC / mXBT

BTC can be exclusively for the rich folk lucky enough to own so many mBTC!

I also like the way "bits" rolls off the tongue. Also for the idea of putting it halfway between satoshis and bitcoins. When "bits" goes obsolete, satoshis will work perfectly.

Even a large number of satoshis would work better than a fraction of a bitcoin. Having traveled in other countries with high rates of inflation, most people don't seem to have trouble with large numbers. It is fractions of a unit that seem to give most non-mathematicians problems.

Besides, you can still buy a million satoshis for less than $2. Perfect selling point to those who are new to bitcoin.

"bits" is my first thought too, and I like it the most. But, if bitcoin takes hold, the market will ultimately decide what expression we use.
My vote goes to "bits" though. And I will use it until nobody understands me. 

You say that like people in the US have no idea how to use the metric system. I live in the US, and I use the metric system more often than I use the non-metric system (I work as a scientist). People casually refer to thousands of dollars as "k", which comes from the metric. Everybody learns how to use the metric system in school. I think the difficulty of changing to the metric system is highly overstated.


There will of course be slang terms used by people who have to refer to the money over and over again. Just like how people use the one syllable term "buck" instead of "dollar". To me, "bits" seems like a quick and easy word to say when trying to say something fast, while "mills" is slow and does not roll of the tongue easily enough to catch on. I imagine in the future things will be priced in millibits, and you might say to your friend "could you spot me a couple bits for a drink, I left my phone at home again?".

I did not state it explicitly, but by dropping the order of magnitude, it is no longer clear how many satoshies a 'bit' is supposed to refer too. Since 100M Satoshies is already has the 'coin' short-form, it makes sense that a 'bit' would refer to 1 Satoshi.

• Imagine that everybody adopts BitDreams' suggestion that 1 'bit' equal 1mBTC.
• About 20 years pass. It now costs $1337 USD to buy one mBTC.
• People decide to move the decimal over again: now 1 'bit' equals 1µBTC.
• Hilarity ensues when coffee suddenly costs 33 bits instead of 0.033 bits.

Don't worry, there's no possibility of confusion. Nobody under the age of 50 has ever used the word "mill" to refer to a fraction of a dollar, for obvious reasons. Hell, it won't be long before young people start asking their parents what "cents" were.

She's probably more likely to call them "mills", since she is old enough to remember what a thousandth of a currency unit was called, back when that was actually worth something.

mBTC is my preferred term for smaller quantities. Users looking for a short name could refer to them as "milli", omitting the reference to bitcoin alltogether. This type of usage has precedence in a common usage of the word "kilo", the SI-prefix for 1000, which is often used instead of "kilogram" (1000 gram) in several western European countries, omitting the reference to gram alltogether.

Can we please take a step outside the bitcoin bubble for one second and listen to ourselves?


"If people were using "bits", I would associate that with the base unit that is actually represented by a single bit (10nBTC)."

"the word "bit" is a neologism.  It would cause confusion, for instance, a company offering "10Gb/s for 3 bits"


Seriously?  THOSE are some of the objections as to why 0.001 BTC shouldn't be branded as a "bit"?  I have some questions for you:

1)  What percentage of the population would be confused by the term "bit"?  (besides a handful of cryptogeeks who apparently would just be TOO confused to process TWO separate meanings for the word "bit".)

2)  Is your grandmother more likely to use a "millibitcoin", or a "bit"?  

Those are the ONLY questions which should be relevant to this discussion - not whether you are so cool that you know the base unit that is actually represented by a single bit.  Because in doing so, you are rejecting a proposal which is, from a branding perspective, far better than any others that have been proposed - that is, if your goal is mass-adoption of bitcoin.  

The beauty of SI (or engineering notation) is that we don't all have to switch over at the same time. You can use kBTC. BTC, mBTC, µBTC or nBTC when it is appropriate.

For example, when you want to move over $2Million USD equivalent value, you could use "10kBTC" instead of "10,000BTC" (the latter may be interpreted as 10BTC by people normally using ',' as a decimal separator).

If you want to buy a beer, you would pay 25mBTC instead of 0.025BTC.

Transactions smaller than 54.00µBTC tend to be dust transactions.

The resistance I see is that Bitcoin has a large user-base residing in a country that has not yet adopted the Metric system.

My keyboard actually has the µ symbol

Just no. A bit refers to a single decimal place in binary notation. If people were using "bits", I would associate that with the base unit that is actually represented by a single bit (10nBTC).

"mills" are fine once people understand you are actually taking about Bitcoin and not some fraction of a dollar.

In the long run: I like a one syllable word for those who stand in markets and have to say the word 'bits' 500 times a day.

Would you rather say millibits or bits five hundred times a day?

I believe the term 'bits' will gravitate to mean something along the lines of a days wages, a months cost of living. It will be regional.

See post above, mBit easy enough to associate with MY bits. uBit is easy to associate what I can afford to give to YOU bits.

On the internet, and in advertising please be 100% formal as requested by the original post. It is more honest to type mB & uB. You write mB if I'm reading it casually out loud I'm just saying bits - assuming everyone around me knows without calculating where to place the decimal . So everyone be kind to people who just say 'bits' casually. Advertise correctly but when speaking 'affectionately' about bitcoins just call them bits.

Like 'come here kitten, i've got some bits for you.'

No, 0.001 BTC is 1 millibit (abbreviated 1 mB). 0.000 001 BTC is 1 microbit (abbreviated 1 uB).

Some people are using the more ISO compliant XBT for bitcoins, so you could say 1 millibit would be 0.001 XBT.

Nice!
That's why we love bitcoins!

Indeed, this is what happens in the fiat world:

Max: Mark, I need $10K to pay my rent and food bills
Mark: No prob! 2 weeks later you'll have the funds
Max: 2 weeks have passed now. Hello? Hello? Are you there??

I read the first page, then couldn't take it any more.

It doesn't matter what the exchange rate it when used for commerce. Nobody checks what the current exchange rate is for the US dollar prior to loading some giftcard to be used at some outfit, paying some high fee for the privilege for doing such.

Most people don't need to transfer large sums of money across borders for some non-nefarious reason, but those that do pay a high fee for a transaction that may take days, if not weeks. This is only one problem that Bitcoin solves, thus allowing one to transfer instantly with virtually no fees. Once the recipient receives the funds, they may have to wait a few minutes (due to confirmations) before they're able to spend or transfer the funds themselves, but how likely is that that they would need to do such so quickly.



Max: Steve, I need $10K for such and such.
Steve: No prob! <30 secs later Max has funds>
Max: Got it! Thanks, bud.

<6 confirmations later>

Max: Here's the $10K for such and such.

Show me a system that can accomplish the above more smoothly, and I'll show you the beginnings of the demise of Bitcoin.

There's only 2 ways to label bits. Enough or not enough.

I think this is relevant up to this day still. I go by mBTC.

Yes maybe bitcoin should be valued in mBtc. This would make it more appealing and affordable. If the bitcoin clients switch to mBtc by default so new users would get 3mBtc, there would be less of a psychological barrier.

Also. Shit I've forgotten what I was going to say!!! Brb

I think 21 million is just too few units for a global currency. We see in the example of other digital currencies that people seem to pay more relative to the currency's value when it is divided into more units.

XRPs are a good example. In case you don't know, they are the currency of Ripple, a brand new debt transfer network with next to zero real activity. There are 100 billion XRPs being issued. Each BTC can currently buy about 6,000 XRPs at the one exchange XRPs are currently trading on.

6,000 sounds like a lot right? Well when you consider an XRP is only 1/100-billionth of the entire XRP supply, that means the entire XRP supply would be able to buy nearly 17 million BTC.

The liquidity is too low to get an accurate estimation of a market cap for the currency, so we can't conclude that XRP's market cap is really 80% of BTC's, but that a completely unproven currency is trading as high as it is on one exchange I think really suggests that people think a currency is being sold at a low price relative to its 'true value' simply because the number attached to the unit is low.

People don't think about how much of the total currency supply that unit actually represents.

Think of it another way: do you think there would be more psychological resistance to invest in BTC when the price of a unit is $0.12 or when it's $120? I think in the first case, the price could easily double without people screaming 'bubble', because the lower number makes them think it's still cheap.