[Bitcoin-development] "bits": Unit of account

Mike Gehl mjgehl at gmail.com
Sun Apr 20 12:35:08 UTC 2014


The usefulness of a "bitcoin" unit will decrease as the value of the
network increases. Today, a majority of transactions are denominated
in fractions of a bitcoin. As a consequence, millibitcoin (mBTC) and
microbitcoin (uBTC) units have been introduced to alleviate the
decimal problem.

While SI units are great for people well versed in them, there is a
very good reason people aren't asking for 100 micro dollars in change.
The average person is not going to be confident that the prefix they
are using is the correct one, people WILL send 1000x more or less than
intended if we go down this road, and these mistakes will happen
frequently. Labeling should be easy enough for kindergarten kids.

I propose that users are offered a preference to denominate the
Bitcoin currency in a unit called a bit. Where one bitcoin (BTC)
equals one million bits (bits) and one bit equals 100 satoshis.

For a user discussion on the topic see:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23flcn/bits_instead_of_%CE%BCbtc/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rmto3/its_bits/




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