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

Erik Garrison erik.garrison at gmail.com
Sun Apr 20 16:23:44 UTC 2014


The world is rapidly becoming a place in which a solid grasp of orders of
magnitude could be considered a basic mathematical skill.  People are very
likely to learn what mBTC and µBTC are simply because they risk their money
if they do not.  This is not a bad thing and I think stands only to help
people who learn about these monikers for orders of magnitude this way.

Any appropriate nicknames for these denominations is sure to develop in due
course.  Promoting an already-overloaded term that could just as easily be
applied colloquially to refer to a small amount of value in any currency
seems problematic.
 I've been a staunch supporter of "microbitcoin" and would like to do
anything I can to make sure that we jump directly to it if we're going to
promote changing the default units.  And I'm happy to integrate it into
Armory as a default (with appropriate explanations and settings/options).
I'm not so convinced about the "bits" name though -- I do like it, but I do
also think that word is too overloaded.  Though, I think we could get away
with it.

(Sadly, I still use "microbes" occasionally (as in *microb*itcoin) when I'm
talking to coworkers, because it slips off the tongue and is actually a
good combination of brevity and self-explanatory -- it just doesn't instill
the right visuals...)

We started integrating alternative units into Armory.  But, of course,
there were a few more loose ends than I expected, which will require some
work.   We want to put it in but not necessarily change the default right
away.  I'd *prefer* we get some commitments from some other wallet
developers, so we can make a unified push for it.  I'm happy to lead that
and make it default as long as I'm not the only one in the world doing it.

-Alan



On 04/20/2014 11:05 AM, Tamas Blummer wrote:

Here is an earlier reference to bits:


https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg04248.html<https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04248.html>

 I forgot that Alan Reiner was also supporting a unit equals to bits :


https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg04264.html<https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04264.html>

 and here the earlier going back to March 2013 and a poll at that time
pushing for XBT being 1 bit


https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg04256.html<https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04256.html>

 Regards,

Tamas Blummer
http://bitsofproof.com

 On 20.04.2014, at 16:53, Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille at gmail.com> wrote:

I told him specifically to bring it here (on a pull request for
Bitcoin Core), as there is no point in making such convention changes
to just one client.

I wasn't aware of any discussion about the "bits" proposal here before.

On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Tamas Blummer <tamas at bitsofproof.com>
wrote:

People on this list are mostly engineers who have no problem dealing with
magnitudes and have rather limited empathy for people who have a problem
with them.
They also tend to think, that because they invented money 2.0 they would not
need to care of finance's or people's current customs.

The importance of their decisions in these questions will fade as people
already use wallets other than the core.

Bring this particular discussion elsewhere, to the wallet developer.

BTW the topic was discussed here several times, you have my support and Jeff
Garzik's.

Regards,

Tamas Blummer
http://bitsofproof.com

On 20.04.2014, at 15:15, Rob Golding
<rob.golding at astutium.com><rob.golding at astutium.com>wrote:

The average person is not going to be confident that the prefix they
are using is the correct one,


The use of any 'prefix' is one of choice and entirely unnecessary, and there
are already established 'divisions' in u/mBTC for those that feel they need
to use such things.

people WILL send 1000x more or less than
intended if we go down this road,


Exceptionally unlikely - I deal every day with currencies with 0, 2 and 3
dp's in amount ranging from 'under 1 whole unit' to tens of thousands - Not
once in 20 years has anyone ever 'sent' more or less than intended - oh,
they've 'intended' to underpay just fine, but never *unintended*.

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.


I propose that for people unable to understand what a bitcoin is, they can
just use satoshi's and drop this entire proposal.

Rob


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