"How much is Bitcoin?"

"About $ 14,000."

"Well, it's too expensive, I can not afford it."

This is a conversation that has surely occurred thousands of times over the last few months, as a new swarm of people finds themselves enchanted by the crypto's space currency and its huge gains.

And this reveals not only a misunderstanding, but also a psychological barrier that many face to enter the scene for the first time.

Given that so much importance is given to the value of a bitcoin in the industry, new users often think that if they want to participate, they will have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy a whole bitcoin.

But in reality, this is not the case – it is possible to buy half of a bitcoin, a quarter of bitcoin or even a fraction of a bitcoin percentage .

Still, it's not always clear to newcomers to the market, and many believe that's why a handful of altcoins – including the dogecoin and dentacoin, which have recently reaches market caps of more than $ 1 billion – see a pump in their price, as they offer an affordable way to access cryptocurrency markets in whole units.

And this confusion is (in part) why developer Jimmy Song argues that a standardization should occur in what the industry calls smaller units of bitcoin.

To achieve this goal, Song released a proposal for standards aimed at expressing one millionth of a bitcoin (about one cent at today's prices) as a "bit". And he encourages portfolio providers, stock exchanges and other Bitcoin companies to support the proposal.

When he is widely adopted, he hopes that this will put an end to this confusion and will make new crypto users more likely to buy even tiny bitcoins, rather than cryptocurrencies that he believes might come back. biting cheap altcoins do not have much technical merit to back them up.

Rise of the & # 39; bits & # 39;

The problem now is that more traditional dollar units, such as $ 5, converted to bitcoin seem daunting and disordered – at 0.000345 bitcoin.

But with Song's proposal – which he published in the form of a bitcoin improvement proposal, or BIP – this value would be rather 345 bits, still a mental juggling, but without doubt less confusing because it is in whole numbers and not in decimals

"For a psychological reason, normal people have trouble understanding decimals and fractions: $ 0.002 is stranger than $ 200.00," says Erik Voorhees, co-founder and CEO of ShapeShift, which supports Song's proposal:

"For bitcoin to be a commonly used world currency, it would certainly be useful to have a denomination that allows people to express prices in integers (2,000 bits for a coffee) rather than a decimal. "

Adding to the mental benefits, Song also said that the "bit" of standardization would remove what he calls "unit bias."

According to Song, people do not like what looks like such a small amount of bitcoin, or money in general elsewhere. The rise in Bitcoin prices at the end of 2017 has only exacerbated this problem, adding even more zeros between positive numbers and decimals.

Making fun of all the recent bitcoin forks, Song says, a group of people could successfully attract a new wave of crypto buyers by separating bitcoin in order to move the Bitcoin decimal system to six positions.

While others have proposed similar unit changes in the past, Song 's proposal seems to be gaining exchanges with stock exchanges and other businesses, which is the only thing that must succeed. in the wallet of an individual but also, in the merchant stores, how much are the things.

And even though Song 's proposal is focused on bitcoin, it could serve as a schema for how other cryptocurrencies, like ethereum, might update their units to make them more user – friendly.

Still confused?

Although the idea of ​​the proposal is to limit confusion, it has garnered its fair share of criticism, and those who have claimed that it could add to the confusion instead.

Critics say, for example, that if all companies do not deploy the standard at the same time – and ShapeShift uses "bits", while Coinbase holds out to "bitcoin" – by sending bitcoin to it. One wallet to another, they might either think that they have won money or lost money.

Voorhees, for one, even agreed that it was a concern, but argued that this should not prevent Bitcoin companies from finally adopting the standard.

"There will undoubtedly be mistakes and friction as the new term is used, but for the sake of linguistic and mathematical simplification, the net result should be beneficial for the adoption of Bitcoin", he said.

Meanwhile, Song pointed out that although he thought it would be a step in the right direction, like most things in the world of cryptocurrency, it's up to the community to decide if she wants to adopt the system.

Still, many other exchanges and businesses should embrace change to kick off the ball. Song has tweeted to various exchanges and companies – including CoinMarketCap, one of the most popular sites for checking the prices of cryptocurrency – suggesting that they are moving to "bits".

Song concludes:

"This initiative is supposed to be a community initiative and the benefits will be, we hope, obvious to the companies."

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an interest in Coinbase and Shapeshift.

Broken bitcoin image via Shutterstock

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