Ferroh



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MemberActivity: 111Merit: 100 A proposal: Forget about mBTC and switch directly to uBTC (instead of satoshis) November 21, 2013, 06:41:51 AM

Last edit: November 21, 2013, 08:26:17 PM by Ferroh #1



You may wish to give uBTC some special name (if not microbits or microcoins) so that this idea works just like the "skip to satoshis" idea.



One problem with the "skip to satoshis" idea is that satoshis are difficult to convert to bitcoins, and microbits are easy to convert to bitcoins. Abandoning bitcoins entirely is now being proposed by some people in favor of satoshis only, which will just confuse things further.



Notice that with SI prefixes for large numbers we have:



Code: 1 uBTC = 0.000 001 BTC

1K uBTC = 0.001 BTC

1M uBTC = 1 BTC

1G uBTC = 1 000 BTC

1T uBTC = 1 000 000 BTC

Suppose we call these uB for short.



All of the arguments for skipping to satoshis still applies, except that we now have:



1M uB = 1 BTC



instead of



100M satoshi = 1 BTC





We also have: 1K uB = 1 mBTC, and similar simple conversion between other SI prefixes, so those can still be used without breaking anything or adding unnecessary confusion.



Also note that we can still talk about satoshis (in the distant future) easily in terms of uB:



0.01 uB = 1 satoshi



So we have a natural "cent" like many currencies do, which is near the limit for how most people are able to reason about numbers after a decimal place.



And when we subdivide a satoshi then we can move from microcoins to nanocoins much more naturally, without having to explain why there is some arbitrary number of 100 million satoshis.





The current price is about $0.61 for 1000 uB. This solution continues to allow us to have symmetry, and allows scalability beyond subdividing a satoshi, and is backwards compatible with the use of uBTC and mBTC.You may wish to give uBTC some special name (if not microbits or microcoins) so that this idea works just like the "skip to satoshis" idea.One problem with the "skip to satoshis" idea is that satoshis are difficult to convert to bitcoins, and microbits are easy to convert to bitcoins. Abandoning bitcoins entirely is now being proposed by some people in favor of satoshis only, which will just confuse things further.Notice that with SI prefixes for large numbers we have:Suppose we call thesefor short.All of the arguments for skipping to satoshis still applies, except that we now have:instead ofWe also have: 1K uB = 1 mBTC, and similar simple conversion between other SI prefixes, so those can still be used without breaking anything or adding unnecessary confusion.Also note that we can still talk about satoshis (in the distant future) easily in terms of uB:0.01 uB = 1 satoshiSo we have a natural "cent" like many currencies do, which is near the limit for how most people are able to reason about numbers after a decimal place.And when we subdivide a satoshi then we can move from microcoins to nanocoins much more naturally, without having to explain why there is some arbitrary number of 100 million satoshis.The current price is about $0.61 for 1000 uB.