From: Aaron Voisine <voisine@gmail•com>
To: Gordon Mohr <gojomo@gmail•com>
Cc: Bitcoin Development <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] "bits": Unit of account
Date: Fri, 2 May 2014 22:41:23 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CACq0ZD7s8tp8GvJhEhZx4T7xMpeZ+tz5HNKQK-p=f=R10NaCmA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <53644F13.1080203@gmail.com>
I have to agree with Mike. Human language is surprisingly tolerant of
overloading and inference from context. Neurotypical people have no
problem with it and perceive a software engineer's aversion to it as
being pedantic and strange. Note that "bits" was a term for a unit of
money long before the invention of digital computers.
Aaron
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole
government working for you -- Will Rodgers
On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Gordon Mohr <gojomo@gmail•com> wrote:
> [resend - apologies if duplicate]
>
> Microbitcoin is a good-sized unit, workable for everyday transaction
> values, with room-to-grow, and a nice relationship to satoshis as 'cents'.
>
> But "bits" has problems as a unit name.
>
> "Bits" will be especially problematic whenever people try to graduate
> from informal use to understanding the system internals - that is, when
> the real "bits" of key sizes, hash sizes, and storage/bandwidth needs
> become important. The "bit" as "binary digit" was important enough that
> Satoshi named the system after it; that homage gets lost if the word is
> muddied with a new retconned meaning that's quite different.
>
> Some examples of possible problems:
>
> * If "bit" equals "100 satoshis", then the natural-language unpacking of
> "bit-coin" is "100 satoshi coin", which runs against all prior usage.
>
> * If people are informed that a "256-bit private key" is what ultimately
> controls their balances, it could prompt confusion like, "if each key
> has 256-bits, will I need 40 keys to hold 10,000.00 bits?"
>
> * When people learn that there are 8 bits to a byte, they may think,
> "OK, my wallet holding my 80,000.00 bits will then take up 10 kilobytes".
>
> * When people naturally extend "bit" into "kilobits" to mean "1000
> bits", then the new coinage "kilobits" will mean the exact same amount
> (100,000 satoshi) as many have already been calling "millibits".
>
> I believe it'd be best to pick a new made-up single-syllable word as a
> synonym for "microbitcoin", and I've laid out the case for "zib" as that
> word at <http://zibcoin.org>.
>
> 'Zib' also lends itself to an expressive unicode symbol, 'Ƶ'
> (Z-with-stroke), that remains distinctive even if it loses its stroke or
> gets case-reversed. (Comparatively, all 'b'-derived symbols for
> data-bits, bitcoins, or '100 satoshi bits' risk collision in contexts
> where subtleties of casing/stroking are lost.)
>
> (There's summary of more problems with "bit" in the zibcoin.org FAQ at:
> <http://zibcoin.org/faq#why-not-bits-to-mean-microbitcoins>.)
>
> - Gordon
>
> On 5/1/14, 3:35 PM, Aaron Voisine wrote:
>> I'm also a big fan of standardizing on microBTC as the standard unit.
>> I didn't like the name "bits" at first, but the more I think about it,
>> the more I like it. The main thing going for it is the fact that it's
>> part of the name bitcoin. If Bitcoin is the protocol and network, bits
>> are an obvious choice for the currency unit.
>>
>> I would like to propose using Unicode character U+0180, lowercase b
>> with stroke, as the symbol to represent the microBTC denomination,
>> whether we call bits or something else:
>> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0180/index.htm
>>
>> Another candidate is Unicode character U+2422, the blank symbol, but I
>> prefer stroke b.
>> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2422/index.htm
>>
>> Aaron
>>
>> There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole
>> government working for you -- Will Rodgers
>>
>>> On Apr 21, 2014 5:41 AM, "Pieter Wuille" <pieter.wuille@gm•..> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Apr 21, 2014 3:37 AM, "Un Ix" <slashdevnull@...> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Something tells me this would be reduced to a single syllable in common
>>>> usage I.e. bit.
>>>
>>> What units will be called colloquially is not something developers will
>>> determine. It will vary, depend on language and culture, and is not
>>> relevant to this discussion in my opinion.
>>>
>>> It may well be that people in some geographic or language area will end up
>>> (or for a while) calling 1e-06 BTC "bits". That's fine, but using that as
>>> "official" name in software would be very strange and potentially confusing
>>> in my opinion. As mentioned by others, that would seem to me like calling
>>> dollars "bucks" in bank software. Nobody seems to have a problem with
>>> having colloquial names, but "US dollar" or "euro" are far less ambiguous
>>> than "bit". I think we need a more distinctive name.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Pieter
>>
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>>
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-05-03 5:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 56+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-05-01 22:35 Aaron Voisine
2014-05-03 2:06 ` Gordon Mohr
2014-05-03 5:41 ` Aaron Voisine [this message]
2014-05-03 15:48 ` Christophe Biocca
2014-05-03 16:02 ` slush
2014-05-03 16:10 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-05-03 16:27 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-05-04 1:04 ` Chris Pacia
2014-05-04 5:18 ` Drak
2014-05-04 6:15 ` Aaron Voisine
2014-05-04 6:23 ` Un Ix
2014-05-04 6:27 ` Wladimir
2014-05-04 6:36 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-05-04 6:59 ` Wladimir
2014-05-04 14:42 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-05-05 22:33 ` Gordon Mohr
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2014-04-20 12:35 Mike Gehl
2014-04-20 13:15 ` Rob Golding
2014-04-20 14:28 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-20 14:52 ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-21 8:52 ` Thomas Voegtlin
2014-04-21 9:34 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 14:55 ` Natanael
2014-04-20 14:53 ` Pieter Wuille
2014-04-20 15:05 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-20 15:50 ` Alan Reiner
2014-04-20 16:19 ` Chris Pacia
2014-04-20 16:27 ` Wladimir
2014-04-20 16:30 ` Chris Pacia
2014-04-22 13:51 ` Aaron Axvig
2014-04-23 9:44 ` Danny Hamilton
2014-04-23 9:56 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-23 11:48 ` Chris D'Costa
2014-04-20 16:23 ` Erik Garrison
2014-04-20 16:30 ` Alan Reiner
2014-04-20 16:56 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-04-20 17:47 ` Jannis Froese
2014-04-20 18:10 ` Pavol Rusnak
2014-04-20 17:42 ` Arne Brutschy
2014-04-20 18:11 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-04-20 18:22 ` Arne Brutschy
2014-04-20 18:34 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-04-20 18:43 ` Oliver Egginger
2014-04-20 19:19 ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-20 19:32 ` Gmail
2014-04-20 20:28 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-04-21 0:16 ` Justin A
2014-04-21 1:18 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-04-21 1:33 ` Un Ix
2014-04-21 3:34 ` Mike Caldwell
2014-04-21 4:08 ` Christopher Paika
2014-04-21 5:41 ` Pieter Wuille
2014-04-21 5:51 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-21 6:21 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-21 12:14 ` Un Ix
2014-04-21 12:24 ` Tamas Blummer
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