Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP Proposal: Utilization of bits denomination

From: Daniel McNally <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:00:02 -0500

I think standardization of this term is a great idea. I second all of
Jimmy's points. I think the analogy of dollars & cents to bits and satoshis
is easy to grasp, particularly given that satoshis and cents are the
smallest tangible units of their respective currencies. It's a concept
that's common across cultures and countries as it also applies to pounds
and pence, pesos and centavos, etc...

To David's points, I agree that it's not ideal that bit is a homonym for
other words, but I don't think it's a terrible flaw as context will usually
make the meaning clear. I'm actually not in love with the term "bit," but
rather the idea of a non-SI term for a millionth of a bitcoin. But bit has
already caught on to some extent and I can't think of anything better.

> - Microbitcoins trains users to understand SI prefixes, allowing them to easily
> migrate from one prefix to the next.  This will be important when bitcoin
> prices rise to $10M USD[1] and the bits denomination has the same
> problems the millibitcoin denomination has now, but it's also useful in
> the short term when interacting with users who make very large payments
> (bitcoin-scale) or very small payments (nanobitcoin-scale).[2]

I find the SI prefixes to be very user unfriendly. I have plenty of smart
friends and family who constantly confuse mega, giga, micro, nano, and so
on. Rather than try to train users, I think we should choose terms that
will be easy for them to grasp right away. Even for people fluent in SI
terms, I think some of the problems regarding unit bias still exist. 500
microbitcoins sounds diminutive and uttering it is a reminder that it's a
very small fraction of a larger unit. 500 bits sounds like you have 500 of
something, neat!

I consider "bits" to be a term that's quite future proofed. While I won't
dismiss the possibility of $10M or $100M bitcoins in the not-too-distant
future, there would still be plenty of time for a bit to be a useful
day-to-day unit. Even at the $10M point, small ticket items like coffee
could still be priced at 0.30 bits for example, not bad I'd say.

Should bitcoin ever soar past the $100M mark, it might be time for a new
term akin to bits and maybe a hard fork to allow for more decimal places on
chain. A nanobitcoin could not be transacted with today anyhow. These would
all be good problems to have.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Jimmy for taking the initiative with this
BIP.

Daniel