An alternative to "training" users to understand SI prefixes could be to make 100 satoshi = 1 mu, spelling out the Greek letter.

Although the Units page on the wiki has been brought up to argue against naming 10,000 satoshi = 1 finney, I would like to support this designation. It seems to be gaining some popular support on Twitter & podcasts. So at $10,000 BTC/USD, 1 finney = $1.00. The smallest unit of value would be 0.0001 finney = 1 satoshi. Finney has a natural abbreviation as fin, and 100 mu = 1 finney.

The Units page also refers to "bitcent" as 0.01 BTC, but if a "bit" is 100 satoshi, then what is a "bitcent" in that context?

/bikeshed

@Natanael you're exactly right. There are already multiple uses of "bits" within bitcoin itself.

@Sjors I don't think a redefinition of 'satoshi' is going to happen ;-)



-Clark

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 4:01 PM, Natanael via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

Reposting /u/BashCo's post on reddit here, for visibility:

---8<---------------------------------------------------------------

> Before anyone says 'bits' are too confusing because it's a computer science term, here's a list of homonyms [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_true_homonyms] that you use every day. Homonyms are fine because our brains are able to interpret language based on context, so it's a non-argument. 

This ignores the fact that there exists multiple meanings of bits *within the same context*, and that beginners likely can't tell them apart. 

Feel free to try it yourself - talk about Bitcoin "bits" of a particular value with somebody who  doesn't understand Bitcoin. Then explain that the cryptography uses 256 bit keys. I would be surprised if you could find somebody who would not be confused by that. 

Let's say a website says a song is 24 bits. Was that 24 bit audio resolution or 24 bit price? Somebody writes about 256 bit keys, are that their size or value? 

You guys here can probably tell the difference. Can everybody...? Bits will cause confusion, because plenty of people will not be able to tell these apart. They will not know WHEN to apply one definition or the other. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin/comments/24m3nb/_/ch8gua7



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