I agree with you Jeff. The unit switch needs to happen once and once only, but that is exactly why I said the defaults really need to change in Bitcoin-Qt since that is still the main reference implementation and it will influence others.

Bitpay could also take the lead here and make the switch to their defaults. That would greatly assist the uBTC movement.

Regardless of what anyone says, Bitcoin-Qt is still the main reference implementation and the best way to encourage a change in the community at large is for the default units to be changed here. Core devs can surely garner enough consensus among themselves to accept and merge a PR to that effect. That will send a message, more than anything else that can be done.

My two satoshi.

Drak


On 13 March 2014 16:29, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@bitpay.com> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Alan Reiner <etotheipi@gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, as Mike said, this ship may have already sailed, but if
> there's any way to revisit this, I'm there.  We're just about to do
> another Armory release and could support this very easily.

mBTC now just means the issue -will- be revisited in the future.  Just
a question of when, not if.

People and software in various nations handle big numbers for small
values (e.g. Yen) just fine.
People and software do -not- handle extra decimal places well, field
experience shows.

<vendor hat: on>  To roll out QuickBooks support --without converting
any numbers, a key financial attribute-- mBTC is simply insufficient
today, not in the future.

I also argue that it is a security risk, as follows:  To support
accounting packages limited to 2 decimal places, decimal point
conversion must be performed.  This produces a situation where your
accounting system shows numbers that do not visually match the numbers
in the bitcoin software.  That, in turn, making auditing more
difficult, particularly for outsiders.

Shipping with mBTC defaults was decidedly unwise, considering that --
like BTC -- it fails to solve existing, known problems that uBTC can
solve, and considering the inevitable mBTC->uBTC switch.

--
Jeff Garzik
Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book
"Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their
applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field,
this first edition is now available. Download your free book today!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/13534_NeoTech
_______________________________________________
Bitcoin-development mailing list
Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development