Received: from sog-mx-4.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com ([172.29.43.194] helo=mx.sourceforge.net) by sfs-ml-4.v29.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1Wbvln-0001aj-Pr for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Sun, 20 Apr 2014 17:43:11 +0000 X-ACL-Warn: Received: from mxin.ulb.ac.be ([164.15.128.112]) by sog-mx-4.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) id 1Wbvlk-0003mH-Ii for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Sun, 20 Apr 2014 17:43:11 +0000 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AsUDANMGVFNYRG20/2dsb2JhbAANMRqDVcRcAQKBMIMZAQEBAwFqDgEFCwsOEwwKDwkDAgECAUUGDQEHAQGINRU2qCyjdRMEiT2FJQcKhC4BA5huhkGPQQ Received: from dslb-088-068-109-180.pools.arcor-ip.net (HELO [192.168.178.31]) ([88.68.109.180]) by smtp.ulb.ac.be with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA; 20 Apr 2014 19:42:59 +0200 Message-ID: <53540715.7050803@xylon.de> Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 19:42:45 +0200 From: Arne Brutschy User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mike Gehl References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. X-Headers-End: 1Wbvlk-0003mH-Ii Cc: Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] "bits": Unit of account X-BeenThere: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 17:43:11 -0000 Hello, > While SI units are great for people well versed in them, there is a > very good reason people aren't asking for 100 micro dollars in change. > The average person is not going to be confident that the prefix they > are using is the correct one, people WILL send 1000x more or less than > intended if we go down this road, and these mistakes will happen > frequently. Labeling should be easy enough for kindergarten kids. Agree - but why do you propose not only a new label but also a different subunit? Also, everybody in the metric world is used to the milli- prefix due to meters and millimeters. It's not such a stretch to expect people to master that; but I agree that most people would struggle with microbitcoins. > I propose that users are offered a preference to denominate the > Bitcoin currency in a unit called a bit. Where one bitcoin (BTC) > equals one million bits (bits) and one bit equals 100 satoshis. There have been many proposals for more or less arbitrary subunits. What would be the merit of your proposal? I don't really follow the reasoning that it's better if it's uncommon for everyone rather than just uncommon for people not used to metric units. Regarding the label of a "bit": I have to agree with the others that bit is heavily overused as a unit, but I am a computer scientist, so I don't have the "average joe's" perspective on this. I find it weird to use as it's already in use in English - "a bit of work" etc I don't really see the advantage of a "bit" - it is part of "bitcoin" and it's short, but that's about it. I think we are free to pick anything we want for a label, so why not avoid ambiguities? See this thread for many creative ideas for labels (and another arbitrary subunit proposal: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=396522.0 Arne