Units of Bitcoin & their explanations

[DiamondCardz]

Most of the units of Bitcoin are derived from the fractional prefixes from the SI (International System of Units or Système International d'Unités) units.

The first unit is a Bitcoin, which can be split up to 8 decimal places. Therefore, the smallest unit of a Bitcoin is 0.00000001 BTC, also known as a satoshi (after the founder(s) of Bitcoin). You can fit 100 million of those into one BTC! Here is what you can derive from this:

The Main Units

1 BTC/XBT = 1 bitcoin OR 100,000,000 satoshis
1 mBTC (millibit) = 0.001 bitcoin OR 100,000 satoshis
1 μBTC (microbitcoin) = 0.000001 bitcoin OR 100 satoshis
1 satoshi = 0.00000001 bitcoin OR a 1/100,000,000th of a bitcoin

The Less Common Units

1 bitcent (or cBTC): 0.01 BTC OR 1,000,000 satoshis.
1 bit: 1 μBTC OR 100 satoshis

Those are the units you will normally hear. There are more, but they are not usually used. I hope this will be helpful to some newbies!

[LiteCoinGuy]

i like it easy. so i just think about that:

1 Bitcoin = 1.000.000 bits

end.


(geek info: the smallest part of a bitcoin is called a Satoshi )

[Windowly]

The real question is when will we have to fork to get even smaller denominations than a satoshi?

And will the debate then be as divisive as the one we're seeing today with regards to scaling?

[DiamondCardz]

i like it easy. so i just think about that:

1 Bitcoin = 1.000.000 bits

end.


(geek info: the smallest part of a bitcoin is called a Satoshi )

That's a good way of thinking about it as well, looking at it in terms of 1,000,000 bits = 1 BTC, 100,000 bits = 0.1 BTC, etc. Quite useful.

The real question is when will we have to fork to get even smaller denominations than a satoshi?

And will the debate then be as divisive as the one we're seeing today with regards to scaling?

I made a blog post about this (be warned: my blog does involve expletives occasionally!): http://swag.pw/2015/11/09/the-divisibil ... lion-myth/

[LiteCoinGuy]

The real question is when will we have to fork to get even smaller denominations than a satoshi?

And will the debate then be as divisive as the one we're seeing today with regards to scaling?

Oh, that would be a great problem.

so, if one satoshi is equal to 1$, with more than 12 million bitcoins on the blockchain right now, the bitcoin economy would be worth more than 1200 trillion dollars and one bitcoin would be worth more than 100 million US Dollars, so it really has the potential to outgrow all other currencies.

I dont think that it will be a big problem to make smaller denominations than a satoshi. why do you think so? to make denominations than a satoshi is nothing bad. you can add as much zeros as you want.