Thoughts on BIP 177

Here's the proposal: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0177.mediawiki So basically, it suggests changing how we represent Bitcoin. Instead of using satoshis, we'll have Bitcoin as the base unit, where 1 BTC equals 100 million bitcoin, and the sat will be phased out. What do you guys think about this? For me, satoshis aren't a problem. But I'm curious about your take. If 1 BTC is now 100 million bitcoin, doesn't that sound kinda confusing? We usually think of BTC as being short for Bitcoin.

What I see here is the elimination of sats which was initially for the purpose of honoring the name of the founder(s) of bitcoin which in my opinion even if the mention bitcoin leads to him such name should be there and it as the base unit is not something that I think should be changed. I looked at the changes and saw something like 0.0001 bitcoin as we know it which is equivalent to 10,000 sats will be displayed or called BTC10,000 or 10,000 bitcoins or 0.0001 BTC for me this will causes problem most especially since the white paper already has 21 million bitcoins as the total supply, this conversion wouldn’t change anything but will cause confusion to some people most especially since there is no much difference between BTC or bitcoins, For me the base unit should have different words or acronym to the main unit and Satoshi will be perfect for that, it also makes calculations of the fees much much easier, this changes now will make some people not see things like BTC or bitcoin as base unit of BTC again but as same thing.

I think renaming the base unit is just plain stupid and totally pointless. Is there some problem or issue that it would solve? No. Sounds like someone simply had too much time on their hands and likes fucking with things just for the hell of it.

just no.. why? makes no sense at all. invent some new term, dont replace the original accepted term

Aha. And when people will try to increase precision, by counting things in millisatoshis, instead of satoshis, then what? Will the author support redefining things again, just to always define "bitcoin" as "the smallest indivisible unit"? Why such thing is needed at all? And because LN uses millisatoshis now, then should in the Lightning Network "bitcoin" be defined as one millisatoshi? And should people be told, that "1000 LN bitcoins is 1 on-chain bitcoin"? It will be always possible to split things further. Even if you have a single satoshi, then you can still have 2-of-2 multisig, and each key holder can own 0.5 satoshis. And when people will start running out of coins, then it could be better to split units further, than to encourage worse outcomes. Things are not integer-only, even when it comes to transaction fee rates. If a single transaction handles three users, and it pays two satoshis per byte as a fee, then if fees are taken proportionally, each user will pay 2/3 satoshis per byte. In the same way, someone could try to remove transaction IDs, because they don't represent values, which are signed by signatures. And instead, when users see a chain of signatures, they should see the actually hashed values, because it "aligns user perception with Bitcoin’s actual integral design". Edit: Also, we don't have any "merit system". We have "sMerit system", and we should count everything in "sMerits", because the smallest unit is 0.5 merit.

So this is the problem that he believes his plaguing Bitcoin. Imagine 2.5 quadrillion bitcoin as total supply I see no implicit use for such proposal.

Bitcoin market cap is about $2T as of today. All world assets are valued at around $900T today. Let's say in 30 years this number may climb to $10,000T due to money printing. In extreme case, Bitcoin may capture all world assets, and therefore its market cap may increase 5000 times - from $2T to $10,000T. [ I disregard 1.3 million additional Bitcoin left to be mined on top of existing 19.7 million Bitcoin already in circulation because this entire calculation is so imprecise] At roughly $100,000 per BTC, today 1 sat = $0.001. If in 30 years BTC price increases by the factor of 5000 then 1 sat = $5 in remote future. 30-50 years ago, you could buy something for 5 cents, but now 5 cents is worth almost nothing. Similarly, $5 will be worth very little in 30 years, and therefore there may be no need to subdivide 1 sat into smaller chunks. Even if LN fees get very small and measured in fraction of a sat (which I believe is already the case), there is nothing wrong in using fractional sat, milli-sat, or even micro-sat similar to how in metric system we use fractional meter, millimeter, and micrometer. There seems to be no good reason to make drastic changes, especially considering the fact that BTC and sat units have been widely adopted, cause no confusion, and honor Bitcoin creator. What is reasonable is to implement fractional sat (e.g. 0.2 sat), milli-sat, and micro-sat. Just my two sats... LOL

That's just stupid. So to the casual observer the price of a bitcoin would suddenly fall from ~$100k to 0.1 cents lol. Doesn't exactly sound like a good idea. And the whole thing would be very confusing. Everyone who knows about Bitcoin understands there are 21 million bitcoin and each bitcoin is 100 million Sats. That's not a difficult concept, literally just explained it in one sentence haha. The idea that this is too confusing for people to understand and after 16 years the entire naming scheme of Bitcoin should be changed, and that "BTC" units would be different than "bitcoin" units...that's all just terribly confusing for no good reason. This is really a bizarre proposal. And like...the protocol wouldn't change at all right? This would just be a UX change in bitcoin applications right? So how would you even enforce this? It would just lead to a state in which some applications/exchanges/websites make the change and a bitcoin is a Satoshi while others would stick to the original format where a bitcoin is 100 million Satoshis. lol whoever came up with this idea is literally just trying to cause chaos and confusion and hurt Bitcoin's perception. Also strangely, I just heard about this by reading an article on CMC about it before coming here and seeing this thread, but the CMC article said it was something completely different lol - it said the proposal was to get rid of Satoshis entirely and make the base unit 1 million bitcoins instead of 100 million Satoshis. So already people are confused about what the proposal even is, I can't imagine the confusion if parts of the Bitcoin ecosystem actually decided to implement this nonsense.

I don't care about semantics to be honest, but I have two thoughts: (a) why? It won't solve any problem, it will just create confusion to people, like me, who have learnt to think in sats. If some tells me "this coffee costs 4,500 bitcoins" instead of "4,500 satoshis", I will be certainly confuzed. (b) bitcoin is the cryptocurrency ledger (the system itself), it's not the native coin which is BTC. So, if you call the lowest denomination "bitcoin" as well, it 'll be kind of strange.

For everyone who want the bigger picture of this or just want to read more opinions, Here's its pull request link in bitcoin/bips: github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1821 (check-out its thumbs-down count) Interestingly, someone already made another BIP that proposes to formalize "Satoshi" as the smallest base unit. Link: github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1841

I have to read it a second time to get it right. This redefinition is confusing especially given the common use of BTC as the symbol for Bitcoin. Changing the meaning of a unit would lead to misunderstanding among users.    Changing what Bitcoin means would be very confusing. Everyone knows what BTC (Bitcoin) is and changing it would cause problems. It's better to leave it as it is because Satoshi (the small unit) is already clear and works well.

this change would of course have a profound impact on the entire presentation and communication surrounding Bitcoin. payment amounts, user interfaces, documentation, media content - all of this would have to be rethought and adapted. the advantage that John Carvalho sees in his bip-177 proposal lies above all in its user-friendliness. instead of confusing amounts such as 0.00000001 BTC, 1 bitcoin would simply represent 1 sat in future. but with the bip-172 there is an alternative that takes a much more conservative approach. instead of redefining terms or reversing the representation, this proposal aims to clearly and consistently document the existing practice in the bitcoin ecosystem. the smallest indivisible unit remains the satoshi, while 1 bitcoin (BTC) is still defined as 100,000,000 sats. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0172.mediawiki

We already have bits (100 satoshi), satoshi, mBTC (100K satoshi) and others. But it's only used on few occasions. Electrum use mBTC by default, but it made some newbie confused by it.

Jack Dorsey is blabbering about this(ish) on his Twitter account pretty frequently.   IMO, if he wants to see the unit terms change... he should implement it on his website and see if it catches on. Website owners are welcome to name anything they want, but then they have to deal with the support tickets too! I agree with y'all.  Rather pointless. 0.00000000 is the least confusing way to present a BTC balance to a user, from my experiences. A great example of a website naming something whatever they want is https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_cryptocurrencies calling BSV "CraigCoin".

Lots of bitcoin software has selectable units, many websites do too.  People can change their defaults and don't need a BIP to do so.

I see that someone has got the big itch for bitcoin redemination. Who in their right mind would pay $100K for something that can still be mined at the rate of 312.5 million units every 10 minutes? This has to be one of the most absurd BIPs I’ve ever seen. No one needs it in my view.

Whoever proposed this and whoever supports this has zero understanding of human psychology and making technology accessible and usable. Bitcoin is hard to use as is and much harder to understand, yet now the idea is to confuse new users with a radical change in the use of units. Keep in mind that all search results from the past will have information which will be incorrect after such a change. Should we also get rid of cents, and make 1 dollar actually be $100? Great idea. It is so backwards and potentially damaging, that it should have not even been given a BIP number. This is one of the cases where maintainers failed to filter out bad proposals. A lot of people get corrupted by having some success, so they think that they are right with all their subsequent ideas when in fact most of their ideas are terrible. On that note, I would get rid of bits and mBTC and just focus on BTC and satoshi to reduce confusion. Keep in mind that an individual satoshi has gained a lot of value in recent times. I don't know one person who prefers using mBTC, basically everyone who installed Electrum on my recommendation changed it as well. This on the other hand is quite good.

Sounds like a really confusing concept which will be responsible for misunderstandings and faulty code. The only reason I see for this implementation is to brag about having large amounts "BTC" to people who do not understand the difference of actual full Bitcoin amounts and the "BTC" base units. Honestly I prefer referring to the metric SI prefixes instead of Satoshi amounts - Milli, Micro, Nano, and so on. It just makes more sense in terms of scalability and is mathematically more sound. If Bitcoin price is $100 000, then 1 Milli-Bitcoin is just moving the decimal by 3 spaces. So $100. And 1 Micro-Bitcoin is $0.1 Dollars since you move the decimal by 6 spaces. All you need to memorize is the base 10 of each SI prefix... 10^-3 is moving the decimal of the Bitcoin price 3 spaces to the left, and 10^3 is 3 spaces to the right.

What I also think in addition is that if the BIP 177 is accepted and some wallet developers makes bitcoin (sat at the time) as default on their wallet, I can see how some scammers will want to make use of it to scam people as people will always think BTC is bitcoin.

I suppose gmaxwell answered it perfectly above. If I develop an open-source product (like a wallet), I am allowed to name the denomination however I like. But, the users won't download my software if they see something they don't like. And, as such, most highly reputable wallets won't do strange things like this. Another question that I couldn't answer is how was the term "satoshi" invented? I think it's just a suggestion that became reality without any formal justification. Here is the first time that I could find, that the term "satoshi" was suggested: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=369.msg22160#msg22160