Why one Bitcoin could soon mean one bit
The post Why one Bitcoin could soon mean one bit appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. Bitcoin’s complicated decimals might soon be history if a new plan to redefine the base unit as the real “Bitcoin” gets adopted. Bitcoin (BTC) has always had a little quirk that confuses even longtime users: the way it’s measured. Officially, one Bitcoin equals 100 million “base units” — also called “satoshis” or “sats” — but in the industry, it’s usually discussed in decimals, like 0.0001 BTC or 0.345 BTC. This setup, while familiar, can sometimes be a bit of a mess. And now, there’s a proposal on the table that might just shake things up. The idea behind BIP-0177, submitted by Synonym.to CEO John Carvalho and Bitcoin developer Mark “Murch” Erhardt, is pretty simple: it wants to flip the whole system on its head by redefining one Bitcoin to actually mean one base unit. That means the smallest indivisible unit of Bitcoin would become the main reference point. No more decimals, no more fractions — just whole numbers. So what used to be “1 Bitcoin” (or 100 million base units) would become 100 million Bitcoins, and what the industry used to think of as a satoshi would simply be called a Bitcoin. The proposal may seem unconventional, but its backers argue it could help clarify much of the confusion surrounding Bitcoin’s underlying structure as the update “aims to simplify user comprehension, reduce confusion, and align on-chain values directly with their displayed representation,” the proposal says. Decimal mindset Currently, Bitcoin’s ledger records all transactions in discrete, indivisible units — whole numbers. The decimals commonly used are human-imposed abstractions, comparable to imagining that a dollar consists of a billion tiny cents. According to the proposal, this has fostered a “persistent decimal mindset” that misrepresents how Bitcoin actually works. In their own words, the current convention “requires dealing with eight simulated decimal places,…
The post Why one Bitcoin could soon mean one bit appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Bitcoin’s complicated decimals might soon be history if a new plan to redefine the base unit as the real “Bitcoin” gets adopted. Bitcoin (BTC) has always had a little quirk that confuses even longtime users: the way it’s measured. Officially, one Bitcoin equals 100 million “base units” — also called “satoshis” or “sats” — but in the industry, it’s usually discussed in decimals, like 0.0001 BTC or 0.345 BTC. This setup, while familiar, can sometimes be a bit of a mess. And now, there’s a proposal on the table that might just shake things up. The idea behind BIP-0177, submitted by Synonym.to CEO John Carvalho and Bitcoin developer Mark “Murch” Erhardt, is pretty simple: it wants to flip the whole system on its head by redefining one Bitcoin to actually mean one base unit. That means the smallest indivisible unit of Bitcoin would become the main reference point. No more decimals, no more fractions — just whole numbers. So what used to be “1 Bitcoin” (or 100 million base units) would become 100 million Bitcoins, and what the industry used to think of as a satoshi would simply be called a Bitcoin. The proposal may seem unconventional, but its backers argue it could help clarify much of the confusion surrounding Bitcoin’s underlying structure as the update “aims to simplify user comprehension, reduce confusion, and align on-chain values directly with their displayed representation,” the proposal says. Decimal mindset Currently, Bitcoin’s ledger records all transactions in discrete, indivisible units — whole numbers. The decimals commonly used are human-imposed abstractions, comparable to imagining that a dollar consists of a billion tiny cents. According to the proposal, this has fostered a “persistent decimal mindset” that misrepresents how Bitcoin actually works. In their own words, the current convention “requires dealing with eight simulated decimal places,…
What's Your Reaction?
