Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Is 21million BTC really enough for the wole world?
by
DannyHamilton
on 14/03/2017, 21:58:53 UTC
OP is mistaken about the quantity.

It is not exactly 21 million bitcoins.  That is just an approximation.

The exact number of units that the protocol is designed to release is:

2,099,999,997,690,000 satoshi.

That's two quadrillion, ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-seven million, six hundred ninety thousand satoshi.

It will be easy for off-chain accounts to subdivide beyond that. It is entirely possible that, for off-chain accounts, you could transact in pico-bitcoins.  In that case you would have

20,999,999,976,900,000,000 pico-bitcoins (lets give them a slang name of picobits) to work with.

That's twenty quintillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-six billion, nine hundred million picobits.