Quote from: editfmah on February 21, 2018, 07:08:26 AM

Quote from: habeas_corpus on February 21, 2018, 03:18:32 AM

Ummmmmm NO.....

Numerical scales are in fact UNIVERSAL....

I don't know what planet you went to school on, but here on Earth....

1 million is always 1,000,000 or 1.000.000
1 billion is always 1,000,000,000 or 1.000.000.000
1 trillion is always 1,000,000,000,000 or 1.000.000.000.000

In the UK, the traditional Billion is 1 Million Millions, and a Trillion is 1 Million Billions. Generally we have fully transitioned to the simpler American version and not the traditional roman version nowadays, but they are marked when referencing material from the 70/80's which use the old scales.

So, sadly, there are differences and that is a FACT. Although those are very rare to see nowadays, and you would certainly not expect to see it in any newer technology such as a crypto currency.

I grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, and I can confirm that this is correct. A billion is a million million, A trillion is a million billion, and so on. In fact, although the US nomenclature has become widely adopted in the ENGLISH speaking world, in fact in the non-English speaking world, it is more like the 1 billion = 1 million million, etc.

Consider German:

What US speakers of English call 1 TRILLION is called "eine Billion" which is what it is in UK English, 1 Billion.

Spanish:

I Trillion (US) is "una billón"

Italian:

1 Trillion (US) is "un bilione"

French:

1 Trillion (US) is "un billion"

Dutch:

1 Trillion (US) is "biljoen"

Swedish:

1 Trillion (US) is "biljon"

Polish:

1 Trillion (US) is "bilion"

Czech:

1 Trillion (US) is "bilión"

There are a few exceptions (Polish, Russion, maybe Turkish) but in general throughout the world the word "billion" and its cognates refers to 10¹² not 10⁹.

Here is what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say on this:

billion

(ˈbɪljən)

[a. F. billion, purposely formed in 16th c. to denote the second power of a MILLION (by substituting BI- prefix² for the initial letters), trillion and quadrillion being similarly formed to denote its 3rd and 4th powers. The name appears not to have been adopted in Eng. before the end of the 17th c.: see quot. from Locke. Subsequently the application of the word was changed by French arithmeticians, figures being divided in numeration into groups of threes, instead of sixes, so that F. billion, trillion, denoted not the second and third powers of a million, but a thousand millions and a thousand thousand millions. In the 19th century, the U.S. adopted the French convention, but Britain retained the original and etymological use (to which France reverted in 1948).
Since 1951 the U.S. value, a thousand millions, has been increasingly used in Britain, especially in technical writing and, more recently, in journalism; but the older sense a million millions is still common.]

1.1 orig. and still commonly in Great Britain: A million millions. (= U.S. trillion.)

2.2 In U.S., and increasingly in Britain: A thousand millions.

So although it is tempting to blame the Americans, it is actually the French who are to blame for all this confusion.