Quote from: shawshankinmate37927 on January 30, 2014, 11:59:14 PM

Quote from: Xav on January 30, 2014, 11:00:39 PM

In marketing terms those metric prefixes sound very small and evoke the suggestion of dealing with tiny little fractions. Though I'm not much of a salesman, but arriving home and telling your girlfriend or wife, or both, you bought 100 milliBitcoins for $80 would not impress her and make her think of you making a great investment. The story turns 180 degrees when you tell her that you bought 1000 rootBitcoins for $80, doesn't it? Additionally there is no need to name each increase by the factor ten/hundred/thousand; nobody writes 1 gigaDollar or 1 megaDollar or 1 kiloDollar or 1 deciDollar.

Yeah, I agree that those metric prefixes don't really "sound right" when talking about money. I was an electronics tech for twenty years, so I'm accustomed to the metric prefix terminology when discussing millivolts, kilowatts, picofarads, etc., but it just doesn't seem quite right when talking about money. I'm not sold on "rootBitcoins", but I'll go along with whatever term most in the community go with. I don't have an adamant opinion on it, just tossing some ideas around.

As you know, bitcoins are very different than fiat currencies and there is less of a need for metric prefixes when discussing them because bankers just create more of them before they have a chance to appreciate in value ("deflation" they like to call it). If the dollar supply had been controlled over the last hundred years the same way the bitcoin supply will be controlled for the next hundred years, they would have been forced to redefine the currency units (similar to a 10-for-1 stock split) or something along those lines.

I see what you mean. In the old days a Coke costed maybe $0.10 and an average workingman earned about a few hundred bucks a month. If he would spend all his income to Coke he would have a few thousand of them. Nowadays the average workingman has an income of a few thousands and a Coke costs about $2.00. Guess what, he still can buy a few thousand of Cokes each month. Is there a need for a decimal shift in the currency? I think not.
A view in the Bitcoin-future; a bit optimistic though. Today BTC1.00 = $800, so a Coke will cost rBTC25.00 (prefix r for square root of 100 million Satoshi). Twenty years later the same Coke will cost maybe 1000 times less in Bitcoins, because Bitcoin value has rocketed. Still no need for any decimal shifting, because we have the good old tiny little guy called Satoshi, which we can use as a prefix also. This future Coke might be rBTC0.025 = sBTC250.
We only need two prefixes; "root" and "Satoshi". My humble opinion.