Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Would it be possible to reestablish the decimal value of a bitcoin?
by
_tenletters
on 21/04/2014, 20:07:15 UTC
And now we begin to see why redefining the word "bitcoin" is so ridiculous.

When I talk about bitcoins, I'll continue to use the word "bitcoin" to refer to the value that it is today (as will many other people) regardless of what all of you decide to do.

Meanwhile, _tenletters (and his friends and followers) will be using the word "bitcoin" to refer to an amount that is equivalent to 0.000001 BTC today, and BawsyBoss (and his friends and followers) will be using the word "bitcoin" to refer to an amount that is equivalent to 0.001 BTC today.

When a price is listed as 13 bitcoins, it's going to become very confusing as people try to figure out if that means 13 "original bitcoins", 13 "tenletters bitcoins", or 13 "Bawsy bitcoins".

Because of this confusion (similar to the confusion if we tried to redefine the names of colors), I don't expect many people to adopt either of your proposals.

The first semantic re-basement to take off in even a small way will win out, especially if adoption rates continue to follow an S-curve. New users will adopt the more intuitive system, and will quickly outnumber holdouts. Referring to 10^8 Satoshis as "one bitcoin" could (and should) become as anachronistic as insisting on using the official measurement units of the Ottoman empire.