Re: [Bitcoin-development] moving the default display to mbtc

["Luke-Jr" <luke@dashjr.org>]

On Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:07:58 PM Allen Piscitello wrote:
> Obviously the answer is to just display all fees and trading rates as BTC
> or MBTC (.0000005 MBTC fee? how cheap!).  On a more serious note, the
> transition should definitely be thought out well as it could be very
> damaging to have this confusion, but I would prefer to do it only once
> rather than twice.

I wonder if it might make sense to bundle some other terminology fixups at the 
same time.

Right now, Bitcoin-Qt has been using the term "confirmations" (plural) to 
refer to how many blocks deep a transaction is buried. We also use the term 
"confirmation" to refer to the point where a transaction is accepted as paid. 
IMO, the latter use makes sense, but the former leads to confusion especially 
in light of scamcoins which abuse this confusion to claim they have "faster 
confirmations", implying that the actual confirmation occurs faster when it 
really doesn't. "5 blocks deep" may not be more clear to laymen, but at least 
it makes it harder for people to confuse with actual confirmation.

I think we all know the problems with the term "address". People naturally 
compare it to postal addresses, email addresses, etc, which operate 
fundamentally different. I suggest that we switch to using "invoice id" to 
refer to what is now known as addresses, as that seems to get the more natural 
understanding to people. On the other hand, with the advent of the payment 
protocol, perhaps address/invoice id use will die out soon?

Thoughts?

Luke