Re: [Bitcoin-development] "bits": Unit of account

[Gordon Mohr <gojomo@gmail.com>]

[resend - apologies if duplicate]

Microbitcoin is a good-sized unit, workable for everyday transaction 
values, with room-to-grow, and a nice relationship to satoshis as 'cents'.

But "bits" has problems as a unit name.

"Bits" will be especially problematic whenever people try to graduate 
from informal use to understanding the system internals - that is, when 
the real "bits" of key sizes, hash sizes, and storage/bandwidth needs 
become important. The "bit" as "binary digit" was important enough that 
Satoshi named the system after it; that homage gets lost if the word is 
muddied with a new retconned meaning that's quite different.

Some examples of possible problems:

* If "bit" equals "100 satoshis", then the natural-language unpacking of 
"bit-coin" is "100 satoshi coin", which runs against all prior usage.

* If people are informed that a "256-bit private key" is what ultimately 
controls their balances, it could prompt confusion like, "if each key 
has 256-bits, will I need 40 keys to hold 10,000.00 bits?"

* When people learn that there are 8 bits to a byte, they may think, 
"OK, my wallet holding my 80,000.00 bits will then take up 10 kilobytes".

* When people naturally extend "bit" into "kilobits" to mean "1000 
bits", then the new coinage "kilobits" will mean the exact same amount 
(100,000 satoshi) as many have already been calling "millibits".

I believe it'd be best to pick a new made-up single-syllable word as a 
synonym for "microbitcoin", and I've laid out the case for "zib" as that 
word at <http://zibcoin.org>.

'Zib' also lends itself to an expressive unicode symbol, 'Ƶ' 
(Z-with-stroke), that remains distinctive even if it loses its stroke or 
gets case-reversed. (Comparatively, all 'b'-derived symbols for 
data-bits, bitcoins, or '100 satoshi bits' risk collision in contexts 
where subtleties of casing/stroking are lost.)

(There's summary of more problems with "bit" in the zibcoin.org FAQ  at: 
<http://zibcoin.org/faq#why-not-bits-to-mean-microbitcoins>.)

- Gordon

On 5/1/14, 3:35 PM, Aaron Voisine wrote:
> I'm also a big fan of standardizing on microBTC as the standard unit.
> I didn't like the name "bits" at first, but the more I think about it,
> the more I like it. The main thing going for it is the fact that it's
> part of the name bitcoin. If Bitcoin is the protocol and network, bits
> are an obvious choice for the currency unit.
>
> I would like to propose using Unicode character U+0180, lowercase b
> with stroke, as the symbol to represent the microBTC denomination,
> whether we call bits or something else:
>   http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0180/index.htm
>
> Another candidate is Unicode character U+2422, the blank symbol, but I
> prefer stroke b.
> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2422/index.htm
>
> Aaron
>
> There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole
> government working for you -- Will Rodgers
>
>> On Apr 21, 2014 5:41 AM, "Pieter Wuille" <pieter.wuille@gm...> wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 21, 2014 3:37 AM, "Un Ix" <slashdevnull@...> wrote:
>>>
>>> Something tells me this would be reduced to a single syllable in common
>>> usage I.e. bit.
>>
>> What units will be called colloquially is not something developers will
>> determine. It will vary, depend on language and culture, and is not
>> relevant to this discussion in my opinion.
>>
>> It may well be that people in some geographic or language area will end up
>> (or for a while) calling 1e-06 BTC "bits". That's fine, but using that as
>> "official" name in software would be very strange and potentially confusing
>> in my opinion. As mentioned by others, that would seem to me like calling
>> dollars "bucks" in bank software. Nobody seems to have a problem with
>> having colloquial names, but "US dollar" or "euro" are far less ambiguous
>> than "bit". I think we need a more distinctive name.
>>
>> --
>> Pieter
>
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