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

[Aaron Voisine <voisine@gmail.com>]

I have to agree with Mike. Human language is surprisingly tolerant of
overloading and inference from context. Neurotypical people have no
problem with it and perceive a software engineer's aversion to it as
being pedantic and strange. Note that "bits" was a term for a unit of
money long before the invention of digital computers.

Aaron

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole
government working for you -- Will Rodgers


On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Gordon Mohr <gojomo@gmail.com> wrote:
> [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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