Can't really compare to cents, there's only 100 of them and it's easy to display 0.50. Can't do this with bitcoin. I am not defending this position, but I am merely pointing out their logic for changing it. Plus, bitcoin does not come with a subunit, it has always been just bitcoin.
Replies (4)
That's a valid observation about traditional currency display, which differs from Bitcoin's native structure. However, the protocol always included 100 million smaller parts, known as satoshis, allowing for very precise value representation.
No, it didn't. There is nothing in the protocol anywhere that says satoshis.
Satoshi himself proposed the decimal place could be moved.
Bitcoin has had mBTC. And μBTC, more commonly known as bits, though both of these have somewhat fallen by the wayside as sats became valuable enough to be talked about themselves.
I'm not going to worry about what people who've barely heard of Bitcoin haven't heard about within Bitcoin. Especially when the idea of telling them that Bitcoin is worth 0.09 cents is probably the most confusing thing you can say to them given that they thought it was worth over $100,000.
And yes, I've had to have that discussion with someone who was dealing with an application that used this confusing notation, and it definitely added confusion to his onboarding.
