This is my first time submitting anything to this mailer list, so I am here with humility and I would appreciate any feedback about any aspect of my BIP draft submission below. If you want to reach out to me directly you can email me at as...@seent.com.
Abstract Rather than having a maximum supply of 21 million Bitcoin, there should be a maximum supply of 21 trillion Bitcoin. This can be accomplished by moving the decimal place 6 places to the right of where it is today, while reserving two degrees of accuracy after the decimal point. Copyright This BIP is under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Background On February 6th, 2010 Satoshi Nakamoto responded to a bitcointalk forum discussion about the divisibility and economics of bitcoin as a global currency. Satoshi chimed in to the conversation when two ideas formed: 1. Bitcoin is so scarce that a perception may exist that there is not enough to go around – there is not even 1 Bitcoin available per person on Earth. 2. If Bitcoin’s value continues to deflate against inflating fiat currencies, Bitcoin transactions may become smaller and smaller, requiring the potentially tedious use of many leading 0’s after the decimal point. Satoshi’s suggested response to these issues was a software update to change where the decimal place and commas are displayed when software interprets a Bitcoin wallet’s balance: “If it gets tiresome working with small numbers, we could change where the display shows the decimal point. Same amount of money, just different convention for where the ","'s and "."'s go. e.g. moving the decimal place 3 places would mean if you had 1.00000 before, now it shows it as 1,000.00.” ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44.msg267#msg267) Since 2010, when Satoshi wrote that post Bitcoin has indeed become a globally adopted currency, the dollar has inflated significantly, and Bitcoin has deflated. There are many debates in the Bitcoin community concerning the nomenclature of Bitcoin’s atomic unit (satoshis, sats, bits, bitcents, mbits, etc). The debate has somewhat spiraled out of control, and there is no clearly emerging community consensus. Additionally this issue impacts the technology world outside of Bitcoin because there are several proposals for various Unicode characters which factions of the Bitcoin community have started using to represent the atomic Bitcoin unit despite no formalized consensus. Therefore The conditions are right to move forward with Satoshi's vision and move the decimal place. Details There are several benefits to moving the decimal 6 places to the right in Bitcoin wallet balance notation: 1. Unit bias. It is a widely held belief that Bitcoin’s adoption may be hindered because would-be participants have a negative perception of Bitcoin’s unit size. One Bitcoin so expensive, and some people may be turned off by the idea of only owning a fraction of a unit. 2. Community cohesion. The Bitcoin community is deeply divided by various proposed atomic unit names, but if this BIP is adopted there is no need to debate nomenclature for the Bitcoin atomic unit. Bitcoin software providers can simply continue using the Bitcoin Unicode character (₿, U+20BF), and there are no additional unicode characters required. 3. Simplicity and standardization. Bitcoin has no borders and is used by people in just about every corner of the world. Other than the name Bitcoin and the Unicode character we have, there is no consensus around other notations for Bitcoin as a currency. Rather than introducing new concepts for people to learn, this BIP allows Bitcoin to grow under a single standardized unit specification, with a single standard unit name, unit size, and unit Unicode character. There is only one drawback I can identify with this BIP, and it is purely psychological. Moving the decimal place may produce bad optics in the short-term, and Bitcoin’s detractors will likely seize the opportunity to spread misinformation that moving the decimal place changes the monetary value of anyone’s Bitcoin. It is important to note that if this BIP were to gain consensus approval, the community would need to prepare talking points and coordinate educational outreach efforts to explain to Bitcoin users and wallet developers that this change does not change the proportion of the total value of Bitcoin any particular wallet holds, and is simply a notational change. There are no “winners” and no “losers” in this BIP – all Bitcoin participants would be impacted in an equal and proportionate manner on pari passu terms, and there is no change to Bitcoin’s monetary policy. Implementation The software updates needed to implement this BIP are restricted to the wallet's CLI/GUI configuration, and only involve changing the location of the decimal point and commas when viewing balances or reviewing transaction data. Each wallet provider including Bitcoin Core would simply need to update the display of a wallet’s balance by moving the decimal place 6 places to the right. Compatibility Because this BIP is a consensus change around the display of Bitcoin wallet balances and transaction amounts, everything will be backwards compatible with previous versions of Bitcoin. There would be no interruption in services for Bitcoin wallets which do not implement this BIP, however there could conceivably be human error problems with miscommunication between counterparties after this BIP is implemented. I believe this risk is extremely minimal because an error of 6 decimal places is so significant that it should be immediately noticed by any two parties conducting a transaction. Cheers, Asher
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