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

2014-04-20 Thread Pieter Wuille
I told him specifically to bring it here (on a pull request for Bitcoin Core), as there is no point in making such convention changes to just one client. I wasn't aware of any discussion about the bits proposal here before. On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Tamas Blummer ta...@bitsofproof.com

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

2014-04-20 Thread Christophe Biocca
If you absolutely want a name for some small unit (which may be valuable, not knocking that part of the idea), please use anything other than bits, which is already a massively overloaded term that will confuse the hell out of people: Harddrive costs measured in bits per gigabyte? An itunes movie

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

2014-04-20 Thread Tamas Blummer
Here is an earlier reference to bits: https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg04248.html I forgot that Alan Reiner was also supporting a unit equals to bits : https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg04264.html and here the

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

2014-04-20 Thread Alan Reiner
I've been a staunch supporter of microbitcoin and would like to do anything I can to make sure that we jump directly to it if we're going to promote changing the default units. And I'm happy to integrate it into Armory as a default (with appropriate explanations and settings/options). I'm not so

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

2014-04-20 Thread Erik Garrison
The world is rapidly becoming a place in which a solid grasp of orders of magnitude could be considered a basic mathematical skill. People are very likely to learn what mBTC and µBTC are simply because they risk their money if they do not. This is not a bad thing and I think stands only to help

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

2014-04-20 Thread Wladimir
On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Chris Pacia ctpa...@gmail.com wrote: The term bit is really only overloaded for those who are techy. 95% of the population never uses the term bit in their daily lives and I doubt most could even name one use of the term. Plus bit used to be a unit of money way

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

2014-04-20 Thread Chris Pacia
You're correct, my impression of the term is based of what I experience in the US. If it is more widely used in other cultures that should be a consideration. On Apr 20, 2014 12:27 PM, Wladimir laa...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Chris Pacia ctpa...@gmail.com wrote: The

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

2014-04-20 Thread Mike Caldwell
As someone who has put a lot of thought into how to best help typical everyday people understand bitcoin, I strongly favor 1 bit = 1e-6 BTC as being very straightforward to explain to non technical types, and also XBT as one bit. There are a million bits in a bit coin is highly intelligible to

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

2014-04-20 Thread Arne Brutschy
Hello, While SI units are great for people well versed in them, there is a very good reason people aren't asking for 100 micro dollars in change. The average person is not going to be confident that the prefix they are using is the correct one, people WILL send 1000x more or less than

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

2014-04-20 Thread Jannis Froese
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I agree that a unit based on 1e-6 BTC is easier to use in practice than BTC. The name microbitcoin is ok-ish. Nearly all countries officially use the SI-system, but that doesn't mean that the average citizen knows all the SI prefixes. Mega, kilo and

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

2014-04-20 Thread Mike Caldwell
It is a paradigm that is easy to explain and grasp for neurotypical people. The average mind has no problem overloading words and distinguishing the intended meaning from context. For most people, overloading a single syllable word with a new meaning is much less complicated than using a

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

2014-04-20 Thread Mike Caldwell
Mainly because it is short, memorable, effectively leads the listener to infer the proper meaning, is culturally neutral, is easy to say by speakers of just about any language, and many other reasons. Mike Sent from my iPhone On Apr 20, 2014, at 12:23 PM, Arne Brutschy abruts...@xylon.de

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

2014-04-20 Thread Oliver Egginger
Hello, just my two 'cents': Terms arises by itself. Just as most people speak of coins when they mean bitcoins. I do not see that bitcoin is currently in common use except for speculation. Therefore no term for smaller units has established yet. No problem in my eyes. Time will tell. - oliver

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

2014-04-20 Thread Christophe Biocca
Culturally neutral? bit in French phonetically collides with slang for phallus (bitte, with a silent e). Apparently it means louse in Turkish as well. Not that this really would be avoidable with any short word (all the short possible words are usually taken), but it's not neutral. On Sun, Apr

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

2014-04-20 Thread Gmail
People in the Bitcoin community are sometimes resistant to the idea of using the word credit as a unit of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is not a credit-based system. However, given that the average person has close to no understanding of what credit means, and probably no concern for the

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

2014-04-20 Thread Mike Caldwell
By culturally neutral I mean we avoid deliberately invoking a cultural reference in the name. For example satoshi would be a reference to Japanese culture just for being a common Japanese name regardless of who Satoshi turns out to be. Mike Sent from my iPhone On Apr 20, 2014, at 1:20 PM,

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

2014-04-20 Thread Justin A
delurk What about ubit, pronounced YOU-bit, representing 1e-6 bitcoin? Easy to say, tied in a visual way to the metric micro, leaves the required 2 decimal places for the marginally numerate.. What more could one want? /delurk Also, hi. My first post; plan to get involved over the southern

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

2014-04-20 Thread Mike Caldwell
My impression: Good because it is short, memorable, and pronounceable by speakers of most languages (though to most of the world that would be oo-bit, as u being yu is mostly an English thing) Downsides include the fact that μ is not a U, it just resembles one. It is a lowercase M in Greek, a

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

2014-04-20 Thread Un Ix
Something tells me this would be reduced to a single syllable in common usage I.e. bit. My 2 cents goes for bit. Because: Bitcoin is a digital currency, BTC starts with bit, bit refers to a small amount of something in its regular english usage and lastly 99.9876543% of people on the planet

[Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-20 Thread Jonathan Levin
Hi all, I am a post-graduate economist writing a paper on the incentives of mining. Even though this issue has been debated in the forums, I think it is important to get a sense of the magnitude of the incentives at play and determine what implications this has for the transaction fee market.

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

2014-04-20 Thread Mike Caldwell
If bit had to be preceded by a letter I would nominate ebit or xbit (which could still be XBT) Those needing a definition for x could define it as coin/100. That said, I am still more in favor of bit. Xbit would just solve the problems others cite about ambiguity if they had to be solved

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-20 Thread Mark Friedenbach
As soon as we switch to headers first - which will be soon - there will be no difference in propagation time no matter how large the block is. Only 80 bites will be required to propagate the block header which establishes priority for when the block is fully validated. On Apr 20, 2014 6:56 PM,

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

2014-04-20 Thread Christopher Paika
Bit is simple phonetically, I'm for it. On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Mike Caldwell mcaldw...@swipeclock.comwrote: If bit had to be preceded by a letter I would nominate ebit or xbit (which could still be XBT) Those needing a definition for x could define it as coin/100. That said,

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-20 Thread Daniel Lidstrom
Of course, in reality smaller miners can just mine on top of block headers and include no transactions and do no validation, but that is extremely harmful to the security of Bitcoin. If it's only during the few seconds that it takes to to verify the block, then would this really be that big

[Bitcoin-development] Mailing list abuse

2014-04-20 Thread Rodney Morris
What is the procedure for dealing with it? Is it considered abuse to reply to and quote the entire digest for the sake of a few lines of content? Am I the only one annoyed by this (if so I'll just shut right up). Rodney

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

2014-04-20 Thread Pieter Wuille
On Apr 21, 2014 3:37 AM, Un Ix slashdevn...@hotmail.com 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

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Mailing list abuse

2014-04-20 Thread Wladimir
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 6:58 AM, Rodney Morris rodney.mor...@gmail.com wrote: What is the procedure for dealing with it? Is it considered abuse to reply to and quote the entire digest for the sake of a few lines of content? Am I the only one annoyed by this (if so I'll just shut right up). I

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

2014-04-20 Thread Tamas Blummer
I think we have two very good candidates both substantiated with arguments for their use in their context: bit - the word for everyday use XBT - the acronym to fit into the ISO currency set. both meaning 100 satoshis or 1e-6 Bitcoin. I am glad that I erred, and this list finaly cares of