I suggest the following:
One bitcoin equals 100 bitcents
One bitcent equals one thousand millicents
One bitcent equals one million microcentsBy subdividing the bitcent rather than the bitcoin, we neatly end up with a name for the tiniest piece of bitdust, i.e. 1/100000000 of a bitcoin.
No doubt in time nicknames would arise for these small units. I like “austrian” and “satoshi” as possible nicknames
That’s an interesting proposal, but I have one strong argument against it: the mixing of a three-order of magnitude scale (1 bitcent = 10^3 millicents = 10^6 microcents) with a two-order scale (1 bitcoin = 100 bitcent) is almost guaranteed to lead to confusion down the road. Moreover, the fixation on cents is largely an artifact derived from the current versions of the Bitcoin GUI using by default two decimal places. Should a future version switch to a three decimal default (a move I think is wise) then this anchoring on cents will go away.
We should pick a scale that uses a uniform jump in orders of magnitude all the way from the tiniest amount to the largest. And the number of orders of magnitude should be three, since it’s the one most familiar to people. Granted, speaking of millicoins and microcoins could get tiresome, so choosing nicknames for the multiples and submultiples is a good idea. I agree that “Satoshi” is a good candidate, but I’ll have to disagree with you on the “Austrian”… :-)
My suggestions:
1 satoshi = 1000 BTC
1 BTC = 1000 koishi (‘koishi’ being Japanese for ‘pebble’)
1 koishi = 1000 suna (‘suna’ being japanese for ‘sand’)
