Author: Jorge Timón 2014-03-13 18:23:04
Published on: 2014-03-13T18:23:04+00:00
In a conversation between Troy Benjegerdes and Mike Hearn on March 13, 2014, they discussed the use of micro-Bitcoin (uBTC) versus milli-Bitcoin (mBTC). Benjegerdes suggests using mBTC as it would be less confusing for people as every volatility bump messes up expectations of what a Bitcoin is worth. He also proposes planning uBTC just after the next price spike to $10KUSD or whatever and rolling back to mBTC when the price crashes from altcoin money supply inflation competition. However, Hearn disagrees and believes that it is highly optimistic to assume they will need another 1000x shift anytime soon. Moreover, he thinks that making assumptions about the future price of Bitcoin to make decisions would not be wise. Hearn also pointed out that having "one true only unit change" would be the whole point of keeping the existing-accounting-tools friendly micro even if Bitcoin crashed to 1 USD. The only need to change it would be if there was a sub-satoshi hardfork, which does not seem necessary anytime soon. Additionally, Benjegerdes expressed his subjective opinion that mBTC looks more like the price of a cup of coffee while 3123.45 uBTC seems like the cost of an expensive holiday. Hearn disagreed with this view, saying it sounded very US-centric and that people used to currencies such as VND, UZS, or MNT might not find it so. Furthermore, he suggested that people seem to like mBTC is an ad populum fallacy and that millions of flies can actually be wrong, adding that no valid argument has been made in favor of mBTC, except that some wallets/services are already doing it wrong.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T20:37:22.209569+00:00