Author: Asher Hopp 2022-03-04 02:07:59
Published on: 2022-03-04T02:07:59+00:00
The author has submitted a BIP draft proposing to move the decimal point six places to the right in Bitcoin wallet balance notation, thus increasing the maximum supply from 21 million to 21 trillion Bitcoin while reserving two degrees of accuracy after the decimal point. The proposal is based on Satoshi Nakamoto's response to a bitcointalk forum discussion in 2010 about the divisibility and economics of bitcoin as a global currency. The proposed change would offer several benefits including unit bias, community cohesion, simplicity, and standardization. The only drawback identified is a psychological one, where moving the decimal place may produce bad optics in the short-term. The implementation of this BIP requires updating the display of a wallet's balance by moving the decimal place six places to the right, which can be done through software updates. As this BIP is a consensus change around the display of Bitcoin wallet balances and transaction amounts, everything remains backward compatible with previous versions of Bitcoin, and there would be no interruption in services for Bitcoin wallets that do not implement this BIP.
Updated on: 2023-05-22T18:00:30.506221+00:00