Author: Christophe Biocca 2014-05-03 15:48:06
Published on: 2014-05-03T15:48:06+00:00
The naming of units in Bitcoin has caused confusion among those unfamiliar with computer science concepts. Using the term "bits" (100 satoshis) as a unit for transactions raises issues with terminology, such as when people try to understand the technical specs of the system. There are also concerns about the natural-language interpretation of "bit-coin" as "100 satoshi coin," which is different from prior usage. Additionally, "bits" can be confused with other terms like "binary digit," and could cause misunderstandings when discussing key sizes, hash sizes, and storage/bandwidth needs. While some argue that human language is tolerant of overloading and inference from context, others believe that using a new made-up single-syllable word as a synonym for "microbitcoin" would be more effective. The proposed term "zib" could be represented by the Unicode symbol 'Ƶ' (Z-with-stroke). Overall, it seems unnecessary to add yet another confusing term to the pile, especially when there were arguably no better words to assign to these concepts in the first place.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:05:30.330937+00:00