Oh yeah, remember this debate from a week ago?
It occurred to me that, having recently launched a site called Sats Per Post, I now have a little “epidermus in the sports ball battle” as they say when it comes to the bits not sats debate.
Let’s assume for a moment that it is even possible to change what satoshi means. It may not be, I don’t know. The term emerged organically in early bitcoin forums, and changing a word that has spread organically will be hard.
But I won’t let ignorance stop me from having an opinion 😉
There are two main reasons that changing satoshis to bits is a bad idea.
- Willingness to change that word, which is a fundamental word in bitcoin literature, would signal willingness to change other aspects of the bitcoin system, which would contradict the message of immutibility.
- Satoshi could have named the larger unit after himself, but he didn’t. And it was the early bitcoin community that designated the smallest unit ‘satoshi.’ Someone suggested the name on a forum and it caught on organically. If a new unit name does catch on, it will happen organically as well, or else not at all. Changing sats to bits now would be disrespectful to those early bitcoiners and the community, and removing any reference to the creator himself is disrespectful to Satoshi Nakamoto. Akin to revoking a medal given to someone who earned it. Why do that?
Bits could be a different unit, like 100 sats or 1000 sats per bit. But until amount of 1000 sats takes on enough use value in the market place to warrant the designation of a new term to it,
(and that designation of the amount will likely be an emergent property of its use in practice,🗡🗡🗡🗡🗡🗡🗡🗡 (swords for making a good point))
I am not convinced that we can just decide the change interpersonally like that. Satoshi had that power, but we do not. (do we?)
The other problem with units like that is they are a fiat, legacy finance term born out of necessity for the purposes of facilitating accurate divisibility of monetary value when handling physical cash money.
Bitcoin is digital.
The only units we need are sats and bitcoin.
Just relax and let the computer do the math.
I guess the last thing I’ll say is that I know there are a lot of people who actually have serious and well-thought-through opinions on this topic.
Let’s be honest we’re all the kind of person who has an opinion on this topic, that’s the intended audience of this entire post at least, so if you don’t care about this at all then here’s a friendly octopus who will show you the way to an octopus party. 🐙
Another thing I’ve noticed is that this topic seems to come up during lulls after the market has topped or bottomed out.
That’s when people start to want to change the word “sats” to bits or add an amount called bits or re-numerate the units such that 1 satoshi is 1, not 1/100 millionth of a bitcoin.
The rest of the time, we’re either hallucinatory with joy or utterly despondent depending on the chart we look at.
Like this cat.
If we do add bits or change sats or whatever in the future, then I guess I’ll just have to go with the flow. But until then, I’m sticking sats.
I guess bits isn’t so bad. Although, it does rhyme with a fun little word.
No matter, let’s just soldier on, say the bitites (pronounced ‘bit’ + ‘tights’, rhymes with Hittites) or perhaps the more economical: bitties.
Perhaps we sat supporters could call ourselves the satians, as in satiated, as in I’ve had enough of this nonsense.
This is all cringe anyway, might as well take it to the next level.
Leave a comment below or ping me on twitter.
