I’ve been thinking recently about what we can do to change the narrative on Bitcoin pricing…
A few things I’ve noticed:
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A lot of my friends/family seem to think that, because they can’t buy ‘a whole Bitcoin’ that it’s too late and not worth buying any at all, which is a big shame.
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Prices for goods (on the rare instances that they’re given at all) always seem to be quoted in full Bitcoin, meaning that they’re a nightmare to mentally convert (eg a loaf of bread costs about 0.000184 btc - too many decimal places to be workable)
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the concept of the ‘satoshi’ is known, but it’s too small to really use, as there are 100 million of them in a single Bitcoin, and around 10,000 to the dollar (that loaf of bread is worth 18,400, annoyingly and unworkably high, especially when used to describe slightly more expensive consumer goods like a night in a cheap hotel being in the hundreds of thousands of sats)
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We need a new benchmark. A new ‘anchor unit’. Something between the two. Something in the order of 100, 1000 or 10,000 satoshi
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the concept of the ‘bit’ (100 satoshis) isn’t so well known, and seems to never be used. Personally, I like it. At the scale between where we are currently (~$10k) and where we hope to go ($100k-$1m), the Bit seems to be a good order of magnitude to be a long term ‘anchor unit’.
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There are a million bits to a Bitcoin, so for people who can never own a full Bitcoin (most people), they could still aim, maybe, for 100,000 Bits (currently just under $1000), which seems more respectable than ‘0.1 Bitcoin’. In USD terms though, 0.1BTC is still a lot for many, so 10,000 Bits might even be a good number for the average person to aim for, given that most citizens only have a few hundred dollars in savings, at best. Also, ‘10,000 Bits’ in savings just sounds a lot more worthwhile and respectable than having ‘0.01 Bitcoin’ saved up…
So… Firstly, I’d like to debate names for the units:
100 Sats --> A ‘bit’ (some call it a youbit), current value just under a penny. Currently a low unit, but could handle growth upwards of 2 orders of magnitude without needing to be changed. I like the name, we just need to spread usage further
And the other 2 ‘anchor unit’ candidates:
1000 Sats --> Seems totally unnamed, current value just under a dime. Could be an ideal candidate if we expect to stay in the order of 10k-100k USD in the mid-long term.
10,000 Sats --> Some called it a ‘BitCent’ but this is a bad name IMHO. It’s currently valued at just under a dollar, so could be a good candidate in the short term, if we stay at this order of magnitude for long enough. It needs a better ‘common-use-name’ tho… We can do better, can’t we? I like ‘Finney’, which could be shortened to a ‘Fin’, but that could confuse people as it’s also used in ETH… Thoughts and ideas?
Secondly…
I put together a super simple proof of concept that uses live prices from the Blockchain.info API and the GroceryBear API to do 2 things:
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Provide a ‘flipped price’, which I believe should be our new pricing metric, which is “How many Bits does a Dollar Buy”
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To provide pricing, in Bits, for 3 very simple products (a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, and 1lb sirloin steak)
It’s ugly and would need a lot of work, and can be changed to accommodate the other 2 ‘anchor unit candidates’ super easily, but I wanted to get a rough concept together to see if it’s interesting to anyone that isn’t me!!
Let me know what you think / how you think it should be improved/where you stand on the ideal ‘anchor unit’.
Thanks
P.S> I was close to using the ‘BitCent’ instead of the Bit (ratio is 100:1), as its value isn’t far from the dollar (currently $0.92). If someone can come up with a catchy name for this, it could be a potential candidate that would be better than the Bit right now, as it would spit out ‘intuitive prices’ that would be v similar to current prices, but it would get hard to use commonly if/when prices go to $100k and beyond… Just a thought.
P.P.S Here’s a link to a site with current common names & denominations