Bitcoin has risen sharply, is it time to use mBTC as the unit?

In the past few months, the price of Bitcoin has risen sharply. Therefore, many Bitcoin supporters have begun to seek the opinions of the community, hoping that they will consider changing the Bitcoin unit to mBTC (millibitcoin) instead of just using decimal points. They made this suggestion because they believe that now is the best time to change the number of Bitcoin units less than 1, which will make calculations more convenient and attract more new users, dispelling their concerns about the high price of Bitcoin.

Use mBTC as the unit

Currently, the value of Bitcoin is close to $2,000. On May 11, the price reached a peak of $1,890. Due to the sharp rise in the price of the currency, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts proposed using mBTC as a new unit. 1mBTC is equal to one thousandth of a Bitcoin, which is 0.001BTC . Based on the current price of the currency, 1mBTC is worth about $1.8. People began to discuss this unit before 1mBTC reached $1.

The advantage of mBTC is that people who don't know much about it can easily talk about small amounts of Bitcoin. In addition, some people who don't know much about Bitcoin may think that they have to buy one coin to buy it, but in fact there is no limit on the number of Bitcoins they can buy. Therefore, Bitcoin supporters believe that using mBTC to describe smaller portions of Bitcoin can help new users better understand the buying and selling of Bitcoin. They can buy $10 worth of Bitcoin or 5 mBTC. Several wallet service providers and companies have already used mBTC in their application interfaces, including Electrum, Blockchain and Mycelium.

Satoshis and Bits

Another unit used to measure small amounts of Bitcoin is聪（Satoshi） , named after the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin that can be recorded in the blockchain, representing one millionth of a Bitcoin ( 0.00000001BTC ). This term became popular after 2010 and became a hot topic in many forums. Sometimes traders will abbreviate Satoshi to "Sat". "Bit" is the same as Satoshi, which is one millionth of a coin.

The usage of satoshis and bits can be said to be more common than mBTC. There are some symbols that specifically represent the unit of satoshi, but they have not yet been widely used.

Is it easier to explain?

In the past few weeks, the topic of changing the Bitcoin unit has become the focus of discussion on major forums. On May 11, a Bitcoin supporter posted a post explaining the importance of the mBTC unit, believing that using this unit is more convenient for communicating with new users. The post mentioned:

Many new users who want to buy Bitcoin are scared by the thousands of euros worth of 1BTC.

'Buy 0.05' sounds weird. So I think it's better for exchanges and wallets to use mBTC. When shopping, the price of a beer is 3mBTC, which sounds much simpler than 0.003 BTC.

Some people also think that there is nothing wrong with the current unit, and once the unit changes, it may be difficult for the community and industry to adapt. However, some people said that wallet companies, exchanges and Bitcoin companies should choose the unit themselves. However, as the mining fee increases, switching to mBTC units is futile, because many wallets cannot use small amounts of Bitcoin at all, and may eventually become addresses that cannot be spent.

From the current situation, the change of Bitcoin units may not have immediate results. But some people firmly believe that the cryptocurrency environment is still young, and efforts in this regard from now on will be beneficial to communication.