That's pretty much the same as saying: What? $3 for a Big Mac? (I'm assuming they're $3).
There will only ever be 21 million BTC. Considering that according to the US deficit, there exists at least 13 trillion USD, that would put the final exchange rate at $620K USD per BTC.
That is only possible, mind you, if BTC actually catches on.
I wonder why they decided to make it 21 million BTC total instead of a larger number. It seems like you'd run into a situation like when I bought a shirt in Bahrain for some low-ish number of Dinar, not realizing that it was much higher in USD. Spending 0.1 BTC doesn't seem like it should be a lot, even though it could eventually be worth quite a bit.
It's just that people have become accustomed to price inflation so things should just "cost more". Does it make more sense for candy to cost $0.05 or $1.50? Given improvements in efficiency, you'd think that the price of candy would have gone down from what it was years ago.
However, due to inflation from the monetary system, everything keeps going up.
The advantage of BTC is that it is infinitely divisible (to the limits of floating point, which will be interesting).
In the USD system, hoarders lose, in the BTC system, hoarders win.
I'm not sure which I prefer. I'd like a decaying cryptocurrency that guarantees money remains in circulation.
"Technically, a Bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimals, so 0.00000001 BTC is the smallest possible amount."
So instead of talking about "0.001 BTC", we could say "1 mBTC" or "1000 μBTC". The smallest amount is then 0.01 μBTC. The total amount is 21 trillion μBTC. For a comparison: As of december 2007, there were 829 billion US dollars in circulation.
Ah, you are correct. But I think that limit was said to be arbitrary and I think it is only set currently due to FP limitations. I am probably wrong though.
In any case, I think the terminology will evolve as you have suggested.
In your example of money in circulation, you have to include the debt money as well though because that is traded as if it exists.
I know what you mean... I've actually said that leaving out the decimal point altogether and having 210 quadrillion indivisible bitcoins would have been nice. But then you wouldn't get to see articles about dollar parity, dinar parity, etc. right now, when the project needs attention the most.
There will only ever be 21 million BTC. Considering that according to the US deficit, there exists at least 13 trillion USD, that would put the final exchange rate at $620K USD per BTC.
That is only possible, mind you, if BTC actually catches on.