

A User Friendly Lexicon for Bitcoin - jimmybyrum
http://blog.coinledger.io/post/100386131999/a-user-friendly-lexicon-for-bitcoin

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lukifer
These are good suggestions; I'm glad that the Foundation recognizes common
sub-units as a problem, and is making it a priority. There is a massive
psychological barrier to buying "only" a single bitcoin for ~$400, and most
laypeople wouldn't think to assume they are divisible (after all, it's a
"coin", and real coins are never split). And for whatever reason, evaluating
costs intuitively becomes incredibly difficult when the decimal is on the
right side; I know the difference between $100 and $1000 much better than the
difference between 0.01 BTC and 0.001 BTC.

However: I've grown skeptical that the developed world will ever price things
natively in Bitcoins, regardless of sub-units. Not because of volatility: over
time, that will be addressed by shorts/hedges/etc, and a larger liquidity
pool.

Rather, the obstacle is social momentum and pricing psychology. While we all
pay a slow and subtle inflation tax, we generally develop an intuitive sense
of what a dollar is worth. As anyone who has travelled and used foreign
currencies can tell you, having to constantly do conversion math means
throwing that knowledge away, and constantly wondering if you're getting
ripped off. Simply put, no one wants to abandon their lifetime of experience
with gauging value and prices by switching to an arbitrary new unit.

I'm still bullish on Bitcoin and crypto-assets in general, but as (a) a pure-
tech, worldwide middleman between fiat and fiat, (b) a way to bootstrap
financial infrastructure for the third world and the unbanked, and (c) a
backbone for other applications and services, with colored coins and proof-of-
existence being two prototypical examples.

As for driving down the street and seeing 0.009 BTC (or even 0.9 Beans) for a
gallon of gas, I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
dllthomas
_" real coins are never split"_

Not these days, anyway...

[http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/...](http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/march05/iotm.cfm)

On a more substantive note, I've been thinking that liquid measures might be a
better metaphor, and also drive intuition away from the notion that you can
follow a single coin around.

