Mike Caldwell [ARCHIVE] / is on Nostr

⚠️ This account is not associated with a real person. It's an archival account for mailing list messages.
🗓️ Active from 2013-10-25 to 2014-05-04
💬 Posted a total of 11 messages
📚 Participated in the following categories: Bitcoin-development
🔇 Please do not DM this user as it's used for archive purposes only.

Last Notes

2023-06-07 15:19:03

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2014-04-20
📝 Original message:My impression:
Good because it is short, memorable, and pronounceable by speakers of most languages (though to most of the world that would be oo-bit, as "u" being "yu" is mostly an English thing)
Downsides include the fact that μ is not a U, it just resembles one. It is a lowercase M in Greek, a live spoken language also studied by many, and calling it a U conveys a notion of global unawareness. And the potential for "XBT" to be 1e-6 BTC on the world stage would be huge, worth pursuing.
Mike
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 20, 2014, at 6:16 PM, "Justin A" <allport at gmail.com<mailto:allport at gmail.com>> wrote:
<delurk>
What about "ubit", pronounced "YOU-bit", representing 1e-6 bitcoin? Easy to say, tied in a visual way to the metric micro, leaves the required 2 decimal places for the marginally numerate.. What more could one want?
</delurk>
Also, hi. My first post; plan to get involved over the southern hemisphere winter if I can learn enough.
On Apr 20, 2014 4:32 PM, "Mike Caldwell" <mcaldwell at swipeclock.com<mailto:mcaldwell at swipeclock.com>> wrote:
By culturally neutral I mean we avoid deliberately invoking a cultural reference in the name. For example "satoshi" would be a reference to Japanese culture just for being a common Japanese name regardless of who Satoshi turns out to be.
Mike
Sent from my iPhone
> On Apr 20, 2014, at 1:20 PM, "Christophe Biocca" <christophe.biocca at gmail.com<mailto:christophe.biocca at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Culturally neutral? "bit" in French phonetically collides with slang
> for phallus ("bitte", with a silent "e"). Apparently it means "louse"
> in Turkish as well.
>
> Not that this really would be avoidable with any short word (all the
> short possible words are usually taken), but it's not neutral.
>
>> On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Oliver Egginger <bitcoin at olivere.de<mailto:bitcoin at olivere.de>> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> just my two 'cents':
>>
>> Terms arises by itself. Just as most people speak of coins when they
>> mean bitcoins. I do not see that bitcoin is currently in common use
>> except for speculation. Therefore no term for smaller units has
>> established yet. No problem in my eyes. Time will tell.
>>
>> - oliver
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book
>> "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their
>> applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field,
>> this first edition is now available. Download your free book today!
>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/NeoTech
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bitcoin-development mailing list
>> Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net>
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book
> "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their
> applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field,
> this first edition is now available. Download your free book today!
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/NeoTech
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net>
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book
"Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their
applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field,
this first edition is now available. Download your free book today!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/NeoTech
_______________________________________________
Bitcoin-development mailing list
Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net>
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20140420/fb9c396c/attachment.html>

2023-06-07 15:19:02

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2014-04-20
📝 Original message:Mainly because it is short, memorable, effectively leads the listener to infer the proper meaning, is culturally neutral, is easy to say by speakers of just about any language, and many other reasons.
Mike
Sent from my iPhone
> On Apr 20, 2014, at 12:23 PM, "Arne Brutschy" <abrutschy at xylon.de> wrote:
>
> agree that overloading isn't an issue when necessary, but my point was
> that the necessity is lacking. If we're free to pick anything, why pick
> something that is overloaded?
>
> Moreover, "bit" is an abbreviation of bitcoin and might be confused with
> it. Most currencies use a work that is phonetically very different and
> short, so why not do the same?
>
> Pluk, or cred, or finney (as proposed the thread I posted), or
> whichever. We could call it "unsp" for unspent ;)
>
> Arne
>

2023-06-07 15:19:01

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2014-04-20
📝 Original message:It is a paradigm that is easy to explain and grasp for neurotypical people.
The average mind has no problem overloading words and distinguishing the intended meaning from context. For most people, overloading a single syllable word with a new meaning is much less complicated than using a unique 3+ syllable word like satoshi or micro-anything.
Doing software development warps our minds to demand fully qualified names for everything. We know our compilers would say "bit? Fatal error 0xaaabbbbwtf, can't continue, not sure if you mean a Boolean or a dog bite". But this peculiarity should not be projected onto the people we are trying to get bitcoin to appeal to, not if we want them to feel like we think about their experience.
If I were to say "a Bitcoin can be divided into a million bits", less than 0.1% of average joes would think I was talking about German beers or the thing that goes in horses mouths. Really, most people are good at using context to relate this to "a dollar can be divided into 100 cents" and accepting it. This requires much less of their mind resources than using SI prefixes correctly or learning 3 syllable words that (to them) have no instantly apparent relationship to Bitcoin.
Mike
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 20, 2014, at 11:44 AM, "Arne Brutschy" <abrutschy at xylon.de> wrote:
>> I propose that users are offered a preference to denominate the
>> Bitcoin currency in a unit called a bit. Where one bitcoin (BTC)
>> equals one million bits (bits) and one bit equals 100 satoshis.
>
> There have been many proposals for more or less arbitrary subunits. What
> would be the merit of your proposal? I don't really follow the reasoning
> that it's better if it's uncommon for everyone rather than just uncommon
> for people not used to metric units.
>
> Regarding the label of a "bit": I have to agree with the others that bit
> is heavily overused as a unit, but I am a computer scientist, so I don't
> have the "average joe's" perspective on this. I find it weird to use as
> it's already in use in English - "a bit of work" etc

2023-06-07 15:19:00

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2014-04-20
📝 Original message:As someone who has put a lot of thought into how to best help typical everyday people understand bitcoin, I strongly favor 1 bit = 1e-6 BTC as being very straightforward to explain to non technical types, and also XBT as one "bit". "There are a million bits in a bit coin" is highly intelligible to average people.
I consider overload/conflict with existing meanings of "bit" as a non-issue for typical population at large.
Mike
Sent from my iPhone
> On Apr 20, 2014, at 10:31 AM, "Alan Reiner" <etotheipi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Whatever we call it. I'm happy to support it as long as it's 1e-6.