‘Sats’ vs ‘bits’ debate reignites amid proposal to change Bitcoin base unit

A recent proposal that aims to change Bitcoin’s base unit to make it easier to understand as a payment tool has run into opposition, with critics saying Bitcoin’s satoshis are no more confusing than the dollar’s cents.

Bitcoin developer John Carvalho introduced Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-177 on April 23, which seeks to eliminate the concept of satoshis, of which there are 100,000,000 in 1 Bitcoin (BTC), and effectively split Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million into 21 quadrillion units.

It follows a 2017 proposal from Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song to create “bits,” representing one-millionth of 1 Bitcoin. However, Carvalho said Song’s approach would still require Bitcoin users to think about decimals and “shifts complexity rather than eliminating it.”

Block Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey is among those calling for the change, saying in a May 18 X post that satoshis, or sats, are too confusing for newcomers.

“Bits of Bitcoin is better, and just Bitcoin is best,” Dorsey said.

Dorsey pointed to a December 2024 discussion on the topic where Stevie Lee, product lead of Bitcoin infrastructure firm Spiral, argued that not enough people know or care about what satoshis are.

“Everyone knows Bitcoin, no one knows sats, people just want to send and receive Bitcoin,” Lee said, recalling past conversations where people thought satoshis were an entirely new token, unrelated to Bitcoin.

He added that the Bitcoin community shouldn’t be too concerned with the change, as they know the underlying economics of Bitcoin would remain intact.

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Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten and Byte Federal director of product Michelle Weekley were among those who opposed the change.

“People understand cents in a dollar, they will understand sats in a Bitcoin,” Weekley said on X.

Magdalena Gronowska, a self-described Bitcoin consultant, claimed that the change could make some people think that Bitcoin abruptly crashed from its current price of around $100,000 and that its “supply has massively inflated.”

Robin Linus, the creator of the Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BitVM), highlighted that even Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was open to changing how Bitcoin’s units are displayed for the purpose of usability.

“If it gets tiresome working with small numbers, we could change where the display shows the decimal point,” Satoshi said in a February 2010 post before vanishing the following year.

“Same amount of money, just different convention,” Satoshi added.

The Bitcoin network hasn't implemented any improvement proposals since the Taproot upgrade in November 2021, which aimed to improve Bitcoin’s speed, efficiency and privacy.

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