Bitcoin Unit Debate Heats Up: Ditching 'Sats' for 'Bits'?

Crypto News Cryptocurrencies

Written by Aaron S.,

Editor-In-Chief

Last Updated: May 19, 2025

Key Takeaways

John Carvalho’s proposal aims to replace satoshis with 21 quadrillion units to make Bitcoin easier to use without decimals;
Jack Dorsey supports the idea, but others argue that satoshis are no harder to grasp than cents in traditional currency;
Satoshi Nakamoto once said display formats could change if needed, as long as the actual value stays the same.

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Bitcoin Unit Debate Heats Up: Ditching 'Sats' for 'Bits'?

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A new proposal to make Bitcoin BTC $89,441.77 easier to use has sparked a new discussion, which brought back a long-running discussion about its smallest units.

On April 23, Bitcoin developer John Carvalho introduced a plan, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 177, that would remove the idea of "satoshis". He suggested splitting the total of 21 million Bitcoin into 21 quadrillion smaller parts.

This change would mean people could work with whole numbers rather than long decimal strings.

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In 2017, developer Jimmy Song suggested a similar approach with "bits", where one bit would equal one-millionth of a Bitcoin.

The suggestion gained attention after Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block Inc., supported it in a May 18 post on X. He wrote, "Bits of Bitcoin is better, and just Bitcoin is best".

However, Michelle Weekley from Byte Federal spoke out against the proposal. Weekley said on X that people understand cents in dollars, so they can learn sats in Bitcoin just as easily.

Robin Linus, creator of the Bitcoin Virtual Machine, reminded that Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, once said the way units are shown could be adjusted if it made things easier.

In a 2010 forum post, Satoshi wrote:

If it gets tiresome working with small numbers, we could change where the display shows the decimal point… Same amount of money, just different convention.

Meanwhile, The Bitcoin Standard author Saifedean Ammous recently joined a discussion on how to address spam on the Bitcoin network. What did he say? Read the full story.