this woman has resparked the sats vs bits debate on twitter, is sats confusing for new comers?
https://bit.ly/3g7tU2T
Bitcoin (Sats, Bits etc) they’re units of measurement.
Meters (cm, mm etc) were equally confusing when introduced at the time of the French Revolution.
> the French sought to create a system that would endure “for all times, for all peoples.”
[NIST: Meter](https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/meter)
Meters measure physical distance with precision, Bitcoin measures digital scarcity.
Unlike Bitcoin, “cryptos” aren’t scarce.
This is an easy argument to make: with 21 million making up the whole, a Bitcoin is a 21 millionth of that whole.
Other “cryptos” on the other hand, as a unit of measurement, what exactly do they represent? Amongst those who have bought them, unless they were to look it up now 95%+ wouldn’t know how many units there will be, or their rate of issuance.
And it wouldn’t matter if they did – changes in their rate of issuance, total supply or other rules of those systems aren’t known so there hardly agreed upon; they are flexible, and are changed with little or no discussion or even attention paid by the people holding them – an “upgrade” being made available for download is about all that’s required to change their rules.
I could list examples where other crypto assets have changed the rules of consensus dramatically without their community blinking, but would rather talk about Bitcoins and Sats.
Bitcoin on the other hand is scarce because an attempted alteration in the total supply wouldn’t change Bitcoin, it would only make another altcoin.
Most people don’t understand dollar, and may only be vaguely aware they have no say in what its total supply is, or of the rate of volume that number is changing, since the people who make those decisions cannot be forced to resign by the public, and are not elected by the public.
According to the (Fed)[https://bit.ly/3rabu7W], in Feb 1976 $50,000 represented 1/21,000,000 (one 21 millionth) of all M2.
1/21,000,000 of all M2 would later cost you:
$100,000 Dec 1983
$200,000 July 1998
$400,000 July 2009
$800,000 April 2020
$1,030,000 Dec 2021
Or the same, measured in Bits instead of Bitcoin:
1/2,100,000,000,000,000 of all M2 in Feb 1976 would be 5 cents.
10c
20c
40c
80c
$1
So if you earn $15 an hour, that’s equivalent to $0.75c in 1976 (the minimum wage equivalent to $46/ph today ($2.30). Reference: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
Those who doesn’t understand why we need a standard unit of scarcity to avoid selling our time for eroding value, is probably time poor enough that they don’t have time to think about it.
Cryptocurrency
