Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and the blockchain protocol. These two technologies have irrevocably changed the world by transforming the way humans can accomplish commerce and finance. The smallest unit a single bitcoin can be divided into is named a Satoshi, in honor of its inventor.
This proposal is to form a measurement system to count satoshi and bitcoin. The name Satoshi Nakamoto is Japanese in origin. Satoshi means ‘Intelligent History’ (one with smart/wise ancestry)1 while Nakamoto means ‘central origin’ or ‘(one who lives) in the middle’2. The Nakamoto surname is found mostly in the Ryukyu islands close to the cost of Japan2. It would be fitting to form the measurement system for satoshi in a Japanese manner.
One satoshi is equal to 1/100,000,000 (one one-hundred millionth) of a bitcoin which is 0.00000001 bitcoin.
In the Japanese language, the words ‘ichi’, ‘ni’, and ‘san’ mean one, two, and three. We can extrapolate these Japanese terms into a standard that makes it easy to count a bitcoin down to one one-hundred millionth of itself.
Let:
‘ichi-satoshi’ or simply ‘i-satoshi’ for short = 1 satoshi (the term ‘i-satoshi’ would be for convention and interchangeable with the word satoshi)
‘ni-satoshi’ = 1,000 satoshi = 0.00001 bitcoin
‘san-satoshi’ = 1,000,000 satoshi = 0.01 bitcoin
In essence, if bitcoin were a dollar, a san-satoshi would equal 1 cent. A ni-satoshi would equal 0.001 cent and an i-satoshi would equal to 1 satoshi which would be 0.000001 cent.
Consider a vendor selling fruit on the street. She has determined that the value of 1 orange is equal to 18,400 satoshi or 0.000184 bitcoin. What should she write on the price tag for her fruit? “1 Orange – 0.000184 bitcoin”? No. The number alone is too cumbersome and would repel customers. How about “1 Orange – 18,400 satoshi”? Again, no. This number seems large and expensive. Even if her customers know what a satoshi is, the number is still psychologically unattractive. Now try: “1 Orange – 18.4 ni-sats”. Not bad, right? The exact value of the orange has been captured in a single sign which is both simple and easy to read.
Bitcoin as well as a pantheon of other cryptocurrencies are now becoming heavily adopted. Day-to-day use of bitcoin and similar blockchain protocols as a means of exchange is inevitable. The value of a single bitcoin has the potential to grow exponentially as time progresses because bitcoin has a fixed total supply of ‘coins’ (21,000,000) yet the human species will continue to expand. In time, the value of a single bitcoin may be synonymous with the value of a nice house. How do we use this same denomination to buy groceries? Clothes? Tip waiters? The Satoshi Measurement System listed above offers simple mnemonics which allow people to state the value of any nominal to significant object that they may possess or have interest in purchasing using bitcoin or similar blockchain currencies.
- Babynames.com (https://www.babynames.com/name/Satoshi)
- Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=nakamoto)