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Satoshi

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What is a Satoshi?

What Is A Satoshi?

A Satoshi (sat or sats for short) is the smallest unit of a bitcoin. 1 Satoshi is a hundred millionth of a BTC (1 sat = 0.00000001 BTC) and 1 BTC is one hundred million satoshis (1 BTC = 100,000,000 sats)

In the future, the protocol may be updated to allow further subdivisions should they be needed.

The term “Satoshi” was coined back in 2010 in tribute to the creator of the bitcoin protocol, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin Divisibility

A single bitcoin can be divided out to 8 decimal places or into 100 million (100,000,000) smaller units. As you may have guessed, this can create some confusion when it comes to denominating bitcoin for making smaller purchases. For instance, buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks for $3.50 would be 0.00346421 BTC (at today’s bitcoin price) or 346,421 satoshi. In an attempt to reduce this kind of confusion and increase user adoption, four primary denominations of bitcoin have emerged; Bitcoins (BTC), MilliBits (mBTC), Bits (µBTC) and Satoshis (s).

1 BTC = 1.00000000 Bitcoin = 1,000.00000 mBTC = 1,000,000.00 µBTC = 100,000,000 sats.

Bitcoin: BTC

BTC
A bitcoin is the largest denomination within the bitcoin space as it denotes one entire bitcoin. This is primarily used for quoting prices of goods and services with a price that is equal to or greater than 1 bitcoin. Think of things like cars, houses, yachts, and even private jets to be purchased with entire bitcoins.

MilliBits: mBTC

MilliBit is the second largest denomination of bitcoin at 1/1000 of an entire bitcoin.

If 1 Bitcoin is worth $10,000 then 1 mBTC is worth $10 because a millibit is 1/1000 of an entire bitcoin. This allows users to send amounts of bitcoin using whole numbers rather than carrying numbers out several decimal places. That $3.50 cup of coffee would be .35 mBTC. You can see how this makes it quite a bit less confusing to spend bitcoin on a daily basis.

Bits: µBTC

Micro bitcoins or more commonly known as “bits” are one millionth (1/1,000,000) of a bitcoin. Bits are also a very common denomination of bitcoin around the world because fiat currencies tend to be divisible into 100 smaller units. In the US, equal to one US dollar so dealing in bits allows for an easy common denomination between multiple countries and currencies.

Satoshi: sats

The term “Satoshi” was coined back in 2010 in tribute to the creator of the bitcoin protocol, Satoshi Nakamoto. A Satoshi as a unit of measure is not very common because it is so small but the word satoshi is used all over the bitcoin space.

Some websites called bitcoin faucets will give away satoshis or even bits for completing certain tasks such as viewing ads, filling out surveys, or spinning a wheel.

Stacking Sats

Stacking sats is common phrase used by bitcoiners to describe any way to accumulate bitcoin. This can be accepting them as payment, bitcoin mining, or purchasing them from a bitcoin exchange.

Sats Are The Standard

SATS has also become an acronym for Sats Are The Standard because the bitcoin community knows that the price of bitcoin will continue to go up forever and it’s only a matter of time before everyone adopts bitcoin. In order to effectively price all goods and services in bitcoin on a global bitcoin standard,