<p>No. And that would be even more confusing. You would have to synchronize the split, and for historical prices you would need to know if they were old BTC or BTC after first split, second split etc... Just use mBTC, uBTC, satoshi, or even fractions of the smallest unit if need be.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-09T23:04:25.470Z
2014-01-09T23:04:25.470Z
djoot
<p>The reasoning behind stock splittings is not preventing cumbersome numbers. It's because you can't sell half a stock, so if a stock costs 1000€ you can't invest just 500€. Thus, a high stock price limits the minimum investment. This is not the case for Bitcoin, because it is divisable into a thousand mBTC, a million µBTC or even 100 Million Satoshis. If this should not be enough some day, the protocol would have to be changed, which is possible although difficult.</p>

<p>However, the protocol obviously makes no specifications on the naming of the units. If everybody would agree to call mBTC BTC from now on, nothing would have to change. But I'm pretty sure this won't happen, because in my opinion this would be a lot more confusing than just using mBTC.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-09T23:34:32.450Z
2014-01-09T23:34:32.450Z
jnnk
<p>I see that bitcoin is reaching 1000USD. If bitcoin becomes widely accepted currency, then we'll have to deal with decimal numbers like 0.00023 for onions etc. This can be cumbersome and might become a blocker for bitcoin adoption.</p>

<p>To overcome this problem, some people already started using mBTC (milli bitcoin) as units. But this is confusing. The better solution would be to split the bitcoins (like we do in stocks). With this approach, when BTC reaches 1000USD, we can split 1BTC into 1000BTC and it would be easy to manage the currency.</p>

<p>So my question is, does the bitcoin algorithm supports splitting of bitcoin?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-10T05:06:04.807Z
This is not an answer, additional questions like this should be placed in the comments section instead.
Scrybe
<economic-theory>
Is split possible in bitcoins (like in stocks)?
ghalways
# Is split possible in bitcoins (like in stocks)?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-01-09)

I see that bitcoin is reaching 1000USD. If bitcoin becomes widely accepted currency, then we'll have to deal with decimal numbers like 0.00023 for onions etc. This can be cumbersome and might become a blocker for bitcoin adoption.

To overcome this problem, some people already started using mBTC (milli bitcoin) as units. But this is confusing. The better solution would be to split the bitcoins (like we do in stocks). With this approach, when BTC reaches 1000USD, we can split 1BTC into 1000BTC and it would be easy to manage the currency.

So my question is, does the bitcoin algorithm supports splitting of bitcoin?

**Tags:** economic-theory

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: This is not an answer, additional questions like this should be placed in the comments section instead.  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2014-01-09. Score: 4

No. And that would be even more confusing. You would have to synchronize the split, and for historical prices you would need to know if they were old BTC or BTC after first split, second split etc... Just use mBTC, uBTC, satoshi, or even fractions of the smallest unit if need be.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2014-01-09. Score: 2

The reasoning behind stock splittings is not preventing cumbersome numbers. It's because you can't sell half a stock, so if a stock costs 1000€ you can't invest just 500€. Thus, a high stock price limits the minimum investment. This is not the case for Bitcoin, because it is divisable into a thousand mBTC, a million µBTC or even 100 Million Satoshis. If this should not be enough some day, the protocol would have to be changed, which is possible although difficult.

However, the protocol obviously makes no specifications on the naming of the units. If everybody would agree to call mBTC BTC from now on, nothing would have to change. But I'm pretty sure this won't happen, because in my opinion this would be a lot more confusing than just using mBTC.


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