Zeroes after the fractional?

published Feb 16, 2022

You may have learned in school that zeroes after the fractional — the digits after the comma — are useless. With Bitcoin, they might not be.

Zeroes after the fractional?

One of these little-known things about Bitcoin is that it will be possible, in the future, to further subdivide amounts in units smaller than the satoshi (currently the smallest unit of Bitcoin).  In fact, it is already the case that the Lightning network supports accounting (but not settling) in fractions of a satoshi.

This might, in fact, become necessary as Bitcoin's purchasing power continues to increase.  At this time, one U.S. dollar can only buy roughly 2200 satoshis... and that amount is likely to continue dwindling.

In short:

Bitcoin will be the first money in history that will see "zeroes" added after the fractional number, instead of before the comma¹.

¹ If your fractional separator is not the comma, pretend I said "period" here.