Millibit
MilliBit was name chosen by popular vote in poll on the Bitcoin forum to represent the SI unit of 0.001 bitcoins (BTCs). The poll was announced on May 14, 2011 to come to an agreement of the most commonly used name.[1] With the market exchange rate nearing $10 USD per BTC, a name for the sub-BTC unit was needed. The subunit later steered toward simply millibit. Other commonly used names are millibitcoin, millicoin, and millie.
A milli is the International System of Units (SI) prefix representing one thousandth (1/1000th)[2].
Examples
- One thousand (1000) milliBits refers to 1 bitcoin or 1 BTC.
- Twenty seven milliBits refers to 0.027 bitcoins, or 0.027 BTC.
- 1.375 BTC may be referred to as one bitcoin and three hundred seventy-five (375) milliBits.
Criticism
A milliBit does not follow the SI standard verbatim, so at best this is an ad-hoc naming convention.
The poll was concluded without participation by a majority of the Bitcoin community nor even was there a statistically significant sample of votes from the community. The adoption of this nonstandard name "milliBit" to refer to the SI mBTC or millibitcoin is seen by some to be a mistake.
Popular Alternates
The Units chart shows mBTC as the abbreviation for the SI prefixed millibitcoin. In addition to the proper SI prefix, another reference to the 0.001 BTC measure is the "Millie". One milliBit equals one Millie.
Similarly, μBTC is the abbreviation for the SI prefixed microbitcoin. The reference to the 0.000001 BTC measure (i.e., microbitcoin using the SI prefix) is the "Mikey". One microbitcoin equals one Mikey.