Units

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While units in Bitcoin usually follow the Standard Metric Notation system, this page lists the most commonly-used units. These can be expressed in any number of ways, from using some form of the prefix to an abbreviation of both the prefix and adding Bitcoin. Bitcoin as a unit of account is sometimes written without capitalization, but since it is not a genericized term yet and refers to one specific type of crypto-currency, capitalization is left as an exercise for the reader.

Unit Abbreviation Decimal (BTC) Alternate names Info
Algorithmic Max - 20,999,999.9769[1] - Current Max Possible: 20999839.77085749[2]
megaBitcoin MBTC 1,000,000 - Rarely used in context
kiloBitcoin kBTC 1,000 - Rarely used in context
Original Block Reward - 50 block Until block 210000
Current Block Reward - 25 block As of block 210000
decaBitcoin daBTC 10 - Rarely used in context
Bitcoin BTC 1 coin Base unit (100 million satoshis)
deciBitcoin dBTC 0.1 - Rarely used in context
centiBitcoin cBTC 0.01 bitcent Frequently used until the November 2013 bubble
milliBitcoin mBTC 0.001 millibit, millicoin, millie Thousandth of a Bitcoin, frequently used subdivision
microBitcoin μBTC 0.000001 bit Millionth of a Bitcoin, frequently used subdivision
Finney[3] - 0.0000001 Finney 10 millionth, 1e-7
satoshi - 0.00000001 none 100 millionth, 1e-8, smallest possible unit

See also

References

  1. Wolfram Alpha Calculation
  2. Current actually possible must take into account duplicate coinbases, destroyed fees, and provably destroyed coin outputs including the unspendable Genesis block. Some of this can be derived from 'bitcoin-cli gettxoutsetinfo' and subtracting that value from the then-current theoretically-possible maximum. As of this writing, it is 160.20604251 of unspendable BTC.
  3. After Hal Finney, Bitcoin Pioneer