John Carvalho, CEO of Bitcoin software company Synonym wants to do away with the idea of “satoshis” or “sats” – the smallest units of bitcoin (BTC).
Each bitcoin is made up of 100 million sats and Carvalho thinks such a representation causes confusion among users and results in unnecessary cognitive overhead.
Carvalho’s solution – which he dutifully outlined in a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) last week – is to simply rename the smallest units of the cryptocurrency to “bitcoin.”
“By redefining the smallest unit as ‘one bitcoin,’ this BIP aligns user perception with the protocol’s true nature,” Carvalho writes. “It reduces cognitive overhead, ensures users understand Bitcoin as counting discrete units, and ultimately improves educational clarity and user experience.”
He acknowledges that this change would be radical, requiring more than a year for the transition. Interim measures, such as displaying two configurations – the old and the new – would be utilized and eventually phased out once Carvalho’s recommendations have been sufficiently adopted.
Synonym’s Bitkit wallet already uses this proposed “integer-only” configuration, according to the BIP draft.
Carvalho’s proposal becomes more compelling as the BTC price soars and an increasing number of people are unable to afford an entire bitcoin. If bitcoin does indeed reach the million-dollar mark in a few years as many are predicting, it will become increasingly inconvenient to toggle between bitcoin and sats, but for now, many bitcoiners seem to disagree with Carvalho, some even going as far as to ridicule him.
“Hey, I’ve got this great idea! Instead of one pizza with eight slices, let’s just call each slice a pizza,” podcast host Stephan Livera posted on X. “Just make sure when you go to order your pizza, you now order eight pizzas instead of one,” he added, apparently poking fun at Carvalho’s proposal, before ending with “Just my two pizzas.”
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