Do people ever wonder how many Satoshis are in a Bitcoin? Perhaps they have this or never questioned why the most popular cryptocurrency has smaller units. In today’s article we will explain how and why BTC is divided into smaller fractions called Satoshi
How Many Satoshis are in a Bitcoin?
There are 100 million Satoshis in one Bitcoin. This is why people who do not have up to 1 BTC in their blockchain wallet, will see a figure in decimal places. It is straightforward to do the conversion, when you think of the 1 as the first number after the decimal point.
Every other number that completes 100,000,000 comes after the decimal point. In simpler terms, interpret it as 1.00000000. This implies that owning 0.03 BTC equals to 3,000,000 Satoshis.
Why is Bitcoin Broken into Smaller Units?
Most people do not fully understand this measurement of the first blockchain token because times have changed. Nowadays, the value of Bitcoin is measured in US Dollars. In this regard, people will often say, “I made a $100 worth of Bitcoin payment” into your wallet.
However, using dollars as the measurement for making a BTC payment was not always the case. In the initial stages, Satoshi was used to enable micro investors to send and receive Bitcoin.
Satoshi – the founder of Bitcoin, wanted to create an ecosystem that is fully functional and sustainable. After establishing a virtual currency, he created a system that breaks this medium of transaction into smaller units. It is such that people would be able to send parts of the digital funds.
For a clearer example, let’s go back to 2011 when BTC was at $30. Even at a very cheap price, there are certain things people can purchase that are lower than that amount. With a monetary system that creates fungible units of funds, people can make transactions easily with proper knowledge of value.
While it is no longer a common practice today, the idea of having Satoshis as the smaller representation of 1 Bitcoin shows how innovative the token is.