Two decimals is impractical
For Cryptocurrency Tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Cryptocurrencies are a digital thing, they exist inside computer memory. Without things like the world wide web and computers there would not be such a thing. Or at least it is highly improbable that Cryptocurrency Tokens could exist. In a practical usable way, that is. To me everything in the digital realm is virtual. Any believed value comes from a connection to something, or someone, in the analogue reality. (No, I'm not getting into a discussion about the Planck scale making everything in its essence digital...!)
Value is a believe system we humans tend to have. This does not necessarily mean it has anything to do with logic. Au contraire mon Ami, I might add. A lot of value attachments do seem actually very odd to me. On the other hand, what I do experience as valuable might seem strange to you. There's not always consensus amongst us when it comes to the definition of what has value and what is pretty useless. Cow shait can be very valuable in places where a lot of farming is done. While dumped on Wallstreet, well that might not be appreciated nor considered useful. No use there, as it is already full of shait. And that could be considered as my personal opinion.
Cryptocurrencies and its Tokens are a computer hardware memory thing. Inside the rabbit hole there are these temporary on and off states, known as Bits and they can represent something. That needs a couple of layers to display what meaning these little virtual switches have. All in all they are frequencies of electrical waves. Once that ment 5 Volt of electricity or none. If interpreted those make up a binary state machine, a digital virtual realm of Bits, Bytes and so on. Nowhere is one of those states actually exactly the same. Still we claim we can have an exact copy of anything inside computer memory.
Like Cryptocurrency Tokens for instance. Those reside in computer hardware memory as integers. And these days they can be considered fungible or non-fungible and with or without smart contract attached. Still in memory hardware they are stored as integer values. And it depends on how many Bits there are defined to store these integers. It can be calculated what maximum value can be stored inside such a memory location.
Early Bitcoin and its spin offs could store a signed integer of 64 bits (switches of 0 and 1). Because 1 bit is being used to define a negative or a positive value, 'only' 63 are left to store a large number in. Meaning a big number of 2 to the power of 63 could be stored in such a computer hardware memory location. Meaning 9 dot something with 18 zeros, or 9 quintillion for short. These days though much of the Cryptocurrency software code has scaled up to huge numbers. These are now stored in 256 bit large memory spots as unsigned integers. And I'm not even sure how to name a number with 76 or 77 zeros. But I guess it is somewhere between 57 (INT256) and 115 (UINT256) Quattuor Vigintillion. (Yeah, cool right, now try to say that out loud.)
If Bitcoin would not use 8 decimals, but just 2, then its maximum of ever to be created BTC would be 21 trillion. And 1 Satoshi would equal 1 Cent. Also the current value of 1 BTC would be divided by a million. Leaving its value at about 0.02(5) Euro. For display reasons this would be rounded of to 0.03 and transactions would cost a fraction of that. And there is where it could get more complicated. In short, every transaction would have to cost at least 1 Cent BTC. With a value of € 0.03 for 1 BTC that still might not be to bad. In practice that would mean that the lowest rounded off transaction cost would be 1 Euro Cent for 1 BTC Cent. Using more decimals though could actually make small transactions (price cost weighted in Kilobytes memory usage) cheaper. Well, in theory that is...
Who would want to send 1 Cent of BTC anyway at the cost of € 0.01? It could be tried setting transaction costs to 0, manually, but that comes at a risk. Even though I have done so myself in the past as an experiment, I would advice against doing so as a standard. And I'm not sure if it still can be done, as one could see it as an an attack on the Bitcoin network. It creates a lot of tiny value transactions, even as low as 1 Satoshi, wasting Blocksize space. Also it takes way too long for such a tiny amount to get confirmed. That is why, to me, the Lightning Network [LN] makes absolute sense! Store and transport huge amounts of value on the main Bitcoin blockchain and use LN to pay for your cup of Java in a jiffy.
Because using 2 decimals would make it more complex to calculate (small) transaction costs for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and their spin-offs, more decimals are being used. And for that a different memory size definition is being used. One Byte of memory, with 8 Bits, should be sufficient for that. Defined as an Unsigned Integer that means a maximum of 255 decimals is possible. That is probably never going to be needed. Bitcoin uses 8 of those and Ethereum takes 18 for itself, same goes for their alikes. In theory this means one could pay one Satoshi for a BTC transaction. And 1 Wei for a ETH one. In practice there is another more complex weighting system to calculate the total of transaction costs. Even dynamics of traffic are involved, pushing up the price sometimes to absurd levels.
A system like Hive could easily do with 2 or 3 decimals. Transactions are almost instantly and do seem to be free. Yes, the actual costs to be able to interact with the Hive blockchain are covered with Resource Credits [RC]. And actually that is a smarter and more practical system than the transaction costs used by the Bitcoin and Ethereum families. Hive could actually set up a minimum of free RC to be credited to any user. To make sure everyone can interact with the Hive blockchain on a minimum level. While earning HIVE Power that also raises the amount of Resource Credit that can be used.
Where the EOS blockchain made the Resource staking related system more complex, it also seemed to have failed. Especially due to the extremely high CPU resource prices. And that users can actually speculate on the price of EOS, and its alike, blockchain resources made it, as I see it, almost a total failure. Yes, I know, the 'free market' holy cow is about to be dragged in by its sacred horns. But I'm convinced the way the EOS system was setup initially is too vulnerable too chocking. Making its blockchain even seem to come to a halt. While it should be one of the fastest around. If its rules are chaotic, without clear restrictions, than the result becomes unpredictable. At least, that is how I look at it.
That is where the Hive blockchain seems to have many advantages. It could even speed up transactions in the future. But only if and when needed. Also it might come with an Arweave alike data storage and connected lazy Smart contract storage. There is still a lot possible, as fiber cable makes GigaBit connectivity a standard and drives with TeraByte storage become a minimum. And the Hive blockchain still seems to be way more usable than any other one out there. While HIVE as a currency Token can function perfectly with just 3 decimals and even 2 would do. Making HIVE truly scarce, especially compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum and its clones.
Now I already wend down the decimals Rabbit hole in previous articles and I just want to go there for a bit again. In computer hardware memory our beloved Cryptocurrency Tokens are in fact stored as integers. And decimals are being used for display reasons and for transaction calculations. Hive does not have that issue, as it uses a recovering, stake related, Resource Credit system. But Bitcoin and Ethereum, and their spin offs, can not function without their 'Gas' transaction costs system. (Technically a Satoshi BTC is not considered a 'Gas' like Wei ETH, but it is a kind of, as I see it.) And to make it more flexible and understandable the usage of 8 or even 18 decimals make sense.
This does however not change the fact that there are a lot if Bitcoin Satoshi available as an integer value. And there is even more Ethereum Wei. In comparison to this I named the smallest Hive part, with 6 decimals behind the scenes, a Honeydrip [HND]. And when I remove the decimals of every blockchain system I mentioned, as they really are integer values in computer hardware memory, then HIVE is the most scarce of them all. 19 million BTC are 19 trillion when using 2 decimals. 100 million ETH become an unbelievable 1 septillion, when using 2 decimals. And Hive would then only be 1.5 trillion, in comparison. Way more scarce than BTC!
Now where is that market price for HIVE at € 317'000 then? Well, there is not such a thing. Not even though the logical usage of comparing integer memory values proves without a doubt that HIVE is indeed the most scarce of them all. But, in real life it is not a logical as that. Because money by itself is based on a belief system that it apparently has value attached. Which comes in handy to be able to exchange one thing for another. Where manure and a loaf of bread can be exchanged freely, by trusting a mutual accepted Token. If it where Gold though, we'd still give it value based in its scarcity and its resistance to corrosion. In short... HIVE is extremely and shamefully undervalued!
Other cryptocurrency Tokens would become more complex to use if only 2 decimals would be used. Also showing how much there actually are of them, making their value drop immediately. Even though there is a feeling and believe system attached. To some it even actually might have become like a religion. Just take a look at all those Smart Contract Tokens on Ethereum kind of blockchains. Some have 10 quadrillion issued, using 18 decimals. With just 2 decimals that would be 10 Nonillion. While as an integer in memory it would be 10 Decillion. Now tell me, how often do you explain your yearly income in those kind of numbers?
How usefull and valuable are those Shiba meme Token yielding farms would you state, based logic and compared to HIVE? Yet, even on expensive transaction blockchains like Ethereum they are traded like crazy. On Cryptocurrency Token market capacity list sites these highly speculative (read: casino gambling) quadrillion issued things are in the top 100 hundred! And some of those have made me a Trillionair for a while. Which is kind of fun to mention at a dead and dull party. "Yes, I'm not sure whether to go to Mallorca on holiday or to just buy it. As I own a 150 Trillion in Cryptocurrency Dollar at the moment." Because everyone there at the school reunion has been telling their succes in life story and you do not want to stay behind.
What I forget to mention is that those 150 Trillion Dollar was in PolyDoge. A Smart contract Token that made me feel pretty stupid as I did not check the source code of it. And I bought 4 pricy nodes for that juicy 4000 percent yielding. While if I had looked at the Smart contract I would have not done so, as it had written 'rug pull' all over it. And so I payed real money value for an expensive lesson. Also looking at those extremely huge numbers these kind of Tokens are being issued might have been an alert signal. Ah well, next time I hope I learned my lesson well.
Well, all things considered in my previous publications and this article I think I can claim that HIVE is one of the most scarce Cryptocurrency Tokens out there. Also to me it seems one of the smartest. Where even HIVE Backed Dollar [HBD] is a tricky thing to master, but so far it looks like the smart innovative programming more or less does the trick. The fact that publishing on the Hive blockchain actually can make you earn the HIVE Token even seems like a thing on the side. Because the on chain storage (publishing and replying is just one possible usage) can be used for so much more.
Add side chains to it, make off chain storage possible and create a 'lazy' smart contract system. There is still a lot of potential and no worries about inflating the amount of HIVE in the process. As that is something I guess could become obvious when using 2 decimals to see how many Cryptocurrency Tokens a blockchain system really has. HIVE could easily go to 2.1 billion in the future and still have the same, theoretical, scarcity as BTC! And I will not even try and calculate how much HIVE still could inflate compared to ETH...
Will this be taken into consideration? By those who trade casino gambling based on belief and feelings, definitely not. Heck, I even have been using three piglets, a bucket and some truffles, for years, to predict the price for Cryptocurrency Tokens. That recently told me to buy a shitload of Fujicoin [FHJ] and Tokel [TKL] on the AtomicDEX market. Just like getting into the Yielding game, that got rug pulled a while back. So, I really needed to have a more logical approach, because FJC crashed horribly, proving them little piglets wrong, again. (For Tokel I actually see a future use, though currently not showing.) With HIVE though logical reasoning seems to be a sound way to go. Even though this is not understood by the masses yet, it could one day and then be at the top of the Cryptocurrency Token market cap list.
But, whatever this article of mine might trigger for you, remember to only invest in Cryptocurrency Tokens what you are willing and can effort to lose.
Play on player!
Image license CC0.
