"Sats" Redefinition Proposal Sparks Controversy in the Bitcoin Community

According to Crypto Briefing, while the Bitcoin community is busy optimizing user experience, launching custody solutions, lobbying regulators, and attracting institutions, core developer and Synonym CEO John Carvalho has put forward a simpler proposal: abolish the "satoshi" unit and remove the decimal point to lower the cognitive threshold for newcomers.

In a BIP proposal in December 2024, he argued that the 100 million "sats" into which one Bitcoin is divided should be directly defined as "Bitcoin." For example, a transaction currently displayed as 0.00010000 $BTC would be displayed as 10,000 $BTC in the new system, completely reshaping the benchmark for "Bitcoin millionaires."

This move quickly sparked controversy. Opponents ridiculed it with the "pizza argument": if each slice of pizza were called a "whole," one would have to order eight "wholes" at a time to meet their needs, satirizing the absurdity of unit inflation. More community members worry that if the total amount is "inflated" from 21 million to 2.1 quadrillion, it will shake the core foundation of the Bitcoin scarcity narrative.

However, Carvalho's proposal may be quietly gaining momentum. On April 25, he posted on X, saying, "Although still in the minority, more and more people are beginning to accept the idea of calling the smallest unit of Bitcoin 'Bitcoin' and eliminating the decimal point."