Public debate has been going on for a while now and most of us are well aware of the pros and cons of both sides - "bit" vs "full bitcoin". What some people may not be aware of is that time is running out for a full switch to bits as the main denomination unit. Let me explain...

For a while it seemed that bits option is slowly but surely gaining majority support. To me it still seems so but no sooner will I say this than 5 people will jump onto this thread to say it's not the case. Over at the Financial Standards Working Group  we seem to have majority supporting bits. Seeing various websites, talking with people, it seems that bits are the way to go forward. Anyway, for supporters of the switch things couldn't be simpler or more convincing:

- We have a real issue with end user adoption due to the incomprehensibility of <1 numbers by regular people. People are not likely to adopt something they don't understand.

- Then we have the issue of compatibility of a unit which requires 8 decimal precision with existing industry standards, practices and software. We need a unit that has full precision with only 2 decimals.

- Price of bitcoin will only grow with time and we need a unit that will be comprehensible both today and 10 years down the road.

- Bits have already gained widespread support within the industry and number of websites offering bits as the display option is growing by the day. But due to the lack of consensus, not everyone is embracing the same solution and we are in a typical non-standardised chaos that plagues any new technology in its infancy.

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Now, you'd think it's a clear case and we can all happily proceed with standardisation of bits. Not really. For that to happen we would have to overcome these obstacles and make it happen real fast or miss the opportunity forever:

- According to Jon Matonis of the BTCF the Bitcoin white paper on which the whole system is based specifies 100000000 satoshis as the main unit. Some people are opposing this view and claim that this is not set in stone, only satoshis are set in stone. Even the same white paper mentions the possibility of moving the decimal point. I myself (with my design photography background) am not so much of a technical person and am not able to comment on this knowledgeably but I invite those of you who can to please do so.

- According to Kevin Beardsley of the BTCF switching to bits as the base unit would require the Core Developers to adopt an update to the reference implementation. Not being familiar with the technical aspects of the system I am unable to understand the scope of this change nor the difficulty of implementing it. From what Kevin says, I understand that anyone can initiate this change by creating a pull request on GitHub for the reference implementation. From then on it is not clear to me what kind of wide-ranging support would be necessary for this request to actually succeed. If you have the expertise, please comment on this as well.

- Jon Matonis and some other people at the BTCF are in the "full bitcoin" camp. This means that unless the "bits" camp adopts an organised and proactive approach to the issue, things will go the "full bitcoin" way.

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If this happens and the standardisation bodies decide to accept the application we will be faced with irreversible damage in these forms:

- We will have two or more ways bitcoin will be represented. We will have one official, standardised way which will be 1.00000000 bitcoin = 1.00000000 XBT = 100000000 satoshis = [unicode-symbol]1.00000000. This one will be largely unusable for most real life, day to day applications. And then we will have a whole mess of various unofficial, non-standard display options for everyday use. Some companies users will use bits, some will use millibitcoins, some will use uXBT, etc. This is the worst possible outcome in terms of bringing clarity and uniformity by standardisation.  

- Standardisation is not something we can revisit in 3 years down the road when we find out it didn't really work so well. By shooting the wrong target now we will cause irreparable damage to bitcoin widespread adoption and overall success.

- For years we will have incompatibility issues because of all the existing software and financial systems out there that do not support 8 decimals. Even if we fast forward 5 years into the future and see all the software updated to support bitcoin, things will still be far from good. Imagine you are creating a spreadsheet in Numbers or Excel and you use bitcoins in your table. You would probably be limited to only one bitcoin unit - the standardised one. I for one will never ever wish to do my personal finance planning or event budget planning or whatever else using values such as 0.00000750. Please allow me to do these things in bitcoin when the time comes for it. I love bitcoin and I want to see it useful, usable and capable of permeating every last pore of our worldwide economy. Please give it a chance.

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Time is ticking out. There is pressure from many directions to standardise asap. Voice you opinion, show your support. We do this only once. Let's make sure it's done right.

Aware of various shortcomings of a forum poll as well as the existence of earlier polls, I will still ask you to please vote for one of the two main options, without going into details of that option (we can do that in a separate poll). So for now forget about all the ifs and just state what you're leaning towards.