4 ms·

> Founder and operator of defunct bitcoin exchange Bitfunder gets 14 months jail time for lying to regulators about the loss of more than 6,000 bitcoins. In th

by apo 7y ago

> Founder and operator of defunct bitcoin exchange Bitfunder gets 14 months jail time for lying to regulators about the loss of more than 6,000 bitcoins. In the early days, it was common to see "bitcoin" used as a mass noun - without the plural. For example: "He lost 6,000 bitcoin." More recent usage seems to have switched to the countable noun version (e.g.: "He lost 6,000 bitcoins."). I speculate that countable noun usage causes problems when users try to reason about how Bitcoin transactions work. Many think of Bitcoin as an account system, where a transaction debits from one account and credits to another account. Not true. A bitcoin transaction is much more like giving another user a specific mass of metal in the form of one or more ingots, each one measured to the nearest microgram. Only, this is done by melting/recasting enough metal on hand into one more more new ingots with some combination of masses exactly equal to the the asking price. The merchant then can combine or split the ingots she receives in the same to make a purchase later. There is no concept of an "account," only splittable and combinable pieces of metal with masses measured to the nearest microgram. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun > In English (and in many other languages), there is a tendency for nouns referring to liquids (water, juice), powders (sugar, sand), or substances (metal, wood) to be used in mass syntax, and for nouns referring to objects or people to be count nouns. ... Worse still, the use of the countable noun "bitcoins" encourages two misconceptions: - a full bitcoin must be transacted because the countable noun version conjures and integral entity - 21 million bitcoin(s) is too few to work as a world currency (no division) Another currency with confusion around mass/countable noun status is the euro: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13551/€10-ten-euro-or-ten-euros https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13551/€10-ten-eu... (long story short, both forms are used) I would argue that the case for mass noun usage in Bitcoin is even stronger than for the euro, given the way it neatly maps as a real-world analogy to the underlying protocol.

saurik 7y ago
You make all of these claims, and yet when I say I gave someone "3 dollars" no one thinks "a full dollar must be transacted because the countable noun version conjures an integral entity", and it isn't because of the existence of "cents": one often says "three and a half dollars". Meanwhile, the word "dollar" was itself originally _a unit of weight_ that represented a quantity of silver (371 4/16th grains), and so was in point of fact "much more like giving another user a specific mass of metal in the form of on or more ingots"... at which point you hopefully realize that, in most English, units of weight use countable nouns: we don't talk about "3 gram", we say "3 grams". Essentially, this becomes some kind of semantic question about whether "Bitcoin" is the measure (like dollars) or the metal (like silver), but as that distinction has been blurred now for a long long time with common currencies (such as the US dollar, which is measured in dollars), it seems like a totally pointless argument that, in fact, causes no practical confusion to anyone.

by apo 7y ago

saurik 7y ago

You make all of these claims, and yet when I say I gave someone "3 dollars" no one thinks "a full dollar must be transacted because the countable noun version conjures an integral entity", and it isn't because of the existence of "cents": one often says "three and a half dollars". Meanwhile, the word "dollar" was itself originally _a unit of weight_ that represented a quantity of silver (371 4/16th grains), and so was in point of fact "much more like giving another user a specific mass of metal in the form of on or more ingots"... at which point you hopefully realize that, in most English, units of weight use countable nouns: we don't talk about "3 gram", we say "3 grams". Essentially, this becomes some kind of semantic question about whether "Bitcoin" is the measure (like dollars) or the metal (like silver), but as that distinction has been blurred now for a long long time with common currencies (such as the US dollar, which is measured in dollars), it seems like a totally pointless argument that, in fact, causes no practical confusion to anyone.