8 ms·
US currency can go to more than two decimal places... http://blogs.reuters.com/ben-walsh/2013/11/18/do-stocks-really-trade-for-fractions-of-a-penny-sort-of/ ht
by bwilliams18 7y ago
US currency can go to more than two decimal places...
http://blogs.reuters.com/ben-walsh/2013/11/18/do-stocks-really-trade-for-fractions-of-a-penny-sort-of/ http://blogs.reuters.com/ben-walsh/2013/11/18/do-stocks-real...
I guess it's time for someone to write an "Assumptions Programmers make about money" post.
- LanceH 7y ago1. Money in a brokerage account is not US currency.
- zrobotics 7y agoWhile it isn't physical US currency, my brokerage account represents the value of the account in units of USD- therefore any rules about how US currency works should apply. Additionally, fractional cents are often presented to the consumer when purchasing gas/fuel.
- nitwit005 7y agoNo it can't. There are systems that track things worth less than a penny for later billing, but at the end of the month when they bill someone, they do some sort of rounding.
- ars 7y agoIf you are earning interest at a bank, and you've earned a fraction of a penny, they will eventually pay it to you once you've earned enough for a whole penny. i.e. they track your account balance to more than 2 digits, they just only show you 2 digits.
- jcranmer 7y agoSomeone should tell that to everyone who ever used a ½¢ coin in the US. Also, US law explicitly states (31 USC §5101) that the unit of 1/1000th of a dollar is a mill.
- nitwit005 7y agoGo to a bank and ask for a half penny or a thousandth of a dollar. Let me know how it goes.
- jsjohnst 7y agoGo to a bank and ask for a $500 or $1000 note too. They won’t give you one as they aren’t in circulation anymore, but most (all?) will let you deposit it for face value.
- nitwit005 7y agoBecause, unlike a thousandth of a dollar, those are valid amounts for real transactions. It goes without saying that half pennies are dead. A mill seems to be from the Coinage Act of 1792, which is perhaps a tad outdated.
- jsjohnst 7y agoTake two half penny coins or notes to the bank and they’ll credit your account a penny. Of course, just like with the $500 or $1000 notes, you’ll be losing money on the deal. > A mill ... is perhaps a tad outdated. Yet you use mills every time you pay for gas. Pointless in that case? Probably. Still used all the time? Certainly.
- cellular 7y agoI pull the gas lever intermittently until the gal goes up but the cents don't. It takes about 5 tries, but always makes me smile that I beat the game.
- coldtea 7y ago>Someone should tell that to everyone who ever used a ½¢ coin in the US. All 10 of them?
- 7y ago
- F-0X 7y agoMoney is not as wierd as anyone might guess. I work on a financial application, and money is almost always just a BigDecimal with the scale set to 2 (and stored in a database as a bigint type or equivalent). When its not, its just a higher scale (for say, compound daily interest on small amounts for a significant period of time).
- blowski 7y agoHow do you store Bitcoin?
- zelly 7y agoBitcoin uses fixed-width unsigned integers. The smallest unit is 10^-8 of 1 Bitcoin, which is represented as just 1.
- blowski 7y agoI like this approach. Is it compatible with the parent comment?
- zelly 7y agoYes, the parent approach is the same thing but with a decimal point added for convenience. The main thing is that the scale is fixed; it is effectively an integer count of 1s of the least significant index. It is impossible to truncate values or round upward and create money that didn't exist. This makes it perfect for representing actual money.
- raarts 7y agoFalsehoods programmers believe about prices: https://gist.github.com/rgs/6509585 https://gist.github.com/rgs/6509585
- raverbashing 7y agoInteresting list, though I'm not sure what do they mean by n. 7
- raarts 7y agoApparently hyperinflation: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zimbabwean_dollar https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zimbabwean_dollar and https://currencyconvert.net/zimbabwe-dollar/dollar https://currencyconvert.net/zimbabwe-dollar/dollar
- jsjohnst 7y agoFor a brief time in 2008, 1 Zimbabwe dollar was very roughly equivalent to one TRILLIONTH of a United State penny. So technically a value of “1” did exist, but it was meaningless. I have some of the 100 Trillion Dollar notes from Zimbabwe from that time period.