Why BTC Will Eventually Fade Out
In the Bitcoin community, there’s an ongoing debate about how best to express value: Should we price things in BTC, in sats, or even in millisats? For beginners, seeing prices like 0.000034 BTC for a cup of coffee can be confusing or off-putting. It feels distant. But the good news is, we don’t have to stress about this. The natural evolution of Bitcoin as money is already solving this issue for us. Bitcoin is a very powerful force indeed.
In simple terms, a unit of account is how we measure and express value. With fiat like the dollar, this function is taken for granted. You don’t say "0.07 dollars."
Bitcoin, being the best money, has already replaced fiat as a store of value and medium of exchange for many people across the world. But as a unit of account, it’s going through a natural phase of transition. Right now, BTC (as in 1.00 BTC) feels too large for most everyday items, just like we doesn’t make sense to measure a pencil in kilograms.
Bitcoin is divisible into 100 million sats, and even more finely into millisats. So 1 sat is 1000 millisats, which means that 1 bitcoin is 100 billion millisats. This gives it unmatched flexibility as a complete form of money. As more people begin using Bitcoin to buy goods and services directly, especially over Lightning, the need for practical, human-friendly units becomes obvious.
A loaf of bread might cost 2,300 sats
A bus fare might be 500 sats
Watching a short video on a pay-per-second stream? That’s 50 millisats per second
This is why the BTC denomination is quietly fading out. It served its purpose in the early days, but now it’s becoming less practical for real, daily usage.
The transition from BTC to sats and or millisats as the dominant unit of account isn’t a problem, but it’s a milestone. It means Bitcoin is maturing as a currency. It’s no longer just about holding; it’s about spending, pricing, earning, and transacting. It’s becoming money in the truest sense.
There’s no need to force BTC as a standard unit for everything. The market is already choosing what works best: sats for everyday payments, and millisats for micropayments. The important part is not which unit we use, but that the underlying money is honest, permissionless, and sovereign.
And that money is Bitcoin.
So whether you’re stacking sats, sending millisats, or still thinking in BTC terms—that’s fine. But as Bitcoin adoption grows, the decimal dust of BTC will naturally give way to the clarity of sats. One day, we’ll look back and laugh at the time we used to price things in 0.00000-something.
Bitcoin is money. Sats and millisats are the unit. The future is already here.