Bitcoin (BTC) may exist circling all-time highs, but a new storm is brewing around its smallest subunit, the satoshi or "sat."

Equally more first-time investors pile in to BTC, attending is once once more highlighting the fact that many still recall Bitcoin cannot be divided and is "too expensive."

Purchase Bitcoin? Too expensive

A frequent point of fence throughout Bitcoin'south recent history, the problem of how to solve this misconception and introduce sats to a wider audience is at present dorsum in the spotlight.

This calendar week, statistician Willy Woo publicly approached listings site CoinGecko with an appeal to brand the tiny satoshi more visible.

"Put up a smaller unit of measurement as the default on BTC on your site and encounter if it catches on. Let's start a trend," he offered.

Woo was responding to an experience from Magic Net Money podcast host Brad Mills, who had been told by a prospective buyer that they could not afford an entire Bitcoin.

A long way to parity?

Satoshis are the smallest original subunit of Bitcoin, which is divisible by up to 8 decimal places. At current prices, this makes a single satoshi worth around 0.02 cents. One dollar is worth 43 sats.

A dedicated resource at present shows how much BTC/USD must gain in order for the i saturday to equal ane cent. For this to happen, Bitcoin would need to claiming the United States' M2 money supply cap, Woo said — Bitcoin would need to striking $1 1000000.

Bitcoin money supply measured in U.S. dollar equivalent value. Source: Woobull

Against that backdrop, a $23,000 Bitcoin price however seems modest. Nonetheless, some currencies have already fallen to satoshi parity of their own accord. In July, the Argentinian peso joined the Lebanese lira in seeing one sabbatum equal their smallest unit of account.

He further noted that across sats, then-called "millisats," which be on the Lightning Network, could exist used should the need arise. Lightning remains the most widely-accepted best bet for Bitcoin scaling, and advances in its user experience volition let entry-level Bitcoiners to send tiny payments for next to no fees in the hereafter.

This is achieved past performing transactions off-chain and syncing them later, fugitive the need for miner fees and congesting the Bitcoin blockchain.