Yes! It is possible to buy less than one bitcoin. Mathematically only 0.3% of our 7 billion people on Earth could even own more than 1 bitcoin due to its limited supply. The good news is that we don’t need an entire bitcoin for this new technology to be useful.
A US dollar can be divided, at most, up into 100 pieces, which Americans call pennies. A bitcoin (regardless of its current value) can always be divided up into, at most, 100,000,000 pieces, which cryptocurrency users call satoshis.
What is a Satoshi?
That means if the price of bitcoin is at $60,000.00 US dollars, then a single satoshi would be valued at 0.0006 dollars, which is the same as saying it’s worth 0.06 pennies. Assuming you live in America and only have dollars in your wallet, then you can’t buy less than one penny of bitcoin. Therefore, a single penny would be worth roughly 17 satoshis. That means the bare minimum bitcoin you could buy would be roughly 0.00000017 bitcoins. However, some exchanges may only allow for buying a minimum of $1 USD, or a minimum of roughly 1,668 satoshis.
Another way to look at this is that when one bitcoin reaches $1,000,000 US dollars in value, then a single satoshi (sat) will be worth one US penny. Cryptocurrency fans refer to that future goal as penny parity. Should the need arise, code could be added to allow for fractions of satoshis to be used. Bitcoin can also be broken down into other units. One bitcoin (BTC) is the equivalent of 1,000 millibitcoins (mBTC), or 1,000,000 microbitcoins (μBTC). Why are the smallest units called satoshis? Let’s back up and explain.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
The bitcoin network began on January 3, 2009, when someone called Satoshi Nakamoto began the bitcoin blockchain and mined the first block, known as the genesis block. Embedded in a message in that first block was the hidden text “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. The secret note was a reference to a then-recent headline by The Times publication. Hot off the heels of the US recession caused by irresponsible financial systems, it was a commentary on the instability of fractional research reserve banking, and made people wonder if a form of digital currency could one day catch on.
Although it has been discussed for over a decade, the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a mystery. Was it a man? A woman? A group of people? Were they Japanese as the name might imply? After sporadically posting in an English online forum (Bitcointalk) in 2009, they abruptly stopped posting one day without warning in December of 2010. People have noted that their English was good, but that they spelled color as colour, implying a possible British location. Or, was it just misdirection? The world may never know, because they’ve not posted since (other than potentially to state “I am not Dorian Nakamoto” in 2014), and their known blockchain address to this day has not moved any of the nearly one million bitcoin that they mined.
Assuming a price of $60,000 per bitcoin, that would put Satoshi Nakamoto’s net worth at roughly $60 billion US dollars, making them just shy of reaching the Top 10 Richest People in the World list. Jeff Bezos has overcome Bill Gates and Elon Musk to top the list at $177 billion USD, with Mukesh Ambani coming in at 10th with $84.5 billion USD. However, if bitcoin reaches $400,000 in the next year like some claim it will, that would sky rocket Satoshi Nakamoto’s net worth up to $400 billion, more than double Jeff Bezos! Does that make Satoshi Nakamoto the best secret ever kept?
How Many Bitcoin Exist?
Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain was designed from day one to only ever release 21 million bitcoins, and is expected to reach that milestone by the year 2140. That comes out to be 2,100 trillion satoshis, which is the same as saying 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.
Currently, around 18.6 million bitcoins of the maximum 21 million bitcoin have been mined. The amount of bitcoin being rewarded to miners per day is slowly decreasing over time via milestones called bitcoin halving dates, which was a design feature included in Nakamoto’s original plan. However, of those 18.6 million bitcoins that exist, roughly 3.8 million are thought to be dormant forever due to being lost or forgotten. Some have forgotten their passwords, others have accidentally thrown their old computers out before transferring them, while some have sadly passed away without moving them first.
More importantly, using the public blockchain data to track transactions from bitcoin addresses, about 10.7 million bitcoins were untouched all of last year. That suggests that roughly 6.9 million bitcoins are being held for long term investments. That leaves around 7.9 million bitcoin, plus ongoing newly mined coins, up for supply in steady circulation.