Little Orange Notebook logo

Bitcoin units

Last updated: June 2024 / 846333 o'block

Bitcoin: units/subunits

Sats/satoshi are a subunit (fractions) of bitcoin, same as cents are subunits of dollar or euro.
They are named to honour the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Sats are the base unit of the blockchain. When specifying an amount of bitcoin, the source code uses satoshi.

100 000 000 sats = 1 bitcoin

There's a handy btc/usd converter on Kraken.

Bitcoin can be divided further into 1/1000 of a satoshi in a lightning payment channel.

More on Bitcoin units: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units

When people say "stacking sats" they mean accumulating more savings in bitcoin.

Bitcoin vs. bitcoin

I'm unaware of any generally agreed-upon capitalisation convention, but on this site, I'm using 'Bitcoin' - with capital B - when talking about the protocol/network, and 'bitcoin' - with lowercase b - when talking about the unit of account or bitcoin as actual money.



Receive new Orange Notes via email