Tara Annison
Head of Technical Crypto Advisory at Elliptic
Published Oct 8, 2019
Like the dollar or the pound which are made of pennies and cents, cryptocurrencies also have smaller denominations. However whilst all fiat currencies have a maximum of 2 decimal places, cryptocurrencies can be broken down into much smaller pieces, therefore allowing them to be partitioned much further.
This short read looks at the denominations for some of the most well known cryptocurrencies:
Ether
An ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, can be partitioned into 18 decimal places. The smallest of these is the ‘wei’, named after a prominent cryptographer Wei Dai who was the second person Satoshi contacted after developing bitcoin back in 2008. The next significant denomination is the ‘gwei’ which is to 9 decimal places and most commonly referenced when speaking about gas prices on the Ethereum network. It is nicknamed a ‘shannon’ after Claude Shannon, a crypto-analyst expert and leading figure in Information Theory. Anything less than a ‘shannon’ is typically referred to as dust [Read more about dust here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ltc-dusting-attack-explained-tara-annison/].Moving closer towards an Ether we have a petawei or ‘pwei’. This is 0.001 Ether and nicknamed a ‘finney’ after Hal Finney, the computer scientist who was the first to receive bitcoins from Satoshi him/her/theirself.
Bitcoin
A bitcoin has 8 decimal places, the smallest of which is called a ‘satoshi’. This is named after the founding father/mother/collective who created bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto. In a nod to Hal Finney, as mention above, a bitcoin to 7 decimal places is referred to as a ‘finney’. At current prices anything less than a ‘finney’ falls outside of a fiat equivalent since it’s less than a penny. A micro-bitcoin, 0.000001 BTC, is referred to as a ‘bit’, and a milli-bitcoin, 0.001 BTC is referred to as a ‘milli’. Then drawing inspiration from the fiat world, a ‘bit cent’ is 0.01 BTC.
XRP
XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the Ripple real-time payment system launched in 2012. An XRP is divisible to 6 decimal places, with the smallest unit being called a ‘drop’. 1 millions drops are equivalent to 1 XRP. The total supply of XRP is 100 billion, with c6billion owned by Ripple Labs, 55billion placed in escrow by Ripple Labs and the remaining XRP open to public and financial institution ownership.
Lumens
Lumens, referred to by the ticker symbol XLM, are the native cryptocurrency of the Stellar blockchain, a function rich network launched in 2014. Initially 100 billion lumens were created and there was an annual inflation rate of 1%. However the annual inflation was scrapped in October 2019 due to community and developer consensus being that it was overly complicated and didn't serve its original purpose of encouraging ecosystem members to invest back into the network growth and innovation. Lumens are divisible to 7 decimal places with the smallest indivisible unit being called a ‘stroop’ This is derived from the term ‘Stroopy’, the name of the Stellar mascot who’s name is derived from the delicious caramel snackstroopwafels!
Monero
Monero is a privacy focussed network (read more about privacy coins here:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/privacy-coins-short-primer-tara-annison/) with an eponymously named cryptocurrency. It is denoted by the ticker symbol XMR and the base unit, a ‘piconero’, has 12 decimal places. It was previously called a tacoshi after Tacotime, an early Monero contributor but was later changed to match a consistent naming schema which added ‘nero’ to the SI units.
Ada
Ada is the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain, a proof-of-stake and smart contract network which was launched in 2017. The base unit is called a ‘lovelace’ in homage to Ada Lovelace, one of the first computer programmers. A lovelace is 0.000001 Ada.
IOTA
IOTA is both the name of the Internet of Things focussed blockchain and its native cryptocurrency. It moves away from the traditional block based structure of other blockchains and introduces the concept of ‘Tangle’ - a directed acyclic graph. The smallest unit of an IOTA is an ‘IOTA’ and it is therefore not divisible any further. As such, because this value is sub-cent/pennies in fiat currencies, value in IOTA is typically referred to in terms of MIOTA - a million IOTA.
DOT
DOT is the native cryptocurrency to the Polkadot blockchain, a Web3 Foundation created network focussing on interoperability. DOTs have 10 decimal places with the smallest unit being named a ‘Planck’ after the famous physicist Max Planck, the founding father of Quantum Theory. A microdot is then 0.0000010000 and a milidot 0.0010000000.
Stable Coins
The reason d’être of a stable coin is to stay as close to the peg as possible, whether that peg is the US dollar, the British pounds, the Chinese Yuan etc (Read more about stable coins here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/strong-stablecoins-tara-annison/). As such, and like their fiat cousins, most have 2 decimal places. The Tether and Tezos blockchains refer to their smallest units as ‘cents’ - unsurprisingly as they are pegged to the US dollar- but a primary unit on the Tether blockchain is referred to as a ‘Tez’ rather than a dollar.
However, bucking this trend are USD Coin (Circle’s stable coin) which is an ERC20 compliant token on the Ethereum blockchain with 6 decimal places of value, and Pax Dollar which has 18 decimal places of value.
