What are satoshis or "sats"?

Satoshis — or "sats" — are the smallest unit of bitcoin. Named after Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, a satoshi is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin or 0.00000001 BTC. Put another way, there are 100,000,000 sats in 1 bitcoin. Each sat might not seem like a lot, but when you start buying and selling bitcoin, you'll see that sats can add up quickly.

When you start thinking in sats, it becomes a lot easier to see bitcoin as an actual currency, not some form of payment straight out of a sci-fi movie. Plus, it's a lot more fun to stack sats when you can see your bitcoin balance going up by the sat — not by the decimal place.

Let's think about the U.S. Dollar for a second. We price goods and services in dollars, but we also price them in cents. Bitcoin and sats are no different — Bitcoin is to dollars as sats are to cents. Dollars and cents are both USD, just different ways of thinking about it. It's the same for bitcoin and sats.

With the price of 1 bitcoin in the tens of thousands of dollars, people need a way to pay for goods without having to think about long strings of decimals. When you buy a coffee — about $5 — you don't want to have to think about paying 0.0001 bitcoin.

That's where sats come in. It's a way to make bitcoin prices more human-friendly. It's a way to break down the bitcoin price into manageable pieces.

Paying 0.0001 bitcoin for a coffee? It's ugly. It's confusing.

Paying 10,000 sats? Easy to picture. That's more like it.

When you start thinking in sats, it becomes a lot easier to see bitcoin as an actual currency, not some form of payment straight out of a sci-fi movie. Plus, it's a lot more fun to stack sats when you can see your bitcoin balance going up by the sat — not by the decimal place.

Satoshi gave bitcoin life, and with it, a new way of looking at currency. By thinking in sats, we can get a better handle on bitcoin as a means of payment. And that's something to be excited about.

We're excited. Are you? Get started stacking those sats.