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Usability - of Dash units by "your mother" target user.

Hi.
Second turn at the "concerned troll" chopping block - see my first post in introduce yourself forum to understand why I say that.

Again, I have done a quick search for this subject, but not found a thread that applies.
If it has already been broached, feel free to point me there.

So, I like the way there is significant focus on usability in Dash, and specifically in Evolution. This is a contribution to try improve that even further.

Humans are not great at dealing with big numbers. We get by with conventions like "hundreds of", "thousands of", "millions of"/Mega, "Billions"/Giga, etc. Many, though not all, are fairly comfortable with those conventions.

We're a lot worse, generally, with small numbers - fractions and decimals.
We do have conventions to help here, too. Like micro and nano and mili. Much fewer of us are comfortable dealing with these conventions, though, especially beyond cents or mili, compared to those for big numbers.

I think this is a potential usability issue for a currency like Dash whose total number does not scale with total value, and whose unit value will therefore not stay constant over time, but will, in fact, deflate.
There are other reasons to maybe not like this kind of deflation, but I want to focus on the usability issue.

And, of course, inflation is also bad, which, to be quite clear, I am not advocating. But people are, at least, used to the idea of inflation, even if they don't like it. Deflation will be new to nearly everyone, and as such, many will have a hard time understanding it and adapting to it.

But, Dash will have a usability issue due to the necessity of using fractions of a Dash.
Dashcents might seem to be a way around this, the kind of convention for smaller units we are used to in currencies. But I wonder if this convention will be sufficient.
Evenually, there will be 18M Dash. To keep the same unit-value (let's call it) usability of the dollar, for example, one Dash would have to be roughly equivalent to a dollar.
But a Dash is already worth $80 at time of writing, and rising, so we are already nearly at the point were people have to think of a Dashcent like a Dollar.
So to spend 1c today in Dash, one has to think in terms of 1/10,000 of a Dash.
This is only going to get worse.
It is not difficult to imagine possible futures where, to buy a loaf of bread, say, one has to spend a ten-billionth of a Dash. This will confuse a lot of people.

Let's play with one example.
If we have an 18T, to take an easy-to-work-with, US GDP, what is the picture? (never mind that it is already much bigger, and that's just one market Dash hopes to dominate)
Well, at 1% Dash capture of the GDP, 0.18T USD over 18M Dash is 10K. i.e. Each Dash would be worth 10K USD and a loaf of bread would be about 1/10,000 of a Dash. It gets worse if one has Dash tied in asset values, or transaction volumes, or all three!
Will your mum feel comfortable dealing with 1/10,000 of anything, ever? Mine wouldn't.
Or 10% or global GDP in 2035? A dollar loaf of bread would be roughly a millionth of a Dash.

Just something to think about.

Tom
 
Hi Mugwamp

nice to meet you....! I know that it's not your preferred nomenclature (it's Tom)... however, I think it's appropriate to highlight from the outset that your name is very much.. well... just a name. The fact that we all agree to call you Mugwamp, or even Tom is very much either a) up for discussion, or b) decided at the outset... Usually by social perimeters.

Anyway... I'll get to the point ;-P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/£sd

If you can make sense of the above wiki then you can figure it out (!)... but one thing I will say is that we will work a solution out.. Language is pretty good at accommodating new words, and denominations of dash will be no different :)

Walter
 
Hi Mugwamp

nice to meet you....! I know that it's not your preferred nomenclature (it's Tom)... however, I think it's appropriate to highlight from the outset that your name is very much.. well... just a name. The fact that we all agree to call you Mugwamp, or even Tom is very much either a) up for discussion, or b) decided at the outset... Usually by social perimeters.

Anyway... I'll get to the point ;-P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/£sd

If you can make sense of the above wiki then you can figure it out (!)... but one thing I will say is that we will work a solution out.. Language is pretty good at accommodating new words, and denominations of dash will be no different :)

Walter

I don't like Mugwamp much. But am open to selecting from proposals for the standard 5 Dash proposal fee. ;)

I don't need to figure it out. I lived it!
Born in the late 60's in the UK, I had to learn both systems almost simultaneously. I can assure you, the decimal system was easier to learn.
Of course £SD was useful enough for small fractions that it was worth the learning curve.
But, there are good reasons why we don't use it any more, why everywhere we now use decimal (except with time, a special case, I am sure you will agree). One of those is because it is easier to learn.
For sure we could work out a solution, but why do that work? Why put up that work as a barrier to adoption?
 
I don't like Mugwamp much. But am open to selecting from proposals for the standard 5 Dash proposal fee. ;)

I don't need to figure it out. I lived it!
Born in the late 60's in the UK, I had to learn both systems almost simultaneously. I can assure you, the decimal system was easier to learn.
Of course £SD was useful enough for small fractions that it was worth the learning curve.
But, there are good reasons why we don't use it any more, why everywhere we now use decimal (except with time, a special case, I am sure you will agree). One of those is because it is easier to learn.
For sure we could work out a solution, but why do that work? Why put up that work as a barrier to adoption?

Being born in the late 60's doesn't qualify you to say decimal is much easier. For those a little older than you, £sd was very straight forward. Not everyone works in decimal and there are certainly good arguments to be working in 12's.. not least that it's equally divisible by 2, 3 and 4.

Anyway, this subject has been thrashed out before. I have previously argued there should ideally be just two or three decimal places. I lost that argument :p The best you can hope for is, eventually, most purchases would be denominated in duffs and large ticket items denominated in whole units of dash. But that's a long way off, not least because most people are valuing their dash against their local fiat currency.
 
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