Coin Values and Units
Coin values (and the total market value) of cryptocurrencies vary widely.
Bitcoin (BTC) is obviously the largest in market capitalization, at around
US$20B, and also the highest price per unit (~US$1200). The next most valuable
coin type is Ethereum (ETH), which is under US$2B; after that there are some at
a few hundred million and then they drop quickly. Market capitalization for most
all coins are displayed at CoinMarketCap.
Price per unit for cryptocurrencies are typically less than US$1. A very common
currency, Dogecoin (DOGE), is valued at $0.0002 per unit; however due to its
large supply of over one hundred billion coins it is one of the top in market
cap (#19) despite that price. [Note: prices and market capitalizations are as of
March 2017.]
Cryptocurrencies use metric like prefixes for multiples or divisions of coin
units. For example with BTC, there are centiBitcoin (0.01), milliBitcoin (0.001),
microBitcoin (0.000001), and kiloBitcoin (1000). There is a special term created
for the smallest unit of BTC possible on the network, called the satoshi (sat
for short) which is 1x10-8 (0.00000001). When using faucets for
acquiring free coins, the satoshi is most commonly used. You will need one
hundred million satoshi to equal one full Bitcoin. Most other coin types use
this same unit of measurement and use the same term of satoshi, although
Litecoin (LTC) sometimes uses litoshi and DOGE will use dogeoshi. Ethereum
deviates with the smallest unit being 1x10-18 (called a wei). The
typical unit used on faucets is a gwei, 1x10-9. This causes confusion
among faucets, as they will report in satoshis (or even give the value claimed in
decimal as 1x10-8), but the ePay microwallet, for example, records
the values as 1x10-9. It is unclear why this so, and ePay is either unable or unwilling to clear up the cause of this
confusion as noted in this article.
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