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bwilliams18

US currency can go to more than two decimal places...

http://blogs.reuters.com/ben-walsh/2013/11/18/do-stocks-real...

I guess it's time for someone to write an "Assumptions Programmers make about money" post.

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Falsehoods programmers believe about prices: https://gist.github.com/rgs/6509585

Interesting list, though I'm not sure what do they mean by n. 7

Apparently hyperinflation: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Zimbabwean_dollar and https://currencyconvert.net/zimbabwe-dollar/dollar

For a brief time in 2008, 1 Zimbabwe dollar was very roughly equivalent to one TRILLIONTH of a United State penny. So technically a value of “1” did exist, but it was meaningless. I have some of the 100 Trillion Dollar notes from Zimbabwe from that time period.

I also have a few. You could buy a stack of 100 trillion dollar bills few a few bucks then. They are now selling for $50-$60 on eBay.

Investing in ZWL, bold move!

1. Money in a brokerage account is not US currency.

While it isn't physical US currency, my brokerage account represents the value of the account in units of USD- therefore any rules about how US currency works should apply.

Additionally, fractional cents are often presented to the consumer when purchasing gas/fuel.

Money is not as wierd as anyone might guess. I work on a financial application, and money is almost always just a BigDecimal with the scale set to 2 (and stored in a database as a bigint type or equivalent). When its not, its just a higher scale (for say, compound daily interest on small amounts for a significant period of time).

How do you store Bitcoin?

Bitcoin uses fixed-width unsigned integers. The smallest unit is 10^-8 of 1 Bitcoin, which is represented as just 1.

I like this approach. Is it compatible with the parent comment?

Yes, the parent approach is the same thing but with a decimal point added for convenience. The main thing is that the scale is fixed; it is effectively an integer count of 1s of the least significant index. It is impossible to truncate values or round upward and create money that didn't exist. This makes it perfect for representing actual money.

No it can't. There are systems that track things worth less than a penny for later billing, but at the end of the month when they bill someone, they do some sort of rounding.

If you are earning interest at a bank, and you've earned a fraction of a penny, they will eventually pay it to you once you've earned enough for a whole penny.

i.e. they track your account balance to more than 2 digits, they just only show you 2 digits.

Someone should tell that to everyone who ever used a ½¢ coin in the US. Also, US law explicitly states (31 USC §5101) that the unit of 1/1000th of a dollar is a mill.

Go to a bank and ask for a half penny or a thousandth of a dollar. Let me know how it goes.

Go to a bank and ask for a $500 or $1000 note too. They won’t give you one as they aren’t in circulation anymore, but most (all?) will let you deposit it for face value.

Because, unlike a thousandth of a dollar, those are valid amounts for real transactions.

It goes without saying that half pennies are dead. A mill seems to be from the Coinage Act of 1792, which is perhaps a tad outdated.

Take two half penny coins or notes to the bank and they’ll credit your account a penny. Of course, just like with the $500 or $1000 notes, you’ll be losing money on the deal.

> A mill ... is perhaps a tad outdated.

Yet you use mills every time you pay for gas. Pointless in that case? Probably. Still used all the time? Certainly.

I pull the gas lever intermittently until the gal goes up but the cents don't. It takes about 5 tries, but always makes me smile that I beat the game.

>Someone should tell that to everyone who ever used a ½¢ coin in the US.

All 10 of them?

I’ve got some at home, but admittedly I’d never use one as currency. I also have US ½¢ paper notes too.

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