Bitcoin Unit Converter: BTC, mBTC, Bits and Sats

One bitcoin splits into 100,000,000 satoshis, and every other unit sits somewhere in between: 1 BTC equals 1,000 mBTC, 1,000,000 bits or 100,000,000 sats. Type an amount into the converter above, pick its unit, and the other three values appear instantly. The tables and examples below show the same arithmetic step by step, so you can check any figure by hand.

WishCoin converts units, not money. You will not find a dollar or euro rate here, because those change by the second and belong on a live market feed.

The four units at a glance

Every step up or down is a power of ten. Going from BTC to mBTC moves the decimal point three places, mBTC to bits another three, and bits to sats two more. Eight places in total separate a whole bitcoin from its smallest on-chain fraction.

What each unit is

Bitcoin (BTC)

The headline unit, and the one exchanges quote. Bitcoin’s issuance schedule caps total supply just below 21 million coins; the exact algorithmic maximum is 20,999,999.9769 BTC because rewards are rounded down to whole satoshis at each halving. Amounts in BTC are written with up to eight decimal places, such as 0.00052100 BTC.

Millibitcoin (mBTC)

One thousandth of a bitcoin. Several wallets offered mBTC as a display option in the early 2010s, when a whole coin still looked like a small amount. You still meet it in older documentation, some mining pool dashboards and forum posts.

Bits (μBTC)

One millionth of a bitcoin, or 100 satoshis. Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 176, written by Jimmy Song in December 2017, set out “bits” as a friendlier name for the microbitcoin, with two decimal places like dollars and cents. Because a bit holds exactly 100 sats, the amount 1,234.56 bits reads naturally as 123,456 sats.

Satoshis (sats)

The smallest amount a Bitcoin transaction output can record: 0.00000001 BTC. The protocol stores every value internally as a whole number of satoshis, so any BTC figure you see is really a count of sats displayed with a decimal point. The unit is named after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Our satoshi guide covers its history, fee rates and the millisatoshis used on Lightning.

How to convert by hand

You only need two rules: multiply when moving to a smaller unit, divide when moving to a larger one.

1. BTC to sats: multiply by 100,000,000 (move the decimal point eight places right).
2. Sats to BTC: divide by 100,000,000 (eight places left, padding with zeros).
3. BTC to mBTC: multiply by 1,000.
4. mBTC to bits: multiply by 1,000.
5. Bits to sats: multiply by 100.

A reliable trick for BTC amounts: write the figure with all eight decimals first. Then 0.0425 becomes 0.04250000, and dropping the “0.” gives 4,250,000 sats once leading zeros are removed.

Worked examples

0.0425 BTC in satoshis

Pad to eight decimals: 0.04250000. Remove the decimal point and leading zeros: 4,250,000 sats. As a check, 4,250,000 divided by 100,000,000 gives 0.0425.

2,750 bits in BTC

A million bits make one bitcoin, so divide 2,750 by 1,000,000. The result is 0.00275 BTC, which is also 2.75 mBTC and 275,000 sats.

12.5 mBTC in bits

Multiply by 1,000 to get 12,500 bits. In satoshis that is 12,500 × 100 = 1,250,000.

1,234,567 sats in BTC

Divide by 100,000,000. Count eight places from the right: 0.01234567 BTC. The same amount is 12.34567 mBTC or 12,345.67 bits.

The block subsidy

Since the fourth halving at block 840,000 in April 2024, each new block creates 3.125 BTC for the miner who finds it. That is 312,500,000 sats, or 3,125 mBTC. At the next halving, due after another 210,000 blocks, the subsidy drops to 1.5625 BTC, which is 156,250,000 sats. When Bitcoin launched on 3 January 2009 the reward was 50 BTC, or five billion satoshis.

Common amounts table

Read any row across and the four figures describe the same amount. One million sats, a round number people often save toward, equals exactly 0.01 BTC.

Rarer units you may come across

The converter sticks to the four units people actually use, yet a few others turn up in old posts and technical writing:

Metric prefixes larger than one coin, such as kBTC for 1,000 BTC, exist on paper but rarely appear outside reports on large holdings. If a figure uses an unfamiliar label, translate it into sats first; that whole-number view makes size comparisons simple.

Where you will meet each unit

• Exchanges and price charts almost always quote BTC.
• Wallet apps usually let you switch the display between BTC and sats; some also offer bits or mBTC.
• Network fees are priced in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), because a fee depends on the size of a transaction, not its value.
• Lightning payments are tracked internally in millisatoshis, a thousandth of a sat, which wallets round to whole sats for display.
• Payment requests using the bitcoin: URI format from BIP 21 state the amount in BTC.

Mistakes that cost money

Most errors come from a decimal point in the wrong place. A factor-of-ten slip on 0.005 BTC turns it into 0.05 BTC, and that difference cannot be reversed once a transaction confirms. Before you send, convert the amount into sats and read it back as a whole number; 500,000 sats is hard to confuse with 5,000,000.

Watch for these as well:

• Confusing mBTC and μBTC. They differ by a factor of 1,000. Bits are the micro unit, not the milli one.
• Treating “bits” as computer bits. In wallets, a bit means 100 sats, nothing to do with binary data.
• Locale formatting. Many European apps write 0,0425 with a decimal comma. Make sure a comma is not read as a thousands separator.
• More than eight decimals. Any BTC figure with a ninth decimal place cannot be paid on-chain; the network has no unit smaller than one satoshi.

Why this site shows no prices

Unit maths never changes: 1 BTC will always be 100,000,000 sats. The value of that bitcoin in dollars, euros or any other currency moves constantly, and a figure printed on a static page would be wrong within minutes. For fiat values, use a live exchange rate from a source you trust, then apply the conversions here. Nothing on WishCoin is investment advice.

Frequently asked questions

More from WishCoin

Read the guide to the satoshi for its background and fee maths. The About page explains who runs the site, the contact page takes corrections, and the privacy policy sets out what data the converter does and does not collect.