Glossary · Crypto
Satoshi
A satoshi (sat) is the smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred-millionth of a coin, 0.00000001 BTC, named after bitcoin’s creator.
Also called: sat, sats, satoshis, 0.00000001 BTC
At bitcoin’s close on November 11, 2026; one sat costs 0.074 cents.
Satoshis per dollar, the month’s average.
In plain words
A dollar splits into 100 cents. A bitcoin splits into 100,000,000 satoshis, or sats, named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin. One sat is 0.00000001 BTC: the eighth decimal place.
Sats are how people use bitcoin when one coin costs a lot. At the latest price $1 buys about 1,355 sats, and $10 about 13,549.
Inside bitcoin’s software there are no fractions at all: every amount is a whole number of satoshis. The “0.5 BTC” on your screen is 50,000,000 sats in the ledger.
Example
Counting in sats
- 1 BTC = 100,000,000 sats; 0.01 BTC = 1,000,000 sats; 0.0001 BTC = 10,000 sats.
- A $5 coffee at the latest price: $5 ÷ $73,806 × 100,000,000 = about 6,775 sats.
- A network fee of 5 sat/vB on a 140-byte payment is 700 sats, about $0.52.
Fewer sats per dollar means a higher bitcoin price: in January 2013 $1 bought about 6,514,548 of them.
One level deeper
The name was not in Satoshi Nakamoto’s original software; it caught on among users in bitcoin’s early years and is now standard, in wallets and in fee rates (sat/vB). Other units exist: a millibitcoin (mBTC) is 0.001 BTC, and a “bit” is 0.000001 BTC, or 100 sats.
The Lightning Network, a payment system built on top of bitcoin, counts in millisatoshis (thousandths of a sat) internally, though only whole sats settle on the blockchain.
Prices in sats move opposite to bitcoin’s dollar price: when bitcoin rises, a dollar buys fewer sats. “Stacking sats” is bitcoin slang for buying small amounts regularly.
How many satoshis $1 buys, since 2013
This is bitcoin’s dollar price turned upside down: when the price rises, a dollar buys fewer sats. On a log scale, equal steps are equal percentage moves. In January 2013 a dollar bought about 6,514,548 sats; at the latest close, 1,355.
The numbers behind the chart
| Date | Satoshis per $1 |
|---|---|
| Jan 2013 | 6,514,548 |
| Dec 2013 | 131,038 |
| Dec 2014 | 293,757 |
| Dec 2015 | 236,985 |
| Dec 2016 | 122,094 |
| Dec 2017 | 6,754 |
| Dec 2018 | 27,441 |
| Dec 2019 | 13,809 |
| Dec 2020 | 4,649 |
| Dec 2021 | 2,031 |
| Dec 2022 | 5,906 |
| Dec 2023 | 2,353 |
| Dec 2024 | 1,019 |
| Dec 2025 | 1,125 |
| Nov 2026 | 1,314 |
Why it matters
It makes bitcoin usable for small amounts: you never need to buy a whole coin.
Bitcoin’s fees are counted in sats per byte, so the unit is part of everyday use.
It shows how divisible bitcoin is: 21 million coins are 2.1 quadrillion sats.
A common mistake
Myth: A satoshi is a separate coin, like an altcoin.
In fact: It is just a unit, like a cent: 100 million sats are one bitcoin. A wallet can show the same balance as 0.0015 BTC or as 150,000 sats.
Questions people ask
How many satoshis are in one bitcoin?
100,000,000, one hundred million. One satoshi is 0.00000001 BTC.
How much is 1 satoshi in dollars?
At bitcoin’s close on November 11, 2026, about $0.000738, or 0.074 cents.
Why is it called a satoshi?
After Satoshi Nakamoto, the name used by bitcoin’s creator, whose real identity is unknown.
Read more on BigCapital
About the numbers
- The numbers on this page are recalculated from the data every night; the sources are listed at the end of the page.
- Bitcoin price: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric PriceUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Crypto data: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, used under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
- This page explains a term. It is not investment advice.