Satoshi to USD converter

How to use the sats converter

1. Pick your currency. It starts with the usual currency for your language, and you can switch to any of 12.
2. Type an amount into any row. Write 21000 in the sats row, 0.5 in the BTC row or 20 in the money row.
3. Read the other rows. They update as you type, and the line under the converter shows the full result.
4. Tap a quick amount to jump to a common value, or use Copy result to paste the conversion into a chat.

Bitcoin units at a glance

Bitcoin has one base unit on the blockchain: the satoshi. Every other unit is a fixed multiple of it.

Millisatoshis exist only on the Lightning Network. A normal on-chain payment cannot be smaller than one satoshi.

How the conversion works

One bitcoin is exactly 100,000,000 satoshis. The protocol itself stores every amount as a whole number of satoshis, so all units are simple multiples:

BTC = sats ÷ 100,000,000
money = sats × price ÷ 100,000,000
sats = money ÷ price × 100,000,000

To get money, multiply the sats by the price of one bitcoin and divide by 100 million. To go the other way, divide the money by the price and multiply by 100 million. The "sats per dollar" number is just 100,000,000 divided by the price.

Many converters use floating-point numbers and show results like 0.30000000000000004 BTC. This one counts in whole millisatoshis with integer arithmetic, so 0.1 + 0.2 BTC is exactly 0.3 BTC and 0.29 BTC is exactly 29,000,000 sats.

Worked examples

These examples use a round price of 80,000 US dollars per bitcoin. The converter above uses the live price instead.

• 21,000 sats to dollars: 21,000 × 80,000 ÷ 100,000,000 = 16.80 USD.
• 50 dollars to sats: 50 ÷ 80,000 × 100,000,000 = 62,500 sats.
• 0.0025 BTC in other units: 250,000 sats, 2.5 mBTC or 2,500 bits. No price is needed, because these units are fixed.
• One satoshi: 80,000 ÷ 100,000,000 = 0.0008 USD, so one dollar buys 1,250 sats.

What is "Moscow time"?

"Moscow time" is bitcoin slang for the number of satoshis that one US dollar buys. The name comes from a 2021 video call: a bitcoin block clock behind Jack Dorsey showed this number, and some viewers joked that the strange "time" on it must be Moscow time.

It turns the usual price around: instead of saying a bitcoin costs tens of thousands of dollars, it says how many sats a single dollar is worth. When bitcoin gets more expensive, the number goes down. The readout above works the same way for every currency. For yen and won it uses 100 yen and 1,000 won, so the number stays easy to read.

Where the name "satoshi" comes from

The unit is named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin. A forum user called ribuck suggested the name on BitcoinTalk in 2010, at first for one hundredth of a bitcoin. In 2011 the community settled on today's meaning: one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin.

Bitcoin Pizza Day shows how much a sat has changed in value. On 22 May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, which is one trillion satoshis.

Good to know

• Lightning wallets and many apps show balances in sats because small amounts are easier to read: 2,500 sats instead of 0.000025 BTC.
• Exchanges quote slightly different prices and add fees. Use the result here as a market reference, not as the exact amount you will receive.
• Network fees are quoted in sats per virtual byte (sat/vB). The total fee depends on the size of the transaction, not on the amount sent.
• There will never be more than 21 million bitcoin, which is about 2.1 quadrillion sats. The converter warns you if you type more than that.
• This page only converts numbers. It does not hold, send or store any bitcoin.