# Gavin Andresen
# 2011-03-31 12:04:07
# https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4086.msg76297#msg76297

@s{quotedtext}
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 @p{brk}
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO YELL THIS?@s{huh}?? @p{par}

Of COURSE you shouldn't use floats internally (unless you are doing something trivial like adding up items in a shopping cart). @p{par}

We are talking about the JSON-RPC api.  Which is an api for communicating between bitcoin and other applications, in which all values are turned into strings. @p{par}

So:  what are the best practices in the banking world for representing monetary values in strings?  As far as I can tell, the answer is "write them out as decimal values and convert them to Decimal() or integer as you read in or write out." @p{par}

Which is exactly what Bitcoin does, and which is what I think we should recommend to people. @p{brk}