Bitcoin Forum

"BTC" is not a good or likely ISO 4217 currency code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217). There are two kinds: country specific and everything else.

The country specific codes start with the two letter country code followed by another letter, often the first letter in the name of the currency. "USD" for US Dollar and "SEK" for Swedish Krona. "BT" is the country code for Bhutan.

Non country specific codes start with an "X" followed by two letters describing the currency. "XAU" for gold and "XDR" for Special Drawing Rights. The natural ISO 4217 code for Bitcoin would be "XBC". "XBC" is currently taken by the obsolete European Unit of Account 9 so maybe it can be reassigned. Or maybe the ISO 4217 Maintenance Agency can make an exception if "BTC" becomes established enough but it would be kind of ugly.

Abbreviations get their meaning from usage, not from approval by a committee. Don't worry about it.

Before the euro came, we paid here in Belgium with Belgium Francs, everybody wrote it down with fr or Bfr instead of BEF.
Did anyone complain, no
did everybody know what it meant, yes.

And the XBC is taken, so actually there is no much choice if you still want to have something not to weird like XBI.
So I would say, just use the BTC, if that agency doesn't want to make an exeption if Bitcoin becomes a widespread currency becouse it would look sloppy, they still can make something fancy from it that stands nice between the iso codes.

Yeah, well, there will be problems anyway. If it catches on big then BTC will be a very large unit. The actual daily life unit will be something like µBTC.

my two myoobitz-- i think the cart is well ahead of the horse in this discussion. 

I agree with the ones that say that use will determine it, but I like" XBC".

Russian roubles - RUB, Ukrainian hryvnia - UAH, etc. So I see no problem with BTC.

The euro is not from any specific country, and yet they didn't call it XEU but EUR. So I don't think the rule is that strong. Let's stick with BTC.

"EU" is the official country code of the European Union.

Standards come from usage not from arbitrary rules.

Only rarely. Most standards are arbitrary rules that are followed because it is useful to be interoperable with everyone else.

Successful standards codify (and thereby standardize) existing practice, but the world is littered with prescriptive standards that failed (http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/standard.htm) because they tried to impose inventions of their own.

It is like evolution. Many try, most die and only the best and/or luckiest survive and prosper.

I meant free market standards. Not those where a company pays lobbyists to impose something on the rest of their industry. :)

And yet euro isn't EUE

We only need to buy bhuthan and claim BTC is from there.

Ok, I thought so
Anyway an exception is needed because none of 'us' will accept to change BTC

There was a MXP. MXN stands for Mexican New Peso (Nuevo peso mexicano).

(Unlike what I said back in october,) I think we should go for BC and XBC.

Most of the time we use "BTC" in contexts where no strict ISO compliance is really expected, it's just an abbreviation. In those cases, let's just use BC instead, it's even easier to understand.

And then XBC can be used wherever strict ISO compliance is needed.

(Or rebrand Bitcoin to Bhutancoin.)

XBC is taken.  XBI and XBT seem open.

+1 for this topic

I don't think it is correct to (ab)use the Bhutan country code. Also I don't think widespead usage will justify an exception from the rule or change the standard. Also this would make it stand out really ugly and especially programmers and mathematicians don't like things that are ugly, they like things that are simple, pure and elegant.

I suggest:

XBC  (best but unlikely)
XBI
XBN

in this order.


And then there is also

XZ  (country code for iternational waters)  ---> XZB
ZZ  (country code for unknown territory) ---> ZZB