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Ares, good initiative.

I have explained in earlier threads why an ISO currency code would accelerate Bitcoin take-up, and make it a harder target for jealous CBs to attack.

So this action activity is an in-house one. It is to ask the Bitcoin Foundation to lobby SIX Standards to register an ISO code.

Getting Bitcoin the ISO code XBT, where 1 XBT = 100 satoshi, or 1 miilion XBT = 1 BTC is most effective. It means that bitcoin amounts are easily stored in all the worlds accounting and FX systems.

What the fuck is wrong with BTC?

The ISO 4217 currency codes are an international standard way to refer to currencies. They consist of three letters, written all caps. For currencies issued by nations, the first two letters are a code for the country, and the third letter represents the currency issued. Example national currencies are the USD (United States, Dollar), GBP (Great Britain, Pound), or JPY (Japan, Yen). Non-national currencies are designated by an X (no nation) followed by a two letter code. This can be precious metals, such as XAG (Silver), XAU (Gold), or XPT (Platinum). It can also be international currencies, such as XAF (African Francs), or XCD (East Caribbean Dollars).

Many people have been using the code BTC for bitcoins, which is clearly wrong. There exists a currency BTN (Bhutan, Ngultrum); BT is the country code for Bhutan. BTC, by the code rules, stands for Bhutan Colones, or Bhutan Crunchies, or Bhutan Calafragilistics. BTC is not Bitcoins.

The rules are pretty clear. Bitcoins are not issued by a nation state, so the code should start with X. BitCoins is comprised of two words, so we can abbreviate that BC. So we should use, and ask for international recognition of, XBC. XBC = (Non-national currency) BitCoins.

This code is for use anywhere the official international codes are used. Exchanges should adopt this code immediately, and stop using BTC. For example, "The current exchange rate is 14.15 USD/XBC." Or "Please send payment of 456.78978466 XBC to the following address."

That being said, in an informal setting you can still use the abbreviation "btc" or "Btc" (lower case, to avoid confusion). I realize this is an uphill battle for implementation since the incorrect use of BTC is spread through the entire bitcoin community, but we need to change this NOW while the community is still small rather than later.

If bitcoins do well, in the future we may have very small prices for items and people will want to use millibitcoins or microbitcoins for convenience. (Reminder: 1 satoshi is 0.01 microbitcoin.) I propose using the terms mBC for millibitcoins and µBC for microbitcoins (use uBC if you can't type µ (mu)).

IN SUMMARY: Everybody, please stop using the abbreviation BTC and pretending it is a good international abbreviation, and start using XBC to refer to bitcoins.

EDIT: As was pointed out later in the thread, XBC is already claimed, so I am supporting XBT instead.
 DO NOT POST SESC LINKS

This is a great idea, I'm on board 100%   :)

I think if the concept catches on, a dedicated website would be something good to look into.

And perhaps less frequent task changes, every few days or something? Just to allow a larger number of participants for each activity

Today's Plan (updated 5/24/13):
Let's ask Zynga to support Bitcoin!

I made this thread on their feedback forum, please voice your support: http://www.zyngaplayerforums.com/showthread.php?1804691-Please-allow-payment-with-Bitcoin

I also found this email for Zynga through gethuman.com: Businessdevelopment@zynga.com

I don't like the idea of some random daily actions. Even if this daily action thread gets massive support from forum members, it won't be effective.

So you edited OP today and changed it to (I'm stripping colors):


There was a totally different agenda here yesterday and there will be another different one tomorrow.

Now imagine company like Zynga that gets a sudden flash-mob-like attack of comments to support bitcoin. They see 2,000 comments in the thread and they might think “wow, there must be something in that”. But then the thread barely lives one day after and totally dies two days later. Now they think “WTF? Thousands of people were supporting this idea yesterday but one day later everyone lost their interest? This must have been some stupid flash-mob-like prank”.

And it will be like that with any action. Getting an official ISO 4217 currency code or convincing any large company to implement bitcoin support require lots of sustained lobbying. One-day flash mobs won't make a difference.

The largest single impact most of us can make is by spending some bitcoins every week. Spend them on something legal too. Buy something from an individual and tell others about how great the experience was. Buy something, anything, from a legit company offering wares for bitcoins. Gyft.com, reddit, and wordpress, are few that come to mind. I like gyft.com. There is something on there that you are going to buy this week anyway. Why not spend some coin?

I love the OP's idea of contacting companies to let them know you are interested in purchasing their wares for bitcoins. How about contacting your favorite locally owned restaurant about accepting bitcoins? What about other locally owned small businesses that you frequent?

Sell something on this board today for bitcoins. Use escrow. Don't scam. It hurts the community to do otherwise.     

If every member purposed to spend at least $20/week in bitcoins on things they would otherwise buy with plastic or paper anyways; it will go a long ways toward adoption by the masses. Big companies often follow the small ones. We just don't hear about it until a major player boards the ship. 

I don't like the idea of some random daily actions. Even if this daily action thread gets massive support from forum members, it won't be effective.

So you edited OP today and changed it to (I'm stripping colors):


There was a totally different agenda here yesterday and there will be another different one tomorrow.

Now imagine company like Zynga that gets a sudden flash-mob-like attack of comments to support bitcoin. They see 2,000 comments in the thread and they might think “wow, there must be something in that”. But then the thread barely lives one day after and totally dies two days later. Now they think “WTF? Thousands of people were supporting this idea yesterday but one day later everyone lost their interest? This must have been some stupid flash-mob-like prank”.

And it will be like that with any action. Getting an official ISO 4217 currency code or convincing any large company to implement bitcoin support require lots of sustained lobbying. One-day flash mobs won't make a difference.

Great post. I'll make a "ask your local X to consider allowing payment in Bitcoin" plan in the coming days.


Also, updated for today

Google Trends has Bitcoin exploding overnight as opposed to say Facebook that did a slow bell curve up from 2005.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook (http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook)
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Bitcoin&cmpt=q (http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Bitcoin&cmpt=q)
I'm not sure what is happening right now but whatever it is should be continued and supported.
The regional maps between the two are quite interesting. Facebook seems to be pretty evenly distributed but Bitcoin has drastically exploded in many areas.

Google Trends has [something-new] exploding overnight as opposed to say Bitcoin that did a slow bell curve up from 2012

This only shows the very infancy of bitcoin. Little popular phrases (like bitcoin) will have huge volatility whenever there will be some mainstream news mention - and this is what you see on this chart. To show you an example of why shape of the chart is meaningless with low volume, please take a look at some bullshit term like “kjsdhf” which I just randomly typed on my keyboard http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=kjsdhf&cmpt=q - whoa, it was very quiet and then it skyrocketed in July 2012 and remains quite popular as the chart is at the top.

To put that bitcoin chart in context, take a look at bitcoin+facebook on one chart: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin%2C%20facebook&cmpt=q all this “bitcoin skyrocketed overnight” is just a flat line at the bottom of the chart. Now pay attention to 2004 values of the Facebook phrase in the above chart. It's a flat line too. Now take a look at Facebook chart but in 2004 only: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook&date=1%2F2004%2012m&cmpt=q - whoa, skyrockets.

Everything needs context.  That 2004 Facebook skyrocket is just a flat line in the long-term 2004-2013 chart. Bitcoin is still very niche and is in its infancy. Spikes like this won't matter in the long term. Ten years from now people will look at long-term bitcoin popularity chart and write:


Or they will write “look ma, there was something called bitcoin but it didn't make it” and the chart will look like this: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=friendster&cmpt=q

tl;dr: let's don't get crazy and don't piss our pants.

So you don't believe the stats that say Bitcoin has increased in hits for 2013 vs every other year of its existence?

Of course it's obvious that it increased. Where did you get that conclusion from?

Im not clear on why encouraging people to spend their bitcoin is a good idea.

wouldnt that mean you are encouraging them to use something that has x perceived value(btc), to purchase something with y perceived value(some product or service), instead of using something that has z perceived value(fiat), to purchase something with y perceived value(some product or service)?

if x is less than z, you would not need to encourage them to trade it for something of greater value. if x is greater than z, you are asking them to sacrifice value.

you are then asking them to sacrifice their own wealth in order to benefit others. i consider that to be charity, and generally not in the interest of the person spending their btc.

you could, however, argue that the sacrificed value is an investment in the btc economy, which will then pay dividends in the future.

however, you would then have to compare this scenario to the the alternatives, namely, 'what investment in the btc economy could you have made if you had used fiat to begin with?' and 'are there any other investments that would pay more dividends and/or pay dividends sooner?'

the logic used to justify the claims made in this post, seem to be identical to the logic used to justify the existence of the Federal Reserve, government spending, and inflation in general, i.e. 'Increase the velocity of money and increase the health of the economy.'

in my opinion, instead of encouraging people to spend their btc to improve the health of the btc economy, it would be more efficient and effective at improving the health of the btc economy if you were to encourage people to part with their btc (by trading it for products or services) because they perceived it to be an increase in personal wealth.

although, thats just my opinion, i could be wrong.

if people continually spend their bitcoin on things that are worth less than the bitcoin, you will be destroying wealth, not creating it and eventually bitcoin will be worthless. imagine if bitcoin was used to pay people to dig ditches and then pay them again to fill them in. did you create wealth or destroy it? by exchanging bitcoin for things of less value, you are telling everyone that bitcoin has a lower value, by demanding a better product or service in exchange for bitcoin, you are showing everyone just how powerful bitcoins really are.

Adoption Action Plan you say? What Bitcoin needs is real world propaganda. Online world is fucked up, don't count on it much because almost everyone browse something others
are not browsing. You can put "Bitcoin Accepted Here" on million of websites but there are still trillions of other websites. It is lost battle, forget it.

Revolution starts locally, in offline world, and for that you can't go much better than using real world items made to promote Bitcoin.

http://www.cafepress.com/bitcoinmegastore
http://www.cafepress.com/bitcoinmegastore/9928661

In my hometown (around 50k people) I'm the only person actively involved in Bitcoin. I have few real world Bitcoin items bought from my own store with profits made there. Number
of people that asked me what that strange B on my T-shirts is supposed to mean and got more or less interested in Bitcoin afterwards is enormously bigger than number of people who
actualy knew what that strange B on my T-shirts means. "Enormously bigger" as in "1000+ people / no one" ratio.

You mean Bitcoin depends on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.? Since when? Or you mean Bitcoin should make itself dependant on those bullshits and other 3rd-party "services"?

There is always a choice. Moreover, "crowd" you are refering to is maybe few % of world population and are provably the most stupid part of population. As such, they do not really
matter, even though it might seem they do. They are nothing but useful idiots manipulated by the system on almost every level.

If you want Bitcoin ruined used than yes, you need those people.