Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

there are several proposals for Sat/Satoshi-symbols.

My girlfriend - she's a graphic designer - just sent me this one:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/08/03/Gu97o.jpeg

Let me know your thoughts.

It is a creative design and I wonder if there is any backstory to it, or it's just a smaller b to show that sats are fractions of Bitcoin.

I do not think there will be an approved (being decentralized there is no one to approve of something like this too) symbol for sats beyond sats. That will mean too many symbols for Bitcoin users to be aware of and they could get confusing.

There is already a common  used abbreviation for satoshi, which is sat

The first symbol is nearly the same as the btc symbol BTC,  so it cannot be used.

The second one is interesting

Nice work. Honestly, pushing a new symbol for a decentralized asset class as spread as Bitcoin at today's date is nearly impossible. Hence, we at 100bit.co.in, stuck to simple BTC & Sats for easy understanding of users.

Interesting, that was a good design and this reminds me of some article I read.  Sharing it here, I found it interesting that some of the Bitcoin community had been discussing on how to represent Satoshi in symbols.  The article about the discussion can be found here:

https://news.bitcoin.com/sat-symbol-initiative-attempts-to-get-satoshi-design-widely-adopted-by-bitcoin-community/
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/a-suggestion-for-the-sats-symbol.

They propose this symbols shown in the images below:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTk0OTI5NzEyMjY5NjMyNjc0/sat-symbol-design-options.png (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/a-suggestion-for-the-sats-symbol)
https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/signgyyyyd.jpg (https://news.bitcoin.com/sat-symbol-initiative-attempts-to-get-satoshi-design-widely-adopted-by-bitcoin-community/)

but it does not push through.

I like this small b design which indicates that satoshi is small to bitcoin which is the smallest unit of bitcoin. If this is approved, it would be good. But most people has been using sat for satoshi and it is becoming what people know to be satoshi. Most likely nothing will change.

Well.. the first one is the Bitcoin sign, the second one the one she made for Sats.

Finally a more interesting design! Congrats to your gf, I rarely ever see unique/creative ideas about the sat symbol.

I don’t think we’ll ever reach a consensus though. I think we’re gonna stick to just “sat”, similar to “USD”. The other ideas are imo too complicated or easy to confuse with other symbols and shortnames. You can see a conflict on BTCtalk too, some use sat, others use s, others prefer other shortnames which are less known. It’s a neverending conflict.

Nice, but I think a small 'b' isn't a good idea. Remember that we're often measuring satoshi per byte, which would look like this: x b/b or x b/vb, which is confusing.

As kevin has pointed out, we'll probably never find consensus. Let's leave it at sat, it's pretty short and doesn't require to mess with the keyboard's symbols.

How are such designs adopted, or even how was the current Bitcoin logo design adopted, as I remember that Satoshi’s proposal was this logo?


I liked the design, but we cannot credit it to Satoshi, as writing b in lowercase letters also refers to Bitcoin
Bitcoin is blockchain while bitcoin is currency

It was created by bitboy back in 2010:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631.msg19455#msg19455 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631.msg19455#msg19455)

I guess adaption was easy back then - only few people were really active in the Bitcoin world, and most just liked bitboy's proposals.

Is there any reason why it is a small b instead of s? Maybe if you can explain it more people will agree with you, although it is unlikely to gain large traction since the community is way too big already. If you plan to use it on your own websites/blogs or something similar, people might also get confused since you use different symbols.

That's right, compared to now it would be difficult to encourage users to use your symbol, especially if it indirectly clashes with the previous one.

I know this, but why was the change to the orange logo or how was it accepted, since I also see that the Bitcoin abbreviation was BC and now the majority is written by BTC, meaning what are the criteria for adopting a specific logo?
We are now dealing with mBTC in many transactions, everyone is not focusing on a symbol/logo dedicated to the Satoshi and it is difficult in the current period to reach a consensus as I see more than one logo for Satoshi.


My personal interpretation says that because the satoshi is the smallest unit in Bitcoin, that is why it was written with the letter “B” in lowercase letters.

There was also a topic created recently about onIs there a glyph for a Satoshi (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5456828.0) and some designs were proposed without approval. The decentralized nature of the Bitcoin community will make it difficult to adopt a single sign. The small case b looks like a brilliant design but the community is used to the sat sign. Modifying or bringing a new design will be subject to the approval of the community because the power to do such doesn't rest on a single or group of individuals.

Okay, I asked my girlfriend if she could write down her thoughts on why she created the Satoshi-symbol.

She delivered  as you can see here:

https://gallikerdesign.ch/satoshi/web-idea-and-documentation-satoshi-symbol.pdf (https://gallikerdesign.ch/satoshi/web-idea-and-documentation-satoshi-symbol.pdf)

On this page, you can find the symbol in all different formats for free use:

https://gallikerdesign.ch/satoshi-symbol.html (https://gallikerdesign.ch/satoshi-symbol.html)

I agree, that it may be difficult to establish a Sat-symbol, but on the other hand, I'm impressed about the process.

(Btw, and I hope mods are okay with this: On her page, you also find some T-shirts with Bitcoin-designs...)

The Bitcoin design hasn’t been changed ever since the 3rd logo and that’s because BTC became popular. It’s easy to change branding when you’re unknown but it can be a self-destroying option if you’re doing it when you’re highly popular and well known. Hence why I’d rather stick to the old ways of calling denominations: BTC, sat.

Why symbolize Sat/Satoshi as BTC? This is the same as McDonald's denoted by the letter F or other letter of the alphabet, for example. There will only be confusion from such innovations in the design of the Sat/Satoshi-logo.

The small symbol BTC is not needed at all, and BTC already belongs to bitcoin.

Let everything remain as it is, because it has already been accepted into the BTC-community and used to it.

The only thing that can be corrected is in sat to add 2 dashes above and below the symbol S, as in the dollar sign ($).

Like that:


Since sat also stands for currency, albeit a smaller denomination.

As you may have seen, also here in the thread, BTC is for Bitcoin, the smaller b for the smaller units.

And please also read this here:

https://gallikerdesign.ch/satoshi/web-idea-and-documentation-satoshi-symbol.pdf (https://gallikerdesign.ch/satoshi/web-idea-and-documentation-satoshi-symbol.pdf)

A lot of people - me included - believe that the value of one BTC will rise dramatically in the future. IF so, the use of sats will become more common.

If you look at the most used core banking systems in the world, we have the following four rows:

Currency - Currency Symbol - ISO Code - decimal places

Let's say we make now a transfer of 550 Sats, assuming that they would have a value significantly higher than today. This would look, today, like this:

Bitcoin - BTC - BTC¹ - 0.00000<sup>2

1</sup> Due to the fact that sats are a fraction of BTC, the BTC currency code would be used.
² Most core banking systems have a limited number of 0 they can display after the comma, usually it is 4 to 6 in currencies. This doesn't apply to all core banking systems, but to most of them. 550 Sats would not be displayed, i.e. not transferred.
A go-around-solution would be to enter Bitcoin as a commodity in a core banking system or with a stock symbol. As a commodity, it would need a definition according to ISO 4217 (900–998). However, this would then again be error-prone in other systems. A stock symbol would be the easiest way.

BIP 176 https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0176.mediawiki (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0176.mediawiki) is a proposal which says that "Bits is presented here as the standard term for 100 (one hundred) satoshis or 1/1,000,000 (one one-millionth) of a bitcoin."

When Jimmy Song proposed this, I was in opposition. Today, I look a bit different at this and wouldn't oppose an ISO-code for Bits, the symbol as defined by Valentina. It would make it easier for core banking systems to use Bitcoin. And it would make it easier to use sats.

Why not keep it simple and easy to understand? Sat is a fraction of Bitcoin so it must have some sort of similarities. I am no graphic designer, but here's something that I have made. Somewhat similar to Bitcoin, let's change that B to an S! This is no serious proposal or anything. I was just trying something on my own, The logo in OP is quite good, but people will be confused with it, I guess.
Here's what I made.
https://i.postimg.cc/Tw5RTpPt/Untitled-1.jpg

I am often against these sort of things but your gf is on to something with last one. tiny b and those 2 strokes are very fitting. I wouldn't mind if this catched on, but i doubt it. Bitcoin maximalists seem to be very much against any kind of change. Although this wouldn't be a change but an addon, and not to code but to visual "brand".

And there's the fact that people have hard time to grasp the whole bitcoin idea, so we have to be careful not to introduce too many new ideas in a row.

That's a good attempt but I'd say if we are to design a symbol for the smallest unit of bitcoin called satoshi we should utilize the letter "s" in it not "b" similar to ¢ which is the symbol for cent and uses the letter "c".

Lower case "b" symbol could be used for other units of bitcoin like bits which is 100 satoshi.