Official Bitcoin Unicode Character?

[Luke-Jr]

I suggest a character representative of symbol for Bitcoin currency be submitted to http://unicode.org/pending/proposals.html

FYI, they won't accept it until there is significant real-world adoption of the symbol.

[hook]

ℬ  Script Capital B  (since you are documenting all the cool things that look like a B)

Of the current options I like this one the most.

But I also agree that what we should aim for is a new symbol — I imagine a blocky thing that looks something between a B and 8 would be nice.

quickly bodged up:

Code:

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[mikegogulski]

I suggest a character representative of symbol for Bitcoin currency be submitted to http://unicode.org/pending/proposals.html

FYI, they won't accept it until there is significant real-world adoption of the symbol.

Indeed. As I noted on another thread, it took a year and a half for the euro currency symbol € to be put into Unicode, and that was an "official" government currency. Piggyback on stuff that already exists.

[Alcoholocaust]

Like I said in the other symbol thread, Ⓑ seems superior (and it is somewhat disappointing that it received so few votes )

it is relatively easy to read and not yet used for any other currency.

ⓑ would be my second personal favorite, but it seems a bit harder to read on small screens

[em3rgentOrdr]

Like I said in the other symbol thread, Ⓑ seems superior (and it is somewhat disappointing that it received so few votes )

it is relatively easy to read and not yet used for any other currency.

ⓑ would be my second personal favorite, but it seems a bit harder to read on small screens

Since both Ⓑ and ⓑ were listed as separate choices, unfortunately, that means that votes by people who supported a "b" or "B" inside a circle were split.  A better voting system would have used multiple stages (whereby the choice with the least number of votes was removed between each stage), or would have allowed people to rank their votes first and then automatically perform multi-stage voting.  The results of the above poll should by no means be taken as any sort of formal decision by the bitcoin community.

[Bruce Wagner]

I believe this election was rigged.

However, even if you add up both of the circled-characters, they still didn't beat the ฿



To me, the fact that the ฿ is already an existing unicode character, adds about 20 brownie points to that choice.

[Mahkul]

I believe this election was rigged.

However, even if you add up both of the circled-characters, they still didn't beat the ฿



To me, the fact that the ฿ is already an existing unicode character, adds about 20 brownie points to that choice.

Once we grow big enough, we will just push on the Thai government to change their symbol.

[S3052]

I believe this election was rigged.

However, even if you add up both of the circled-characters, they still didn't beat the ฿



To me, the fact that the ฿ is already an existing unicode character, adds about 20 brownie points to that choice.

Agree to Bruce and many others.
I think we all could re-focus on other cool and promising projects and just take this character.. and move on..

I also like the fun behind creativity and discussion, but after a couiple of weeks, we should be able to lock this and move on (just my personal POV, feel free to continue debating as this is an open forum)

[em3rgentOrdr]

A great man once said,

"The only real standard is a defacto standard."

[davux]

I live in Mexico, where the symbol for MXN (Mexican pesos) is $, same as USD. In everydaylife, this causes no problem, since there's no ambiguity: everything is written in pesos, you pay in pesos, you charge in pesos. From time to time, though, there's an ambiguity about whether the price is in USD or in MXN, especially in "international" zones (airports, touristic places, a whole big part of the Internet, etc.). When I first arrived at the airport, I found the price for losing one's "forma migratoria" ($80 or $100 IIRC) very high, until I realized it was Mexican pesos. Also, on an art website I'm doing (http://plaztika.com), prices are in Mexican pesos, and I can't use the $ symbol because it would be ambiguous. Some French artists will join the website soon and will have prices in EUR, and in that case I'll be able to use €, but for prices in pesos, I'll have to stick to "MXN", which means concretely that the $ symbol cannot be used. Same for any future artwork sold in American dollars, I'll need to use "USD" or "dollars". Sad but true. I've been hating this long before I heard about Bitcoins, so this is not a tweaked argument.

The same situation could happen if ฿ were used for both BTC and THB (Thai Bath): it will work as long as there's no ambiguity (e.g. here on this forum), but for example on that art website I won't be able to use it ever.

So it's fine by me if people start using ฿, but it will be only a partial feature. While it's still time to choose, let's be more clever than that.

[FatherMcGruder]

Meh. I'm sticking with ⓑ and BTC until I see something better.

[Bruce Wagner]

I think ⓑ could cause confusion in Boston...   as it could be mistaken for the logo for the Boston Bruins (see http://www.sportslogos.net/logo.php?id=27 )

And since 1.00 THB = 0.0329327 USD, I think the beautiful wonderful Buddhist people of Thailand will be very happy indeed if you pay them in BTC instead of THB.   

[ElectricGoat]

You'd rather borrow a symbol used by an entire country than one used by a Boston sports team ?

[MoonShadow]

The confusion of residents in Boston is even less material to what we do than the confusion of residents of an entire nation, or several.

[bittersweet]

Besides sports team logo is used in other context than currency symbols, so you can't really confuse it.
If I would have to choose already existing symbol, I would probably choose Ⓑ because it looks similar to the unofficial logo.

[LZ]

I just found this thread. What about B⃦? It is Unicode 6.0 - so you need supported typeface like GNU FreeFont.
Just set FreeMono as a fixed-width typeface, FreeSans as a sans-serif typeface and FreeSerif as a serif typeface.

[davux]

What about B⃦?
Examples:

Code:

0.01 B⃦TC

B⃦100

Yeah. Like it. I especially like the "B⃦TC" form, since it kind of degrades to "BTC" when the COMBINING DOUBLE VERTICAL STROKE OVERLAY (a.k.a. U+20E6) character cannot be interpreted.

There's also room for a dedicated character (range U+20b9 to U+20CF, see http://www.utf8-zeichentabelle.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl?start=8320). I think that should be the goal. Does anybody know what the criteria for insertion into Unicode are?

[FatherMcGruder]

Does anybody know what the criteria for insertion into Unicode are?

Pretty sure this thread has covered the question.

What about placement of the symbol. I prefer it after the price. For example, 20.11ⓑ. And that, actually, has me leaning more towards not bothering with a symbol and just sticking with BTC. Eventually, deflation will have us using centi, milli, and micro bitcoins. Denoting them as cBTC, mBTC, and uBTC respectively. Doing so with any currency symbol just doesn't look right.

[ribuck]

What about placement of the symbol.

Personally I'd like to use the symbol instead of the decimal point. You can see this sometimes on electronic circuit diagrams where a 4.7k ohm resistor is labelled 4k7 so that there's no confusion due to missed decimal points.

That solution also covers the situation of very large units being needed. So, if we used "m" for a milli-bitcoin and "u" for a micro-bitcoin, we could have denominations such as 2m50, 7504b25 or 400u.

Of course this notation will never fly with the average Joe, so I'm not proposing it seriously.

[davux]

Of course this notation will never fly with the average Joe, so I'm not proposing it seriously.

In France, I've often seen prices in euros written this way, e.g. 12€50.