Hey guys and pretty ladies (KkotNEM),
I wanted to talk about our abbreviation to use on exchanges. There is a really big problem using the abbreviation “NEM” on exchanges. Technically, according to international conventions, that would mean that NEM is the official sponsored country of Niger (a very poor country in Africa). Here is the wiki article on the standards for currency abbreviations.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217The currencies on FOREX and other major international currency exchanges have three letters. The first two letters represent the countries international abbreviation. The United States is "US". The third letter represents the currency.
US (United States) + D (dollars) = USD
IN (India) + R (rupee) = INR
JP (Japan) + Y (yen) = JPY
CN (China) + Y (yaun) = CNY
SA (Saudi Arabia) + R (riyal) = SAR
ZA (South Africa) + R (rand) = ZAR
In this last example South Africa was not allowed to use (SA) because it was registered to Saudi Arabia. Therefor South Africa settled with ZA. It is a first come first served system.
These country codes are not just for currencies. It is the internationally recognized country code. These codes are used for things like websites too.
For instance the following.
http://www.state.nj.us/ = US website (New Jersey State)
http://www.mu.ac.in/ = Indian website (Mumbai Uni)
http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ = Japanese website (Tokyo Uni)
http://en.shu.edu.cn/Default.aspx = Chinese website (Shanghai Uni)
http://ksu.edu.sa/ = Saudia Arabia website (King Saud Uni)
http://www.uct.ac.za/ = South African website (Capetown Uni)
Now here is the important part. "NE" is already claimed for the country of Niger. So if we say "NEM" people will think it is the official currency of a very poor country in Africa.
http://uam.refer.ne/ = Niger website (Niamey University)
Currencies/commodities that don't have a country start with "X" thus
XAU = Gold
XAG = Silver
XPD = Palladium
XDR = International Monetary Fund
XUA = African Development Fund
XBD = European Bonds
XRP = Ripple
XCP = Counter Party
XBT = Bitcoin
And so on. There are actually lots and lots of tickers codes that aren't officially started from a country that start with an "X".
Most people think that Bitcoin is “BTC” and in popular culture it is. But really on financial markets Bitcoin has become XBT. Kraken uses it because Kraken is trying hard to be regulated. Google’s webpage about Bitcoin says BTC.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=CURRENCY:BTCBut when you look at the API in the code Google is using XBT.
https://code.google.com/p/xbt/This is because Google wants regular people to look at their page, but major international money exchanges to use their API.
I for one am planning on NEM being huge in the future, so I want to avoid the confusing situation of having two ticker abbreviations (one for small bitcoin related exchanges, and one for major international exchanges). The difference in volume is many zeros and lots of money for us.
If we want NEM to be recognized internationally, it cannot start with NE as that is for Niger.
Monero recently went through this discussion too and so they changed their ticker code from MRO to XMR.
The ticker for NEM needs to start with an X. The possibilities are XNM, XEM, XNE. Of these, I really think XEM looks a lot better. Other people on Trello thought so too.
This doesn’t mean we are changing our name. Monero is still called Monero, just the ticker is XMR. In the same way NEM’s name will still be NEM, just the ticker symbol could be XEM.
