35 crypto companies got together to make a change dot org petition called “Bitcoin Deserves an Emoji”.
F that
I don’t mind there being an emoji for cryptocurrency. It’s a relevant thing in modern society whether we like it or not, so there’s no reason it should be excluded. But just not Bitcoin, specifically. Even though Bitcoin is the one that kicked off crypto, it’s still a brand name, which would result in auto-rejection according to the Unicode Consortium’s guidelines.
If there was a more general-purpose icon/symbol that could represent cryptocurrency in general, that’d be more appropriate. But it can’t be Bitcoin.
I mean it has its issues but a non regulated currency not controlled by a government is cool imo
Its supposed benefits are vastly overshadowed by their only practical application: allowing online crime to flourish.
I wouldn’t think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?
Either way there isn’t a generic symbol for cryptocurrency. This emoji will go the way of the save icon, where in a couple generations most people will have no idea what it relates to, but know that it’s a symbol for cryptos.
I wouldn’t think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?
It’s still the name of a specific product/service. The issue is partly trademark/copyright, but also partly a matter of neutrality. The Unicode Consortium want to ensure that they’re not directly or indirectly endorsing any specific products. If they added a Bitcoin logo, then you’d see every other crypto lining up to get their logos permanently installed on every person’s devices, too. Free advertising for life on 99.99% of phones would be hard to pass up.
I mean, we have a symbol for effectively any currency that anyone can or wants to fill out the paperwork for and can demonstrate the basics of “this is a meaningful symbol with more than transient relevance”.
They added ₿ in 2016.
Surely the Tokyo tower is a specific product then? 🗼It costs money to visit, aren’t the other towers jealous?
It’s a specific type of thing, but it’s not a brand. Nobody owns the trademark for Bitcoin. Anyone can buy, sell, or mine Bitcoin. It’s no more a specific product than dollars are a specific product.
If they added a Bitcoin logo, then you’d see every other crypto lining up to get their logos permanently installed on every person’s devices, too.
Is there a problem with that? This isn’t “advertising”, these are unicode symbols. There are unicode symbols for all kinds of things. Every currency has unicode symbols, why not cryptocurrencies?
The creator of bitcoin is as unknown as batman’s identity. The folks at the center of the main blockchain companies and stuff like that all know pretty well who created it, they just play along with the story.
Satoshi Nakamoto is some kind of consipracy…?
Satoshi Nakamoto.
The problem with having cryptocurrency as emoji is agreeing on the specification how it should be drawn, and also make it different enough from already existing emojis such as coin 🪙. It is not exactly a tangible thing.
Just make it the B symbol they use in the coin? None of the others would exist in their current fashion, without Bitcoin anyway.
I don’t think it should have an emoji either, but how does this rule apply to real currencies being emojis? I mean there is dollar banknote 💵 and yen banknote 💴 and euro banknote 💶 as separate emojis, not just a general money one. And honestly, even most of the emojis referencing anything that has to do with money uses dollar signs, i.e. $. Were these rules made after these emojis were already added?
It probably falls under faulty comparison:
https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Faulty_Comparison
Their guidelines change, and it’s possible these emoji were added with old guidelines. They can’t remove old emoji, which means specific buildings like Tokyo Tower🗼is an emoji, even if they prohibit the addition of specific buildings nowadays.
I saw this get brought up a lot. I think the difference is that currency symbols generally don’t refer to a specific currency. USD and AUS both use the $ symbol, for example. “Dollar” and “American Dollar” aren’t the same thing since other types of dollars exist, and the symbols are still technically multi-purpose, whereas the ₿ symbol technically refers only to Bitcoin.
That’s my theory on the reasoning, at least.
Why in the world would you have “emojis” as part of Unicode anyway?
We already have a way to have endless “emojis” without administrative stupidity, it’s called JPEG.
If you need to show text as that, we’ve had smileys since 90s.
Would you rather send an entire JPEG over text message for an emoji? Or just 4 bytes of unicode right inline where you want it? Unicode having a standard set of emoji is actually incredibly useful and reduces complexity. I guess it would disincentivize 👏 emoji 👏 spam 👏 to use JPEGs tho.
I’d send :-} and :-\ and =P and D= instead of an emoji. As the founding fathers intended.
Hmm, why do we need a corporation to be arbitter of the written language anyway ? If they want to use it, they should just use it.If they can’t because of some central authority then Unicode is is to be abolished and replace with a system where you can usev wherever squiggle that you want and nobody gets a second opinion. You just do it.
We also need a McDonald’s emoji, Pepsi emoji, Windows emoji and Mastercard emoji. These are also brands that are heavily ingrained in our culture. Probably even more so than Bitcoin.
Or we accept that brands like Bitcoin shouldn’t use emoji as a marketing tool.
Probably even more so
probably? shitcoin isn’t even in the same ballpark universe as something like McDonald’s or Pepsi.
Yeah McDonalds is based on torturing and murdering animals while destroying the planet… While bitcoin is only destroying the planet like the rest of capitalism.
We also need a McDonald’s emoji, Pepsi emoji, Windows emoji and Mastercard emoji
bitcoin is not a company.
🍟 <<< Only one brand sells French fries / Chips in this format. And it’s the super-size format.
Unicode Consortium decide which emoji should be included. It’s up to each vendor themselves to come up with how they should look like. I don’t think Unicode Consortium explicitly state it must look like McDonald’s fries.
No. But the description of the Emoji is French Fries in a red carton.
Now I can’t be absolutely certain only McDonald’s sells french fries in a red carton, nor do I know if red french fry cartons are trademarked (answers to these questions evaded simple websearches) but I have never seen french fries sold in red cartons outside of McDonald’s.
If you do find non-McDonald’s french fries sold in a red carton, please point them out.
Since when is Bitcoin a brand lmao? I’m really struggling to see how it is comparable to McDonald’s or Windows. Having a logo does not make you a corporation
Bitcoin is digital money. A better analogy would be to campaign for a USD, Yen, euro or British pound emoji.
Oh wait, they already exist.
https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Faulty_Comparison
The existence of other emoji can’t justify the inclusion of a new emoji. Those emojis are old, and it’s unlikely they would’ve been approved under Unicode’s current guidelines.
I agree with you.
I’m not really arguing for a bitcoin emoji. Just against the McDonald’s brand comparison.
BTC is not mainstream enough (and never will be) to be needed in everyday text speak.
Except those are real currencies the world recognizes.
Most businesses will tell you to fuck off if you try to pay them in bitcoin.
Most businesses will tell you to fuck off if you try to pay them in bitcoin.
Yes and no. You can indirectly pay for things in Bitcoin using a Bitcoin credit card. Although I’m not sure why you would want to.
The logo and name is the brand. How do you visually represent a specific payment protocol without using its logo? There’s no emoji for HTTP or TCP either.
while there may not be an emoji for http, maybe there should be. there is sort of an unofficial one (a broken lock), and there are other protocols that have logos. as another commenter said, it’s kind of silly to fight for an emojii for it, and probably sillier to fight against it.
yes, it is. anyone can spin up a node or download the blockchain or make an address.
It already has a codepoint. ₿
You don’t get a new Emoji by creating a change .org petition lol
You need to write a proper proposal and send it to the Unicode consortium: https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html. If it gets rejected, it’s four years until you can reapply for the same Emoji.
A Bitcoin emoji was rejected in 2020 i doubt it will be any different this time.
Yeah I doubt it’d be approved… I was just saying that there’s an actual process that has to be followed. The Unicode consortium aren’t going to care about a Change .org partition that gets maybe 20k signatures at most given billions of people use Unicode and they’ve got proper processes to go through.
Short reminder that Bitcoin was created as a reaction on the world finance crisis and to allow people like Assange to receive donations, because PayPal and similar just blocked them…
That does not mean that Botcoin is perfect, but: If the alternative system was perfect, there was not bitcoin.
Now, do we need an emoji? I don’t care TBH…
I don’t mind a system like bitcoin existing but bitcoin itself has way too many problems to be useful and actually is detrimental to the environment. It takes way too long to process a transaction, it is massively energy intensive for what it is, and it’s been hyped up like the Californian gold Rush.
Sure it was created to solve a problem but it doesn’t actually solve that problem very effectively. It also introduces an infinite number of new problems that no other currency system has ever experienced.
Bitcoin is terrible for that though. High transaction fees, slow transaction speeds, everyone can see your balances and transactions (and with KYC requirements it’s very easy to link a wallet and a coin to a person).
Monero is the only digital currency worth having.
Monero is great. Except for the fact that when the dev team dislikes what miners are doing, they introduce a new arbitrary rule, and everyone just goes with it. Having a process to introduce such changes unilaterally is a bug that needs to be fixed first.
Also, there’s a lightning network which allows you to transact bitcoin fast and cheap. Although the privacy aspect is still not solved there.
This is like saying “laws aren’t always enforced equally, so we should have no laws whatsoever”. Bitcoin is not a helpful response.
I think, whether it’s helpful is an individual decision. E.g. for people in Turkey, it’s a lot more stable than their own currency. Same logic for probably dozens of other countries…
Maybe, it’s not useful for you, but that’s OK. No one is trying to replace your currency with it and force you to use it.
Bitcoin’s “value” in USD terms has dropped ~20% in the last few days, so I’m not sure we can call it ‘stable’
