Unicode Consortium Adds Official Bitcoin “B” Symbol

On June 20 the Unicode Consortium revealed new version 10.0. They finally added the bitcoin symbol to their code. Now users can type the “B” symbol with their keyboards. The updated version has 8,518 new characters, with a total of 136,690. The Unicode site also mentions they have new scrips and emoji characters. 

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The site reads, “Unicode 10.0 adds 8,518 characters, for a total of 136,690 characters. These additions include 4 new scripts, for a total of 139 scripts, as well as 56 new emoji characters.”

On the Unicode page, the website had bitcoin under a special section that read “important symbol additions.”

Bitcoin Unicode Symbol was Years in the Making

People have trying to get the bitcoin symbol added to Unicode for years. Back in 2011, Sander Van Galoven attempted to get the bitcoin symbol accepted into the Unicode standard, but he proposition was rejected. More recently, in October 2015, Ken Shirriff submitted the classic “B” symbol with the two lines running through it. That is when the symbol was officially accepted.

Kevin Helms writing for bitcoin.com covered this when it was announced: “Bitcoiner Ken Shirriff submitted the classic B symbol with two vertical lines through it as the Unicode symbol for the bitcoin currency and was told that it had been accepted. One month to the day after his submission, Adobe employee and Unicode representative Ken Lunde tweeted that Shirriff’s application had been accepted”

U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN was just accepted at #UTC145, to be included in a future version of the standard ? https://t.co/B9hWLds9HK @kenshirriff

— Ken Lunde (???) (@ken_lunde) November 3, 2015

Even though the symbol was accepted, it was not in the 2016 code update. Some have been using the Thai baht ‘?’ symbol, others the ? symbol. Soon they should be able to use an official bitcoin symbol when providing descriptions of bitcoin prices online.

Are you excited about being able to use a legitimate bitcoin Unicode symbol? Share your thoughts below!

Images courtesy of zastavki.com and Wikipedia

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