{"id":25728,"date":"2015-11-04T01:54:50","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T01:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe79d0052697"},"modified":"2015-11-04T01:54:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T01:54:50","slug":"bitcoin-finally-gets-an-approved-unicode-character-point-1446580490","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/bitcoin-finally-gets-an-approved-unicode-character-point-1446580490","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin Finally Gets an Approved Unicode Character Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/bitcoin-finally-gets-an-approved-unicode-character-point.jpg\" title=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p>As obvious an oversight as it could be, attempting to type the bitcoin symbol via text, email, or on webpages is not the easiest thing. However, after a successful vote at the latest Unicode meeting, users will be able to easily type the character.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#Bitcoin<\/a> sign is accepted by Unicode. My second addition to Unicode, probably more useful than the group mark. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ZOoBGGMmX3\">https:\/\/t.co\/ZOoBGGMmX3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ken Shirriff (@kenshirriff) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kenshirriff\/status\/661396468796817408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">November 3, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Shirriff, who showed how one could mine for bitcoin with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y3dqhixzGVo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pencil and paper<\/a> or with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.righto.com\/2015\/05\/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old-ibm-1401.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a 55 year old mainframe<\/a>, felt that it was a huge oversight to not have the symbol part of Unicode. Since he had experience getting another symbol approved by Unicode, \u201cI figured I needed to make this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unicode.org\/L2\/L2015\/15229-bitcoin-sign.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">proposal<\/a>, he wrote, \u201cThere is substantial demand for [Bitcoin Symbol] to be added to Unicode, the user community supports adding the sign to Unicode and its addition would fill a significant gap in Unicode\u2019s currency symbols. This proposal has the support of the Bitcoin Foundation as well as other Bitcoin organizations, companies and developers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t his first time getting a new symbol added to Unicode. \u201cI have been helping restore an IBM mainframe from the 1960s and it uses a strange character set (BCDIC). When I tried to write about the computer, I discovered that one symbol (the group mark symbol) was missing from Unicode. I figured I\u2019d try to get that character added to Unicode, so I followed the steps that the power symbol people suggested, wrote up a proposal, and got the group mark symbol added to Unicode.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Shirriff explained that part of the process was showing the symbol used in \u201crunning text. \u201cPeople on reddit.com\/r\/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org were very helpful and gave me a ton of examples, everything from web pages to research papers,\u201d he said. Originally, the Bitcoin Foundation was pushing to get the symbol added to Unicode, but after a year, there had been little progress. Shirriff submitted the proposal at the beginning of the month and gained acceptance last night.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Unicode 9.0 standard will come out in June, so the Bitcoin symbol should be in that version,\u201d Shirriff said, though he cautioned that font support could take longer. Between the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bitcoinhalving.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">next bitcoin halving<\/a> and this symbol, it seems like Summer of 2016 should be a very exciting time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Jacob Donnelly is a full-time product manager and freelance journalist covering stocks, business and bitcoin. He runs a weekly digital currency and blockchain newsletter called Crypto Brief.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As obvious an oversight as it could be, attempting to type the bitcoin symbol via text, email, or on webpages is not the easiest thing. However, after a successful vote at the latest Unicode meeting, users will be able to easily type the character.&nbsp; Shirriff, who showed how one could mine for bitcoin with pencil [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3596,"featured_media":25729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[490],"class_list":["post-25728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-culture","tag-foundation"],"author_data":{"id":3596,"name":"Jacob Donnelly","nicename":"jacob-donnelly","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/bitcoin-schmitcoin-promo-image-2-96x96.png"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/bitcoin-finally-gets-an-approved-unicode-character-point.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}