Exhibit no. 20BF
The Bitcoin Sign ₿
A B with two short strokes. It began as the coin icon of the Bitcoin client in 2010, and in June 2017 Unicode 10.0 made it a character of its own: U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN. Every modern system can now type it.
35bGPnLzJjSLJXuewgYNsBf99X35QtocLHAJNjtYNBTC- Code point
- U+20BF
- Character name
- BITCOIN SIGN
- Encoded in
- Unicode 10.0 · 2017-06
- Unicode block
- Currency Symbols, U+20A0–20CF
- General category
- Sc · Symbol, currency
Drawn just now by your own device
Left: the glyph on its guides, redrawn for this hall. Right: the same character rendered by the fonts on your screen. That it shows up at all is what being encoded means.
Drawn by
Satoshi Nakamoto, February 2010, as the client's coin icon
Proposed by
Ken Shirriff, October 2015, with the backing of the Bitcoin community
Encoded
Unicode 10.0, June 2017, right after the Georgian lari ₾
How the B got its strokes
2009
A gold coin marked BC
The first Bitcoin client ships with a coin icon. No sign yet, just two letters.
Feb 24, 2010
Satoshi draws the strokes
Satoshi Nakamoto redraws the icon. The coin now carries a B with two short vertical strokes.
Nov 1, 2010
It turns orange
Forum user bitboy sets the sign on an orange disc, tilts it, and gives the art to the public domain. The orange is #F7931A.
Oct 2, 2015
The proposal
Ken Shirriff submits a proposal to add a bitcoin sign to Unicode, backed by Bitcoin organizations and developers.
Nov 2015
Accepted
The Unicode Technical Committee accepts U+20BF BITCOIN SIGN for a future version.
Jun 2017
A real character
Unicode 10.0 is released with ₿ in it. Fonts and operating systems follow, and the sign becomes plain text.
Not ฿. Not Ƀ.
Before 2017 there was no bitcoin sign to type, so people borrowed. Three letters, three different marks.
U+20BF
BITCOIN SIGN
Two short strokes, above and below. Never through the letter.
U+0E3F
THAI CURRENCY SYMBOL BAHT
One stroke straight through. The usual stand-in before 2017.
U+0243
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B WITH STROKE
A horizontal bar across the stem. Another early stand-in.
Its neighbours
The Currency Symbols block, U+20A0 onward. Thirty-two signs from U+20A0, the euro-currency sign, to U+20BF. Hover to read their names.
Right after the Georgian lari ₾. Proposed in 2015, shipped in Unicode 10.0 in 2017. The Kyrgyz som sign came next, in 2021.
Write it anywhere
- Character
₿- HTML
₿- HTML, decimal
₿- CSS content
\20BF- JavaScript
\u20BF- Python
\N{BITCOIN SIGN}- UTF-8 bytes
E2 82 BF- UTF-16
20BF
- macOS
- Control + Command + Space, then search “bitcoin”
- Windows, in Word
- Type 20BF, then press Alt + X
- Linux (GTK, IBus)
- Ctrl + Shift + U, then 20BF, then Enter
The coin
$U+20BF
₿ started as a client icon, turned orange on a forum, and became a code point in 2017. $U+20BF is a meme coin for the character itself. No roadmap and no promises: a sign, and the people who type it.
35bGPnLzJjSLJXuewgYNsBf99X35QtocLHAJNjtYNBTC