‘Crypto-Twitter’ really wants a Satoshi symbol — but nobody can agree on one

The Bitcoin currency symbol or glyph (฿) has been around for a while now. It was first used by Nakamoto in an early release of the Bitcoin client. Apple even added it to the iOS12 keyboard last year. But the community is yet to decide on a symbol for smaller denominations of Bitcoin, otherwise known as Satoshis.

The community has been discussing the need for a “Satoshi” symbol for some time. Twitter user BitFicus has been campaigning for one symbol for over a year. Five months ago, they compiled their idea into a bundle of assets and published a GitHub repository for a Satoshi symbol .

Earlier this week, the conversation was given another kick up the backside after the head of operations at Lightning Network development house, Lightning Labs, Desiree Dickerson, asked if we can “crowdsource a symbol for the Satoshi?”

But before we get to potential symbols for the Satoshi, let’s take a look at what a Satoshi even is.

What is a Satoshi?

The Satoshi, in case you were wondering, is another way of expressing an amount of Bitcoin. There are 100,000,000 Satoshis (or Sats for short) to one Bitcoin. Satoshis are useful when you want to send a small amount of Bitcoin to someone. For example, Sending 100 Sats, to someone is a bit easier to comprehend compared to 0.000001 Bitcoin.

Counting in Sats actually feels like you own something. But that’s almost certainly a psychological thing, programmed into my brain after years of seeing decimals as just fractions of a whole.

Sats are generally used for small transactions. Bitcoin and Lightning Network developer Guillaume Verbal uses Sat payments in many of the apps he creates. For example, in his Lightning Connect Four app , players each stake 100 Sats (0.000001 Bitcoin or $0.0095), and the winner takes all.

More fuel for the fire

A retweet from Square – the payment app headed by Twitter founder and Bitcoin lover Jack Dorsey – showed support for the idea. After which, people started sharing their suggestions. At the time of writing, the tweet had received nearly 90 replies.

One tweeter proposed the idea of combining the dollar sign and the @ symbol, to create an appropriate hybrid. As it turns out they already have a GitHub repository supporting this symbol, and have been campaigning for its adoption since last year.

Other users jokingly suggested that the community didn’t need to come up with a symbol, because one already exists, the $ sign. The joke goes that dollars will soon be redundant and the cryptocurrency community will be able to adopt the symbol for Sats.

While that’s equal parts fun and terrifying to think about, there were other more realistic ideas submitted. A small group of submissions focused on the fact that Bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places, and built the logo around variations on the number eight.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what the community decides or whether a decision is ever made. Perhaps developers like Verbal and Lightning Labs should just pick their favorite and stick with it, and force the market to adopt whichever symbol they prefer.

The community has been debating this for long enough, and still hasn’t agreed on one. It might need a more forceful hand to make it a reality.

As the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, though, Satoshis will become more relevant. If Bitcoin is more widely adopted as payment for normal things such as bread, or milk, how would you rather think about it?

Would you rather think of a loaf of bread as costing 0.00016 Bitcoin or 16,000 Sats? If it’s the latter, we should probably have a symbol for it… and soon.

H/T – Cryptoslate

Update, August 1, 2019, 1252UTC: Corrected typo

Moonday Mornings: North Korea denies earning $2B by hacking cryptocurrency exchanges and banks

If you’re reading this, that means we successfully lured you into clicking our Bitcoin-related headline. Sucked in.

What it really means, though, is that you and I have now entered into a (rather loose) social contract. It demands you are provided with enough interesting cryptocurrency tidbits so that you don’t complain to us on Twitter about being baited into reading another shitty blockchain article.

Let’s see if we hold up our end of the bargain.

1. Manny Pacquaio, the renowned Filipino boxing champion, launched his own cryptocurrency at a free concert in Manila on Sunday, Reuters reports. The use-cases for his PAC token, however unnecessary, will be buying merchandise and interacting with Pacquaio on social media. So lame.

2. North Korea has denied allegations that it earned $2 billion via hacking cryptocurrency exchanges and the like, The Korea Times reports. “The United States and other hostile forces are now spreading ill-hearted rumors,” said local (state-run) news agency KCNA. “Such a fabrication by the hostile forces is nothing but a sort of a nasty game aimed at tarnishing the image of our Republic and finding justification for sanctions and pressure campaign against the DPRK.”

3. According to ABI Research published Aug 28, the total global revenue generated by blockchain tech is on track to hit $10 billion by 2023— despite 2018’s cold as fuck ‘crypto winter.’ Venture capitalists have been a positive influence, with ABI detecting 620 funding rounds totalling $3.1 billion last year.

4. In India, the supposed ringleader of a Bitcoin scam that generated Rs 485-crore ($67.4 million) in ill-gotten gains has been murdered, with his body dumped by five men at the emergency ward of a nearby private hospital. The Times of India reports that since then, those five men have been arrested. The accused were reportedly in on the scam, and local police are hunting for five more associates.

5. Electric Coin Co., the blockchain startup behind budding alternative cryptocurrency Zcash, has revealed it operated at a loss during the first quarter of this year, CoinDesk reports . The for-profit company posted an average monthly deficit of 30 percent in those months, taking in $449,000 while simultaneously spending $635,000 per month.

How did we do? Not that it matters, we’re going to do this again next week, whether you rated it or not.