I've been going with XBC but someone recently pointed out that EUR is used for the Euro and it's not a country either so it should be possible for ISO to accept BTC as standard symbol for Bitcoin on the same basis. Using BTC would be optimal but after that I kind of lean towards XTC as an homage to the drug trade.
I like XTC too. Very clever
The currency EUR does conform to the ISO country standards as "EU" has been reserved for the European Union, of which the euro is meant to be used by all member countries, even though, so far, half have transitioned to it.
I have experience dealing with standards authorities directly, and I know how they think, and they will never accept BTC as an official code because it would break their own standards to do so. However, BTC is fine for unofficial public use, just as US$ and CA$ are commonly seen. But these codes are not found in any significant financial/FX system. It is theoretically possible to get XBC, but that is an uphill battle as there are many computer systems with bond transactions denominated already in XBC, and confusion would occur if it was re-assigned.
There is one thing that markets are bad at, and that is defining standards. Standards
underpin successful markets, just as mathematics underpins physics. Having standards makes markets work efficiently as everyone is exchanging fairly, price discovery works best.
An ISO currency code for Bitcoin will greatly help cement its future as a rival for fiat.
