Topic: The Thai Baht (฿) has always been the most frequently used Bitcoin symbol right? - page 5. (Read 30424 times)

When I copy the image into Emacs it just shows up as a B, webfonts and this forum's CSS only work where that additional configuration is set.

Yep.  I want it in my text files, my (plain text) email, my ODF docs and everywhere else.  I also don't want it broken by a GPG clear signature.

I'm betting in 5 years it'll still be broken for about half of folks...

It isn't showing up for me on my computer or phone either.

Absolutely agree.


Exactly, so many currency symbols are reused around the world that the arguments against using the baht symbol are basically along the lines of "we wish we had our own recognisable currency symbol."

Such problems are irrelevant. I'm not suggesting changing anything.

No, I only use UTF-8.

Yep, in fact I'm pretty sure these forums use UTF-8 only.

Edit: Actually, looking at the source, I see the forum is choosing ISO-8859-1 encoding, which doesn't work with Unicode at all. This is likely the reason why many people are having technical problems.

Yep, just pulled it up on a Mac I have lying around and it rendered fine in Lion/Safari.

The $ symbol also is used in several countries that use a Peso variant as well.

How many times do you need to see posts from others saying (and even showing) that it isn't displaying for the majority of people as it does for you?

Are you using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8?

Have you successfully rendered this symbol on a system using UTF-8?

Have you viewed this symbol on any system other than your own?

I'm guessing your answers will be: infinity, yes, no and no, respectively.

Depends on how long "most people" use broken stuff. It works in all the software I run, at least, excepting only Links.

How long until implementations work for most people? 1 year, 5 years, a decade?

If they don't, it's a bug.

B⃦ is standard UTF-8, it is not UTF-16.

I'm not addressing whether baht is an acceptable replacement or not; just the reality that it isn't the current standard BTC symbol.

Which is fine if everything you do is on the web, but not everything is and it should not have to be.

See, this is exactly the problem of selecting a UTF-16 symbol over a UTF-8 symbol.  If you're going to select a standard then go for the widest implementation of Unicode, which means UTF-8 and not UTF-16.

Except not every implementation of Unicode displays whatever symbol that is.

In Firefox 15 on OS X Leopard I see the letter B followed by "20E6" for a Unicode symbol that won't display (Combining Double Vertical Stroke Overlay).  In Emacs I see B followed by a different symbol (Both Firefox and Emacs are configured to use UTF-8 on my system).

The problem is that you've opted for a UTF-16 character instead of a UTF-8 character.  UTF-8 is far more common and accessible.  This is why, like shamoons, I argued in favour of using the Thai Baht symbol last year.

The only argument against using ฿ is that it is used for THB aleady.  On the other hand $ is already used for USD, CAD, AUD and NZD.  While ¥ is used for Yen and Yuan.  Currencies sharing symbols is nothing new, that's why we have three letter codes for them as well.

Once again, I don't see any problem with using the baht symbol for Bitcoin and it has the added advantage of displaying correctly on a wide range of systems.

This was debated in detail last year and my post in that thread (which included a couple of other suggestions in addition the the baht) is here.  My opinion in my first paragraph hasn't changed:  I think that the symbol ought to be an existing UTF-8 symbol so that it can be readily used on most systems or browsers and not require additional fonts to be installed.

BTW, there's a poll in that thread from last year which was resoundingly in favour of using the baht symbol.

It renders correctly on my laptop...

Ligatures would, and they would fix the copying problem too (hint, hint).

I'm not against Ƀ neither. It's my preference. I'm just saying that even the $ sign would be fine with me if the majority here wishes to use it. I just don't like to not have an agreement that I can push on Wikipedia or other pages. I'm pretty sure that a consensus would rule out …


… custom solutions and symbols that just render badly on 50% of all computers.

I like it too, and about the criticism that it looks almost like the number 8, maybe serifs should be added, like:

People in Thailand already use BTC.

I'm not talking about countries getting into legal trouble... how does that even work? I mean "OMG you scammer, I obviously meant Nicaraguan córdoba!". Imagine people in Thailand start using BTC!

We're not damned imposters of anything else. There's no reason to use that other than it looking "familiar", which I also find wrong for Bitcoin. It's a stupid choice, and it doesn't need a great analyst to see that.



Ƀ really doesn't look like a bad choice. I never liked the color scheme people advertise with it, but the symbol seems perfect.