this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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35 crypto companies got together to make a change dot org petition called "Bitcoin Deserves an Emoji".

F that

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I wouldn't think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?

It's still the name of a specific product/service. The issue is partly trademark/copyright, but also partly a matter of neutrality. The Unicode Consortium want to ensure that they're not directly or indirectly endorsing any specific products. If they added a Bitcoin logo, then you'd see every other crypto lining up to get their logos permanently installed on every person's devices, too. Free advertising for life on 99.99% of phones would be hard to pass up.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean, we have a symbol for effectively any currency that anyone can or wants to fill out the paperwork for and can demonstrate the basics of "this is a meaningful symbol with more than transient relevance".

They added ₿ in 2016.

https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Sc

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So, if there's already a symbol in Unicode, the petition doesn't make any sense. They should ask Google and Apple to display the symbol in the emoji list, with a control character to force it as emoji.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Totally. It's double weird, because it's not a petitionable issue, it's a form where you make your case and a committee decides, and they already have the symbol and they just seem to want it to be usable like 💲, which isn't a thing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Surely the Tokyo tower is a specific product then? 🗼It costs money to visit, aren't the other towers jealous?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago

It's a specific type of thing, but it's not a brand. Nobody owns the trademark for Bitcoin. Anyone can buy, sell, or mine Bitcoin. It's no more a specific product than dollars are a specific product.

If they added a Bitcoin logo, then you'd see every other crypto lining up to get their logos permanently installed on every person's devices, too.

Is there a problem with that? This isn't "advertising", these are unicode symbols. There are unicode symbols for all kinds of things. Every currency has unicode symbols, why not cryptocurrencies?