An influential industry website/group is endeavouring to give Bitcoin a more recognisable symbol, after they agreed that the current symbol B⃦ doesn’t provide the benefits that the new symbol would, for a variety of reasons, not least because it’s not even an official Unicode symbol.

Hence, the new Bitcoin symbol that’s been suggested?

Join the iFX EXPO Asia and discover your gateway to the Asian Markets

Ƀ

Unfortunately, the current symbol for Bitcoin, B⃦ is currently not recognised by the Unicode Consortium, the authority who are in responsible for creating and establishing symbol standards.

This is in contrast to the new symbol, Ƀ, suggested by the group, since it’s actually already a Unicode symbol with the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organisation, describing it pretty much as exactly as we see it, a “Latin capital B with stroke”, possessing the hexadecimal Alt code as: Alt+0243.

Although, on Windows platforms, it’s slightly different, e.g. when using Microsoft Office – you would just type:

0243

And then press the Alt and X keys together – and voila, the Ƀ symbol appears (that’s exactly how I’m producing the symbol right now).

Consequently, by using the symbol Ƀ, it immediately gives Bitcoin a valid inroad into being employed by all forms of media, such as print and online. In addition, this would open the door for a huge variety of fonts and formats to be applied to the character Ƀ.

If the use of Ƀ ever becomes official, in the future we could see the new symbol appear across computer keyboards.