Unicode 10 Drops with a Bitcoin Currency Symbol

 The Unicode Consortium has released version 10.0.0  which introduces  Unicode 10 introduces 56 new emoji, 8,518 characters, and four new scripts. One of which is the bitcoin currency symbol now available as a standard character.

Over the years there have been many arguments, ideas, and websites dedicated to pushing an official version. The two most prominent being the current standard most of us are familiar with or the lower lined B, while many people also use the Thai currency symbol due to the previous absence of a bitcoin symbol.

The prevailing symbol is now Unicode U+20BF, , as of June 20th, 2017.

According to Unicode, Inc. bitcoin's symbol was an "important" addition as stated in the press release regarding the new version. The coding can be found on page 2 of the U020A specifications (see below).

The effort was lead by Ken Shirrif and submitted way back in October of 2015 and gained approval in November of that same year, however, it's taken over a year and a half to come to fruition of the much anticipated symbol.

Obviously most folks will continue to see symbols such as ▯ or � until software systems and operating systems release support for Unicode 10.0 but considering the majority of the major players in that space are part of the Unicode Consortium, that should take to long. Members include Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Symantec to name a few.  

So get the bitcoin text and twitter messages ready, but you'll still have to cut and paste or use keyboard combinations since a bitcoin "key" is unlikely for hardware any time soon.

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Article by dinbits

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