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Voting on the Sats symbol
16 sats \ 16 comments \ @itsybitsybtc 5 Dec 2022 bitcoin
Bitcoin has an established currency symbol, but Sats does not.
I argue that this is as important as the Bitcoin logo itself. Bitcoin is for everyone, but the world will be spending sats. Prices will be listed in sats, people will transact in sats, almost all of daily life will be a flow of sats, rappers will use sats in verses.
So far I have only seen two solid proposals put forward, and both can be seen and discussed in this article from over a year ago: https://news.bitcoin.com/sat-symbol-initiative-attempts-to-get-satoshi-design-widely-adopted-by-bitcoin-community/
Let’s vote on it, and if there is a clear winner we should drive an initiative to establish a unicode character and permanently brand this critical piece of symbolism.
I’ve looked and nothing else serious has been put forth, and these two options are strong.
  1. https://satsymbol.com/
  2. S+@ symbol: https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/signgyyyyd.jpg
Please vote, and I would also be interested in hearing why people made their choice.
1. Three line sats symbol.81.8%
2. S + symbol.18.2%
11 votes \ poll ended
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590 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b 5 Dec 2022
I'm a ⚡️ (lightning bolt) maxi.
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494 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsybitsybtc OP 6 Dec 2022
After giving it some thought I think I’ve come around on the lightning bolt. It looks like an s, and electricity is decidedly more cyberpunk and badass than any other option.
When I created the poll I didn’t know people used the lightning bolt for Sats I thought it meant distinctly LN, but it can do both.
Wish I could update my poll. Also the tip icons on this site should go the same direction as the ⚡️emoji.
The stacked symbol is still great and a close second for me but lightning bolt works well and already has shades of adoption.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @itsybitsybtc OP 5 Dec 2022
imo this is like using a highway icon to represent car.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 5 Dec 2022
Using the other symbols is like using a kabob and an s in a circle to represent a car. I'd rather have a highway icon represent a car rather than a meat treat.
They are all symbols. Symbols are inherently subject to interpretation.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @itsybitsybtc OP 5 Dec 2022
Symbols also have to be employable around the world and be immediately context recognizable. Lightning bolt is already established iconography; for lightning. It is used in signage to warn about storms and dangerous situations. Lightning bolts also get drawn in different ways by different people. There might not be an Emoji keyboard available every time someone wants to denote something in sats.
You might see a kabob, but that isn't how branding works. With global adoption, people will only see Sats no matter what their first impressions are.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 5 Dec 2022
You are applying a double standard though.
"You might see a kabob, but that isn't how branding works." -> "You might see a warning about storms, but that isn't how branding works."
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsybitsybtc OP 5 Dec 2022
What I am saying is that your impression of the symbol looking like a kabob will change. Much like your first impression of a lot of things have likely changed over time, or as you got used to it. And not everyone will see a kabob. I certainly didn't. But everyone who sees a lightning sees lightning.
A lightning bolt has an established visual context. Sats would simply be sharing that, instead of having something for itself. It is never going to be purely Sats, it will always be Sats and Lightning. Sats can and should have its own symbol.
And for that matter, suggesting the lightning bolt is only because of the Lightning Network. Sats exist off the LN and can still be sent off the LN. I believe Sats can and should have its own symbol.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsybitsybtc OP 5 Dec 2022
Well, apparently I can't vote in my own Poll, but if I could my vote is for 1.
My background is in branding and design. I’ve helped establish and maintain global corporate identity systems, and I think the Sats Symbol meets every important piece of criteria to achieve world wide adoption and usage.
  1. It is distinct from every other currency symbol and yet it looks like a currency symbol.
  2. It can scale well to any size large or small.
  3. It requires the bare minimum to reproduce.
  4. It looks digital. Pure, straight lines.
  5. It is derived directly from the Bitcoin symbol, as a sat is still part of Bitcoin.
While I think Option 2 is clever, and could also work, there are a few things going against it.
  1. It is too derivative of an existing symbol. Why have it resemble the @ symbol at all. Bitcoin is a new thing, it should have a new visual language.
  2. It does not have great scalability. At very small sizes it will be hard to distinguish between the @ and this proposal. Very large will look oddly proportioned.
  3. It doesn’t reproduce very well. Consider drawing the 2 symbols for a road side stand in Cambodia. Which is going to be easier to marker, and read from the road?
  4. The S with the lines is derived from the $. It is basically $+@. Why do we want any visual heritage from that absolute shitcoin in a brand new symbol in the Bitcoin design language. It also makes it feel more US centric. Bitcoin is for everyone.
I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t move forward adopting the 3 line sats symbol. It should be a unicode character, it should be in phone keyboard layouts, it should sitting right next to the Sats amount in this very website.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @NorthKoreanHostage 5 Dec 2022
You don't vote for kings.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Brunswick 7 Dec 2022
I think the $ symbol is sufficient to represent sats.
#88784
105 sats \ 1 replies \ @Brunswick 3 Nov The dollar sign actually is used for allot of different currencies. Since the sat will eventually reach a dollar, one could use b$ for sats. For example $1 = b$4948 Eventually the b will be dropped. The line through the S, some say, represents the pillars of Hercules
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @timechain 6 Dec 2022
I like either the lightning bolt, or the "section symbol": § Lolli still uses that one, I believe.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @guyfawkes 5 Dec 2022
'satoshi' should be obsoleted and replaced with 'bitcoin'. Anything to the left of the decimal point is just a multiple of the bitcoin unit.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @itsybitsybtc OP 5 Dec 2022
First of all, that sounds miserable to read. How are prices written? A coffee is going to cost 35k sats, not 0.00035 btc. Tips are 500 sats. 0.000005 btc looks ridiculous.
But it doesn't even matter because it's too late. Sats are already adopted into the lexicon. No one is going to stop using that. We are already using it on this site itself. Every single post would be labeled .0000001 (I had to count, this already sucks) which also makes this notion really shitty UI.
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @guyfawkes 6 Dec 2022
Maybe I didn't word the idea properly. Using your examples, a coffee will cost 35k bitcoin. Tips will be 500 bitcoin. Anything to the left of the decimal point is just multiples of one hundred million bitcoin.
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @itsybitsybtc OP 6 Dec 2022
Thanks for clarifying, that makes more sense. I still don't think this will happen, nor is it effective UX for bitcoin. Ultimately, if someone says "500 bitcoin", that already means something else and it happens to mean something incredibly important. Sats already has wide spread adoption, and there's no way I see it changing.
That said, had Bitcoin started off the way you're suggesting, I think it probably would have stuck. Just too late now.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @guyfawkes 6 Dec 2022
Having Bitcoin on the brain for so long, I agree, but I onboarded a mate the other week, and explaining bitcoin vs satoshi was just one more road block I had to overcome in order to have him secure financial independence. Explaining that 100 million satoshis is equal to 1 bitcoin is a mental exercise noobies can do without. And when you imagine just 3 epochs from now, when the reward is under 100 million bitcoin (😉), an infinitesimal minority will be referring to more than 100 million units. If we can use trillions for dollars, we should have no issue with trillions for bitcoin. The pebble has been thrown into the pond, let's see where the ripples take us.
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