Over the past few days, cryptocurrency advocates have discussed the Sat Symbol initiative, a goal that aims to obtain a symbol specifically designed to represent the smallest unit of bitcoin and have the symbol widely adopted. The Sat Symbol has been promoted by a number of crypto luminaries but others have offered alternative ideas.
Initiative tries to link the symbol to the smallest unit of Bitcoin
Most people know that Satoshi Nakamoto is the inventor of the Bitcoin protocol, the “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic money” which was released on January 3, 2009. The word Satoshi has Japanese roots and the name translates into definitions such as ‘quick-witted,’ ‘clear thinking’, and ‘wise.’
Additionally, the main human character from the popular Pokémon anime, Ash Ketchum, is called “Satoshi” in Japanese. While the name was used by Bitcoin’s inventor, the term “satoshi” (lowercase) is also the smallest unit of bitcoin.
The term satoshi, when referring to the smallest unit of bitcoin, has been widely adopted by the crypto community as a whole. Around two years ago in mid-October 2019, Oxford University Press published its quarterly report explaining the word satoshi was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) database.
The cryptocurrency bitcoin is divisible up to eight decimal places. Each bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis and the protocol has a supply cap of roughly 21 million bitcoin. There is now an initiative that attempts to obtain a symbol for the smallest unit of bitcoin adopted by the community as a whole.
The web portal called satsymbol.com showcases the idea as three parallel horizontal lines and there’s a small vertical line above and below the stack of horizontal lines. The website shows the orange bitcoin symbol “B” and its connection to the satoshi design concept in a lively fashion.
“Support the bitcoin design initiative to make this the official satoshi symbol – open, free, and unrestricted as Satoshi would have wanted – please share if you agree,” the satsymbol.com website details.
Satoshi symbol discussion reignites
Thursday night around 7:00 p.m. EST, the term “satoshi” was tendency with a large number of trending tweets sharing the design of the Sat Symbol initiative. Microstrategy’s Michael Saylor shared the web domain on Twitter and said: “May satoshi be with you.”
Crypto specialist and self-proclaimed “bitcoin maximalist” Max Keizer has decided to share an alternative idea which could represent the satoshi symbol. “Symbol for satoshi should be a tilde. It looks enough like the sign for infinity – and it’s on every keyboard. ~ 1,000,000 = 1 million sats,” Keiser added.
Others share the old-school S symbol (“Cool S” also known as “Stussy S” or “Super S”) that all cool kids used to draw back then. Bitcoin proponent Dennis Porter said he agreed with Keiser’s idea. “I agree with Max Keiser on the satoshi symbol. It’s on every keyboard, which will make it backward compatible, ”Porter wrote.
However, another person disagreed with Keiser’s take on the symbol and one person replied to Porter and said: “Max isn’t often wrong. He’s wrong on this one. He’s wrong on this one. This symbol is better, ”while sharing a screenshot of the image from the Sat Symbol initiative.
A number of others tweeted about the Sat Symbol initiative on Thursday evening. The idea of calling the smallest unit of bitcoin satoshi was conceived in 2010 when an individual nicknamed “Ribuck” proposed that a hundredth of a bitcoin be called satoshi to honor the inventor of the protocol.
Ribuck’s idea has stuck around and most people use the term satoshi to represent the smallest unit of bitcoin but as far as the symbol goes, a widely adopted idea may not come to fruition.
The attempt To attach a symbol to the term has been tried several times, but so far all have failed in the end. In July 2019, Square Crypto started a trend on Twitter when it asked people to share designs that could represent the smallest increment of bitcoin. One person told Square that he designed a fairly popular idea that had gained some traction.
