Over the last few days, cryptocurrency advocates have been discussing the Sat Symbol initiative, a goal that aims to get a specifically designed symbol to represent the smallest unit of bitcoin and also get the symbol widely adopted. The Sat Symbol has been promoted by a number of crypto luminaries but others have offered alternative ideas.
Initiative Attempts to Tie Symbol to Bitcoin’s Smallest Unit
Most people know that Satoshi Nakamoto is the inventor of the Bitcoin protocol, the “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” that was launched on January 3, 2009. The word Satoshi has Japanese roots and the name translates into definitions such as ‘quick-witted,’ ‘clear thinking’, and ‘wise.’
Furthermore, the popular anime Pokémon’s lead human character Ash Ketchum’s name is “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 bitcoin’s smallest unit, has been adopted far and wide by the crypto community at large. 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 by up to eight decimal points. Each bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis and the protocol has a supply cap of roughly 21 million bitcoin. Now there’s an initiative that is attempting to get a symbol for bitcoin’s smallest unit adopted by the community at large.
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 “B” bitcoin symbol and how it relates to the satoshi design concept in animated 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 Re-Ignites
On Thursday evening around 7 p.m. (EST), the term “satoshi” was trending with a large quantity of trending tweets sharing the Sat Symbol initiative’s design. Microstrategy’s Michael Saylor shared the web domain on Twitter and said: “May satoshi be with you.”
The crypto pundit and self-proclaimed “bitcoin maximalist” Max Keiser decided to share an alternative idea that 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.
We all have the true satoshi symbol embedded in our minds. This was a prophecy. pic.twitter.com/mGo3NAD4Cp
— MancHODL ⚡️ ∞/21M (@MancHODL) October 7, 2021
Others shared the old-school S symbol (“Cool S,” also known as the “Stussy S,” or “Super S”) all the cool kids used to draw back in the day. Bitcoin proponent Dennis Porter said he agreed with Keiser’s idea. “I agree with Max Keiser on the satoshi symbol. This is 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. This symbol is better,” while sharing a screenshot of the Sat Symbol initiative picture.
A number of others tweeted about the Sat Symbol initiative on Thursday evening. The idea to call the smallest unit of bitcoin satoshi was conceived back in 2010 when an individual dubbed “Ribuck” proposed that one-hundredth of a bitcoin should be called satoshi to honor the protocol’s inventor.
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 tether a symbol to the term has been tried on many occasions but every one so far has ultimately failed. In July 2019, Square Crypto initiated 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.
What do you think about the Sat Symbol initiative and the many attempts to get a symbol tied to bitcoin’s smallest unit? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
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