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Comment by cturner | Hacker News Reader

I don't see a strong need for special symbols for currencies. Currencies can be represented using three letter codes like GBP, USD and BTC. It's ASCII, unambiguous and scales better than having a new custom symbol per character.

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About that: note that in the ISO standard for those 3 letter currency codes, the first two letters represent the country or union that issues the currency. For instance, there will not be another GB* currency that is not british. And BT* correspond to Bhutan, IIRC. So BTC is problematic.

That's as arbitrary as the idea that only a nation-state can support a currency.

Arbitrary or not it's a standard that's worth following. Maybe there should be a prefix for country-less currencies.

XXB maybe?

That prefix already exists, it's a single X. For example, gold is XAU.

XBC is already used for "European Unit of Account 9". XBI, XBO, XBT and XBN are available.

http://www.currency-iso.org/dam/downloads/dl_iso_table_a1.xm...

The ISO 4217 currency codes [1] look pretty arbitrary too. For example, why is the Afghan afghani "AFN" instead of "AFA", or the Japanese yen "JPY" instead of "JAY"?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217#Active_codes

It's JPY because the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 2-letter country code for Japan is JP. Similarly, it is GBP because the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 2-letter country code for the United Kingdom is GB, not UK. ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 is used everywhere, for example on the web for ccTLDs (although the UK is an exception, since it has GB allocated, but for backwards-compatibility with another network, it also got UK, and now disallows registrations on GB).

The Afghani is another case of revaluation. It was AFA before 2003.

So then Bitcoin should adopt ‘EAB’ (Earth Bitcoin)? Or ‘WOB’ (World Bitcoin)? That'd be fun, a Bitcoin penny could be called an Erby or Wobby (that's about USD 0.90 right now).

I'd suggest IAB for International Bitcoin, but it already has meaning in 'Internal Affairs Bureau' ...

I think you'll find that EVERY three letter acronym already stands for something or other. Don't let that deter you.

I believe X is used for non-state stuff. For example, an ounce of gold is XAU, and silver is XAG. So maybe XBC or XBT for bitcoin?

Where does euro fit in?

It's "EU" (3166-1 value) + "R" (currency identifier):

For practical reasons, the ISO 3166/MA has "reserved the two-letter combination EU for the purpose of identifying the European Union within the framework of ISO 3166-1".

Bitcoin could use XXB or XBT. (XBC is already taken for some EU bond market units.)

Yeah, which is kind of weird when a country revalues their currency. For instance, Mexican Peso was the obvious MXP, then it was revalued so they needed something new, so it's MXN (Mexican Nuevo Peso, I guess). Similarly, Turkish Lyra went from TRL to TRY ("Y" for "Yeni" meaning New.)

Where's the "Upvote with half my karma" button when you need it?

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