UPDATE (May 18, 2022, 17:30 UTC): Clarifies that the designer was a student at the time and that the logo proposal was a school project.
A graphic design student has proposed that his new, multi-page, shape-shifting Bitcoin logo - a representation of the dynamic nature of decentralized money - be the symbol adopted by the Bitcoin community.
The design, which was created as part of a school project, is the latest development in an ongoing debate in the digital currency community. Years after bitcoin's inception, there is still no consensus on what bitcoin's logo should look like. Many argue that the classic orange logo no longer fits the technology's goals.
The idea explained here is to represent bitcoin not as a physical object, as is the case with money today, but as something digital and therefore more malleable.
TheStudent
named J. P. Brenner explained his rationale for the design in a lengthy post on his own website. In it, he argued that Bitcoin's lack of brand identity contributes to consumer confusion about the technology.
Brenner explained,
"There is no need to portray Bitcoin as a physical gold coin as we know it today. After all, bitcoin is just as much a coin as an MP3, GIF or any other binary file," said Brenner, who developed his idea based on a heptagon, a heptagonal polygon that can take on an infinite number of shapes. He went on to say that the number seven is significant to bitcoin because it will be distributed worldwide - there are seven continents - and because the word bitcoin has seven letters.
Reactions to the proposalReactions in
theBitcoin community to Brenner's proposal were mixed
.Some, like Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO of the exchange platform Coinsetter, disagreed with the design.
Others, like Vaughn Blake, CoinMKT's head of marketing and strategy, were more positive:
"Aesthetically I'm a big fan, in a weird way the changing nature gives the image a kind of tangibility.Marshall Hayner, co-founder of Quickcoin, believes there is no better Bitcoin logo that stands out from the original:
"If the idea was to confuse, then I would call Brenner's logo a success. So far, I haven't seen a better logo than the current design." Reactions on Twitter were similarly mixed.
- Jordan Semar (@jordansemar) April 22,2014Bitcoin's current logoThe current
logo for BTC, used in stores and on point-of-sale systems around the world, has been in use for some time now. However, it turns out that the logo is not in Unicode format, which makes it difficult to translate into different fonts.
📷
It has been suggested that "Ƀ" be used for the Bitcoin symbol, as it works well as an existing Unicode symbol.
Companies such as ATM manufacturer Lamassau already use it, and it does not need to be approved by the Unicode Consortium to be accepted; it just needs consensus.
In fact, using Brenner's design as a bitcoin logo creates a problem because it is a design rather than a usable symbol in text form.
Even if a shape-shifting logo were suitable for bitcoin, the digital currency would still need some way of representing it in writing.
So what is the best logo for bitcoin in the long run?