this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
718 points (87.3% liked)

Technology

59646 readers
2680 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

35 crypto companies got together to make a change dot org petition called "Bitcoin Deserves an Emoji".

F that

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 222 points 3 months ago (7 children)

I don't mind there being an emoji for cryptocurrency. It's a relevant thing in modern society whether we like it or not, so there's no reason it should be excluded. But just not Bitcoin, specifically. Even though Bitcoin is the one that kicked off crypto, it's still a brand name, which would result in auto-rejection according to the Unicode Consortium's guidelines.

If there was a more general-purpose icon/symbol that could represent cryptocurrency in general, that'd be more appropriate. But it can't be Bitcoin.

[–] [email protected] 111 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They already have that, πŸ’©

[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Its a coin emoji, but its one of those emoji that get rendered wildly different depending on which device (and software version) you’re viewing it on

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Wait it is a coin! What the what!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Hah, poop coin! For me it's like realistic moon without face, just like Samsung quality moon photo.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (1 children)

an emoji for cryptocurrency

πŸ’©πŸͺ™

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I mean it has its issues but a non regulated currency not controlled by a government is cool imo

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Its supposed benefits are vastly overshadowed by their only practical application: allowing online crime to flourish.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Criminals use what works. So therefore that means that crypto actually does its job as a real currency that cannot be controlled. Criminals also have a habit of using auto mobiles, guns, computers, shoes, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If criminals only used cars from brand X and nobody else used brand X, it would be viewed the same.

There are plenty of currencies out there, which normal people use. Cryptocurrencies are mainly used by criminals though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Chain analysis companies whose whole reason for existing is selling exchanges and governments software to track illicit cryptocurrency transactions show that less than 1% of transactions are illicit in nature. So I don't know how that means the majority of crypto is used for illicit finance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Had to go out and find a source myself.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/Europol%20Spotlight%20-%20Cryptocurrencies%20-%20Tracing%20the%20evolution%20of%20criminal%20finances.pdf

Private companies say less than 1%. Academia says around 20%. That's a huge difference to only cite one side of the story.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

That's a good point. It's pretty safe to assume that private companies would want to downplay it as much as possible and academia for governments and shit would want to play it up as much as possible. So the real number probably truly lies somewhere in between those two.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Β―\_(ツ)_/Β― drug users gotta get their drugs

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

The main issue is that it tries to fix government trust issues with private actors trust issues. It's still trust issues

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I wouldn't think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?

Either way there isn't a generic symbol for cryptocurrency. This emoji will go the way of the save icon, where in a couple generations most people will have no idea what it relates to, but know that it's a symbol for cryptos.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I wouldn't think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?

It's still the name of a specific product/service. The issue is partly trademark/copyright, but also partly a matter of neutrality. The Unicode Consortium want to ensure that they're not directly or indirectly endorsing any specific products. If they added a Bitcoin logo, then you'd see every other crypto lining up to get their logos permanently installed on every person's devices, too. Free advertising for life on 99.99% of phones would be hard to pass up.

[–] ricecake 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean, we have a symbol for effectively any currency that anyone can or wants to fill out the paperwork for and can demonstrate the basics of "this is a meaningful symbol with more than transient relevance".

They added β‚Ώ in 2016.

https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Sc

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So, if there's already a symbol in Unicode, the petition doesn't make any sense. They should ask Google and Apple to display the symbol in the emoji list, with a control character to force it as emoji.

[–] ricecake 4 points 3 months ago

Totally. It's double weird, because it's not a petitionable issue, it's a form where you make your case and a committee decides, and they already have the symbol and they just seem to want it to be usable like πŸ’², which isn't a thing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Surely the Tokyo tower is a specific product then? πŸ—ΌIt costs money to visit, aren't the other towers jealous?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Faulty_Comparison

The Tokyo TowerπŸ—Ό(a specific building) does not justify adding the Eiffel Tower.

Many historical emoji violate current factors for inclusion. Once an emoji is encoded it cannot be removed from the Unicode Standard.

It was added when Unicode Consortium had different guidelines. They don’t accept specific buildings anymore.

Under automatically declined:

Specific buildings, structures, landmarks, or other locations, whether fictional, historic, or modern.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks for the explanation

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The creator of bitcoin is as unknown as batman's identity. The folks at the center of the main blockchain companies and stuff like that all know pretty well who created it, they just play along with the story.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (5 children)

if this is true, there would be some evidence

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Satoshi Nakamoto is some kind of consipracy...?

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The problem with having cryptocurrency as emoji is agreeing on the specification how it should be drawn, and also make it different enough from already existing emojis such as coin πŸͺ™. It is not exactly a tangible thing.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Why in the world would you have "emojis" as part of Unicode anyway?

We already have a way to have endless "emojis" without administrative stupidity, it's called JPEG.

If you need to show text as that, we've had smileys since 90s.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Would you rather send an entire JPEG over text message for an emoji? Or just 4 bytes of unicode right inline where you want it? Unicode having a standard set of emoji is actually incredibly useful and reduces complexity. I guess it would disincentivize πŸ‘ emoji πŸ‘ spam πŸ‘ to use JPEGs tho.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Just send the file hash and only download a copy if you don't have it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'd send :-} and :-\ and =P and D= instead of an emoji. As the founding fathers intended.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

You do that. πŸ‘

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There's even more use cases that come up, like being able to use emoji and other fancy symbols anywhere unicode is supported. So you can even program with them. People have taken that idea to the extreme just for fun: https://www.emojicode.org/

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I don't think it should have an emoji either, but how does this rule apply to real currencies being emojis? I mean there is dollar banknote πŸ’΅ and yen banknote πŸ’΄ and euro banknote πŸ’Ά as separate emojis, not just a general money one. And honestly, even most of the emojis referencing anything that has to do with money uses dollar signs, i.e. $. Were these rules made after these emojis were already added?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

It probably falls under faulty comparison:

https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Faulty_Comparison

Their guidelines change, and it’s possible these emoji were added with old guidelines. They can’t remove old emoji, which means specific buildings like Tokyo TowerπŸ—Όis an emoji, even if they prohibit the addition of specific buildings nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I saw this get brought up a lot. I think the difference is that currency symbols generally don't refer to a specific currency. USD and AUS both use the $ symbol, for example. "Dollar" and "American Dollar" aren't the same thing since other types of dollars exist, and the symbols are still technically multi-purpose, whereas the β‚Ώ symbol technically refers only to Bitcoin.

That's my theory on the reasoning, at least.

load more comments (1 replies)