The bitcoin logo is a white ₿ tilted to the right on a flat orange circle, posted to the Bitcoin forum in November 2010 by a user called bitboy, who built it on a B that Satoshi Nakamoto had drawn earlier that year. The ₿ itself became an official Unicode character, U+20BF, in June 2017, so today you can type the bitcoin symbol much like a dollar sign, once you know where your device hides it.
This guide covers where the orange logo came from, what the bitcoin symbol means, how to type ₿ on any device, and the naming habits (BTC or XBT, Bitcoin or bitcoin) that confuse newcomers.
Where the bitcoin logo came from
The logo you see on exchanges, wallets and stickers went through three quick versions, and none of them came from a branding agency.
Satoshi's gold coin, 2009
The first Bitcoin software shipped with a gold coin icon stamped with the letters BC. It looked more like an arcade token than a currency, which fit a project that almost nobody had heard of yet.
The B with two strokes, February 2010
On February 24, 2010, Satoshi posted a refreshed set of icons in a BitcoinTalk thread called New icon/logo. The coin now carried a capital B with two short vertical strokes sticking out of the top and bottom, the shape the bitcoin sign still uses. In the same post, Satoshi wrote that he was releasing the images into the public domain and asked that derivative works stay public domain too (read the post).
The strokes borrow a trick from older money signs. The dollar sign has vertical lines, while the euro and yen signs have horizontal bars. Put lines through a letter and readers see a currency.
Bitboy's orange logo, November 2010
On November 1, 2010, a forum member named bitboy opened a thread of new logos, buttons and banners (the original thread). He took Satoshi's B, made it white, leaned it to the right and set it on a plain orange disc. A few days later he wrote that he did not mind releasing his Bitcoin graphics into the public domain, and the Bitcoin Wiki lists them that way today. Nobody has ever learned who bitboy was.
The orange version won because it was free to use, read well at tiny sizes and looked nothing like a bank logo. Within a few years it was the de facto bitcoin logo everywhere.
What the bitcoin logo means
There is no official style guide, and bitboy never published a reason for picking orange. What we can say is how the community reads it:
- The B with strokes says "bitcoin" and "money" at the same time.
- The tilt gives the mark a sense of motion, like a coin mid-flip.
- The orange has become shorthand for bitcoin itself. That is why bitcoiners talk about the "orange pill" or call it the orange coin (see our bitcoin slang glossary).
- No owner. Bitcoin has no company behind it, so nobody controls its logo. That is why you see endless remixes: gold logos, outline logos, logos drawn into other words.
Bitcoin logo PNG and SVG files
If you need a bitcoin logo png or vector file for a slide, a sticker or a website, start with the Promotional graphics page on the Bitcoin Wiki, which hosts the public domain originals. Grab the SVG if you can: it scales to any size without going blurry. Free icon sites often add their own license terms to remixed versions, so check before you use one commercially.
The ₿ symbol in Unicode
For years there was no proper bitcoin sign in fonts, so people borrowed lookalikes: the Thai baht sign (฿) or a B with a single stroke (Ƀ). In October 2015 engineer Ken Shirriff submitted a formal proposal to the Unicode Consortium. It was accepted, and Unicode 10.0, released in June 2017, added BITCOIN SIGN at code point U+20BF in the Currency Symbols block (Unicode chart).
Being in Unicode does not mean every font draws it. Operating systems added the glyph to their fonts over the following couple of years. If you see an empty box instead of ₿, the font you are using simply lacks it, and switching fonts usually fixes it.
How to type the bitcoin symbol
Most physical keyboards have no bitcoin key, so here are the reliable ways in.
- Anywhere: copy ₿ from this page and paste it. Low tech, always works.
- Mac: press Control + Command + Space to open the Character Viewer, type "bitcoin" in the search box and click the symbol. For a keyboard-only route, add the Unicode Hex Input source in keyboard settings, then hold Option and type 20BF.
- Windows, in Microsoft Word: type 20BF, then press Alt + X and Word converts it to ₿.
- Windows, elsewhere: holding Alt and typing 8383 on the number pad works in some programs but not all, because Windows handles large Alt codes inconsistently. Copy and paste is the safer bet.
- iPhone: the built-in keyboard has no ₿. Paste it once into Settings, General, Keyboard, Text Replacement and assign a shortcut like "btcsign".
- Android: most keyboards also lack it. Keyboards such as Gboard have a personal dictionary where you can save ₿ with a shortcut.
- Linux: in many desktops, press Ctrl + Shift + U, type 20BF and press Enter.
BTC vs XBT
BTC is the ticker almost everyone uses. XBT is an alternative that follows the ISO 4217 pattern for currencies not tied to a country, which start with X (gold is XAU, for example). It has never been added to the official ISO list, but some financial data providers use it. Either way, you are looking at the same asset.
Bitcoin or bitcoin, capital B or lowercase
There is no official rule, but a common convention is:
- Bitcoin with a capital B for the network, the protocol and the software.
- bitcoin in lowercase for the money itself: "I sent you 0.01 bitcoin."
- sats for the small units. One bitcoin is 100 million sats, which our guide on how many sats are in a bitcoin breaks down.
Writers mix these up constantly, and nobody will revoke your keys for it.
Wearing the logo
A logo this simple works best on a plain shirt. Our logo tees are all black and printed to order, and they cover the range from quiet to loud:
- Bitcoin Logo, Chest puts a small orange B where a polo brand would sit, easy to wear to work.
- Bitcoin B, Center moves that small B to the middle, just under the collar.
- Bitcoin Wiggle goes big, with a yellow B inside wobbly hand-drawn rings.
- Bitcoin Boss hides the ₿ inside the word BOSS.
The whole set lives on our bitcoin logo shirts page. If you want the story of the person who drew the first B, read who is Satoshi Nakamoto.
