Most of you reading this have only ever known Bitcoin by its current logo[1]: that white, double-striped “B” superimposed on an orange circle.
Orange coin has become an internationally-recognizable symbol, but Bitcoin didn’t come with this branding out of the box. As with almost every aspect of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto[2] created a rudimentary logo in the protean days of the decentralized currency and the community iterated on it until this one stuck.
You truly old-school Bitcoin Maximalists will remember the evolutions in this design. And you also might recognize some of the mathematical symbolism that underpins Bitcoin’s logo.
For those of you who don’t, here’s a little history lesson and crash course on the design choice behind Bitcoin’s iconic emblem.
The Evolution of Bitcoin’s Logo
Bitcoin Core originally featured Bitcoin’s first-ever logo created by Satoshi: a gold coin with the initials “BC” inscribed on it. The nod to gold here shouldn’t be overlooked (especially considering that some people think the digital gold comparison is some crazy notion cooked up by Bitcoin extremists — when, in reality, Satoshi himself was thinking of Bitcoin in this way from the start).
OGs typically took to the logo well, though one or another would occasionally make suggestions to alter it on Bitcointalk[3]. One of these suggestions involved using the Thai baht currency symbol (฿) and designating the initials “BTC” as the official currency code.
The latter caught on more easily than the former. Using the Thai baht did prove to be a convenient stopgap before something else came along, though some insisted that using it “would cause confusion.”
But, it could have very well inspired Satoshi to added the dollar-stripes to Bitcoin’s design that make it so distinguishable today. On February 24, 2010, he
