So far in my life I learned enough to know that people will always do what they want to do and that I can't control anyone beside myself.

But even so I have to try and plead with the community:

Please, do us a favor and if you're going to invent new symbols for Bitcoin, don't look for inspiration in the old failed and oppressive ideologies but instead look forward to freedom and cooperation, to spontaneous order as opposed to order by government's monopoly on violence and to a society with freely agreed to rules, consistent and mandatory for everyone as opposed to a central authority with dual standards and last but not least to a market regulated and constrained by it's participants as opposed to a market regulated by a central planing authority.


I beg you, please draw your inspiration in images of freedom, voluntarism, cooperation, openness, consistency, capitalism and entrepreneurship as opposed to oppression, violence, and pretense of knowledge. Thank you.

When people left of center like yourself (totally assuming so correct me if I'm wrong) hear or see the word 'capitalism' there is meaning applied that could be defined as oppressive, violent etc.

but when people with more libertarian leaning ideals (like myself) use the word 'capitalism' we mean; a respect for private property, a respect for the rights of the individual, freedom to enter into mutually beneficial contracts, self ownership etc.

I think it means very different things to different people. semantics. 

The belief that acquiring more stuff than your neighbors makes you better than them incites violence. You can't have capitalism without it.

The symbol should be a circle, left half white, right half black. Kind of like the symbol for the machine society in the Matrix animations.

We need Joe Pesci. 

I thought "Capitalism" was coined (pardon the pun) as an answer to or opposite of Communism. The problem is that they both seem to share the same flaw: human nature. Things like natural inequality, greed/sense of ego, entitlement, superiority and so on, combined with the unavoidable realities of having to co-exist with other people in the world, mean that brute force is required to enforce Communist ideals. Those same human features are "free to corrupt" Capitalism.

In practice, many societies seem to strive for some kind of healthy middle ground, whereby the worst aspects of both are limited. There is usually some kind of framework to include things that don't "fit" the market model. For example: prisons, a public healthcare system, a road code, an education system, and so on. Some may argue that if societies simply enforce a "user pays" policy to everything, it'll be fine. But in many cases that attitude is demonstrably wrong. For example, a mentally ill criminal with no family or friends is stuck in an institution to protect all the die-hard capitalists on the outside. Who pays?

Overall I think Bitcoin is simply a realistic attempt to solve some problems that other types of money have. No more, no less.

How about something that symbolises ones and zeros?

Your friendly torte insurance company. The problem isn't that society needs prisons and government goons to bash down your door and force you to pay for them. The problem is that prisons, as a "rehabilitation program", teach offenders to become career criminals rather than just petty offenders.

People go to prison out of a background of child abuse, and are then subjected to further abuse in prison, reinforcing the lesson that violence and dishonesty are the solution to their problems. Sure, there are problems where externalities aren't easily avoidable, but the solution is never to get a big group of assholes with guns and have them tell everyone what to do and steal money from everyone on an ongoing basis to pay for said activities.

The solution to keeping child molesters away from your children is not to administer TSA agents to molest your children legally at the airport, mall, school and so on.

Does wikipedia require a totalitarian tax collection agency to operate?

The tone of the article is a little off, but it raises an important issue.

If bitcoin is socially considered "nerd money" that won't be as good as "amazingly awesome money".

This is getting way off topic, but...

I used to think that about prison. Now it's clear to me that many of the 'criminals' on the inside are there for the protection and/or service of the criminals on the outside. It's a bonus to them that many degenerate inside making a nice excuse to keep it all going.

Hmm, my "die-hard capitalists" comment was probably bit OTT. It can get a bit overwhelming as a non-American to be bombarded with so many American-centric attitudes and issues when interacting in the Bitcoin sphere. For example, I mentioned "institution" and everyone assumed I was talking about prison. Meanwhile, Australia has publicly funded secure hospitals for the mentally ill. I guess you could call those prisons, and I guess that in theory some way could be contrived to make them private, profitable, and all encompassing. But I guess no-one's figured how to extend "the Bitcoin way" to the rest of society just yet.

Back on topic: Bitcoin is already glorious enough on its own two feet without someone glorifying it. As for marketing ideas, why not pay homage to the binary number system?

Even the regular dollar symbol seems to be based on a "serpent coiled around a cross", which pharmacies sometimes display. If I start digging around on the Net, I'm sure to find all kinds of occult/religious/pagan history surrounding it.

How about a Tetris-like "B" in bright colours? I know it's a bit Google, but Google is popular, whereas shiny bullion-like designs remind of dodgy poker sites.