Talk:Bitcoin

Lead sentence sourcing

Is there appropriate RS to support this statement in the Lead?

"Bitcoin is currently used more as a store of value and less as a medium of exchange or unit of account."

Bitcoin proponents surely view it more as a store of value and less as a medium of exchange, plenty of RS to support that statement, however for "used" I do not know if adequate sourcing exists. ILoveFinance (talk) 06:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

This sentence aims to sum up this section: Bitcoin#Economics_and_usage. Bitcoin proponents = bitcoin users, so what they "view" is the same as their "use". a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 13:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

It should then reflect what is explained in the section, that it is "viewed more as" rather than "used." ILoveFinance (talk) 14:53, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

"Use" is the term used in the section. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 15:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

We could add this RS btw: "Citing bitcoin's $700 billion market capitalization, compared to the around $2.6 trillion worth of gold owned as an investment, Goldman Sachs said that the cryptocurrency currently has a 20% share of the "store of value" market." https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/goldman-sachs-says-bitcoin-will-compete-with-gold-store-value-2022-01-05/ a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 15:49, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

That would certainly be a good line and RS to add to the Bitcoin#Economics_and_usage section. ILoveFinance (talk) 15:51, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Adding to the prior comment: great find!

However, reading through that section again, it does not appear to describe what is currently listed in the Lead. There is commentary regarding Bitcoin's use in commerce, and commentary regarding its use related to storing value, however it does not commentate on whether it is used more as one or the other.

Either this line should be re-written, or should be removed. ILoveFinance (talk) 15:56, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

"As of 2018, the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions took place on cryptocurrency exchanges.": this means it's used more to invest than to purchase stuff. That's the comparison. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Other RS: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/insights/trading/gold-or-bitcoin-store-of-value-debate-rages-as-bitcoin-grows/ "Bitcoin is already a store of value within the world of cryptocurrencies and could be embraced on a wider scale." a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Good find. I might be missing it but is this source included on the page yet? ILoveFinance (talk) 16:06, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

To me, investing and storing of value are not necessarily one and the same. The line should reflect the word "invest" in that case, I would imagine. ILoveFinance (talk) 16:03, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I've just added these two sources to the article. I removed the sentence from the lede, not needed. Ideally we should find data looking at bitcoin usage: what's the % that is related to purchases? It's probably impossible to tell as many transactions (especially small-ish amounts for payments) are done off-chain on Lightning. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Actually we have data here for crypto in general. I assume it's the same for BTC but we can't add it to the article:

• https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2023/jun/consumer-payment-behaviour-in-australia.html
• https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2023-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2022-banking-credit.htm
• https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/statistics/statistics-on-payments-banknotes-and-coins/payment-patterns/

tl;dr: 1–2% of people have used crypto to pay over the past 12 months, and 20% of crypto users use crypto to pay for goods and services (the other 80% just use it to speculate/invest/store value). There's also 20% using it to send money, and there's some overlap so it doesn't add up to 100%. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

This is a source discussing usage of different cryptos in commerce, but only describes of businesses surveyed that accept crypto, how many accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash: https://www.dbusiness.com/from-the-magazine/is-crypto-the-next-bubble/ ILoveFinance (talk) 16:53, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

"32 percent of small business owners and top-level executives said their business currently accepts cryptocurrencies.": that's way too high to be true (outside of El Salvador). a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 17:19, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

On that line, absolutely agreed. Might have been unclearly written, though, as the article references a Skynova survey, so that number could be of survey respondents. ILoveFinance (talk) 17:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

If not already included in the Cryptocurrency article, it could make a lot of sense to include those there! Great resources. ILoveFinance (talk) 17:29, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

• There is consumer daily use of bitcoin in some countries such as El Salvador, it is an accurate summary. It is also WP:OR to think that use does not include investment use. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:09, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

  What is this in response to? ILoveFinance (talk) 19:14, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

  The wording talked about bitcoin's use more as a store of value than medium of exchange; ILoveFinance's contention is that while RS may support the fact it's viewed that way, they may not necessarily support that it's used that way. So I'm a little confused what point you're making mentioning daily consumer use in El Salvador (i.e. as a medium of exchange, not a store of value) – especially since you seem to support the current summary? Apologies if I've misunderstood anyone. GhostOfNoMan 02:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

  Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you for clarifying this! ILoveFinance (talk) 03:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

My point is the existing wording is fine and do not support the change suggested by Ilovefinance. I was saying there is no need in the lead to get into nuance of used in finance (as investment) vs used in a supermarket in El Salvador. We dont do that level of nuance in the lead. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:05, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

The change was already made, though, by Antoine. It before was getting into the nuance. Not sure what's unclear here. ILoveFinance (talk) 03:14, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Capitalisation (bitcoin vs Bitcoin)

I note Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ says to use lowercase bitcoin in all cases. Is this a convention specific to this article? Can anyone point me in the direction of any discussions/RfC/etc. that may have taken place? Also, I see it's rendered Bitcoin in many other articles; would it be appropriate to correct those occurrences to bitcoin with reference given to Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ? GhostOfNoMan 02:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

It would seem to make sense to me, unless others would suggest an RfC to update/change the FAQ. ILoveFinance (talk) 05:31, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I can't think of any reason not to begin changing to bitcoin (like in the Bitcoin Cash article and elsewhere). It seems this is a pretty established consensus! GhostOfNoMan 12:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

• Here are some earlier discussions (I just picked some random ones from the talk page archives). Talk:Bitcoin/Archive_20#Why_not_Bitcoin?, Talk:Bitcoin/Archive_8#Suggestion_regarding_capitalization, Talk:Bitcoin/Archive_30#Casing? which has an interesting comment that says "I would suggest reading the article. The Terminology section must answer your question." On an older version of the article we had an Etymology section (it has since left the article, no idea why, maybe it was merged). It said "The word bitcoin first occurred and was defined in the white paper[5] that was published on 31 October 2008.[15] It is a compound of the words bit and coin.[16] The white paper frequently uses the shorter coin.[5] There is no uniform convention for bitcoin capitalization. Some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network and bitcoin, lowercase, to refer to the unit of account.[17] The Wall Street Journal,[18] The Chronicle of Higher Education,[19] and the Oxford English Dictionary[16] advocate use of lowercase bitcoin in all cases, a convention followed throughout this article." Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:51, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for those links – it looks like there has been a lot of discussion and firm consensus established for lowercase over time. I do wonder why the Etymology section was removed; it feels like valuable information to have in the article. Maybe someone complained about WP:NOTDICT or some such... GhostOfNoMan 12:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

  There's no established consensus on capitalization. As written in the article: "No uniform capitalization convention exists; some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network, and bitcoin, lowercase, for the unit of account. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary use the capitalized and lowercase variants without distinction."

  We have 3 options:

  1. Capitalized
  2. Not capitalized
  3. Capitalized for the network but lowercase for the unit of account

  Option 3 is too complex and always subject to discussions. I'm OK with options 1 and 2. It's an editorial choice. The NYT capitalizes while CNN doesn't. Ethereum seems to always been capitalized on Wikipedia btw. But when some brands enter the common language they tend to lose their uppercase, so it might just be that bitcoin is more well known. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 13:06, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry, I meant specifically a consensus on Wikipedia. There does seem to be a clear consensus for lowercase here, at least, since around 2014 (Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ). But you're very correct in highlighting the differing styles elsewhere! I, too, imagine bitcoin will become the overall norm over time. GhostOfNoMan 18:35, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

• I added the old etymology section back, just copied from a few years ago. If someone else remembers why it was deleted, or objects, feel free to delete it again. I cant recall why it was deleted. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:16, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

A455bcd9 (talk · contribs) reverted my edit and advised it had been merged into Bitcoin#Units_and_divisibility a bit farther down on the article. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:05, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

• Is this an interesting subject for us to have an RFC on? Seems the FAQ consensus is quite old (2014 is forever for this subject). I personally dont have a strong opinion at this time on b vs B. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:09, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

  Dictionaries and RS use both spellings. According to the Google ngram viewer, Bitcoin is 3x more common than bitcoin and both are growing: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=bitcoin%2CBitcoin&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false . Other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Solana use capital letter so Bitcoin might be better for consistency. But currencies like dollar and commodities like gold use lowercase so consistency here would be bitcoin. An RfC is probably the best way to settle the matter (I would probably not vote as I'm fine with both options, the case for Bitcoin is a bit stronger based on Google ngram and usage though). a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:46, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

  Generic dollars are lowercase. US Dollar is uppercase. vsync (talk) 00:42, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  No, it's always lowercase in most style guides (AP, Chicago, NYT, etc.). So "US dollar" and "United States dollar". This is also Wikipedia's style. GhostOfNoMan 15:06, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  That's not true. The word 'dollar' in 'US dollar' isn't capitalized. It's capitalized neither in Wikipedia nor in major news websites. Vgbyp (talk) 16:19, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

"Guarantee security" should be revised to "secures"

The sentence in the LEAD ending in "...guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain" does not accurately represent the whitepaper nor the one source (cited later in the article) for the claim.

The whitepaper itself does not use the word "guarantee" anywhere, rather, uses probabilistic terms to explain why the odds of a successful attack would be low.

The whitepaper states as follows:

As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers.

The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.

Note the mention of "as long as" - the network is secure contingent upon "honest nodes" controlling the majority of the PoW.

Later, the same word "guarantee" is used and sourced. However, reading the paper that is cited (A review on consensus algorithm of blockchain), that statement is not made.

Per the paper:

If anyone wants to tamper with the blockchain, he needs to control more than 50% of the world's hashing power to ensure that he can become the first one to generate the latest block and master the longest chain. The gains from tampering can be much greater than the cost. So the PoW can effectively guarantee the safety of the blockchain.

The word "effectively" is used, and is critical language. Also to note, this is referencing blockchains using PoW as its security mechanism (in relation to other security methods such as Proof of Stake, Delegated Proof of Stake, Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, and Raft, rather than bitcoin specifically, though of course this would apply to bitcoin as it uses PoW.

The paper also states:

The system is stable as long as the longest chain is guaranteed by the honest nodes.

The source is not stating that bitcoin's security is "guaranteed," rather, it is stating that the security of a blockchain using PoW is "effectively guarentee[d]," using contingencies reflected in the whitepaper itself: "as long as".

Also to note, the Summary/conclusion is the following:

Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, stability, security, non-modifiability and so on. With the development of technology, the blockchain is attracting more and more attention in different areas. This paper makes a systematic review of the usual consensus algorithms used in the blockchain. Consensus algorithm is the core technology of blockchain, but current research of the consensus mechanism is still in its infancy. The consensus algorithm specially designed for different scenarios is still very rare. How to make the blockchain performance better in a particular scenario? We still need further research.

All in all, the paper is not specifically about Bitcoin, but different security mechanisms. The current language is making a conclusion not supported by the singular source.

---

I would propose to alter the two sentences as follows:

LEAD: "Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that secures the bitcoin blockchain."

Design>Mining: "The high cost required to reach this level of computational power "effectively guarantee[s]" the security of the bitcoin blockchain."

ILoveFinance (talk) 06:23, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I would agree with this. No blockchain has security guaranteed, no matter how much mining power is required to pursue a 51% attack, which did in fact happen to Bitcoin as well, with the party who had 51% hashing power needing to willingly dial back amidst community concerns. This is something that cannot even be disputed - it very literally happened and it proves that security is not guaranteed - this is even mentioned on the BTC article itself under source [94] @ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/16/popular-bitcoin-mining-pool-promises-to-restrict-its-compute-power-to-prevent-feared-51-fiasco/ Artem P75 (talk) 06:36, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

We would not be using the whitepaper for statements like this in wikivoice anyhow. Key point is what the RS say, the whitepaper would not be an RS for something like this. Agree that guarantee is probably not an encyclopedic term. You should propose more clear changes, such as change a to b. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:23, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Lead:

Current: "Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain."

Proposal: "Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that secures the bitcoin blockchain."

Design>Mining:

Current: "The high cost required to reach this level of computational power guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain."

Proposal: "The high cost required to reach this level of computational power "effectively guarantee[s]" the security of the bitcoin blockchain." ILoveFinance (talk) 13:31, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

We don't write quotes like "effectively guarantee[s]" without attribution on Wikipedia. All of this discussion just to change "guarantees the security" to "secures". WOW! What a damned waste of time. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 20:40, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I would disagree that it is a "waste of time." But let's not waste time discussing that!

I will make the changes. ILoveFinance (talk) 21:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

OI/OR Images/Videos should be removed

There appear to be five OI/OR images/video in the article currently:

1. Image: Bitcoin mining facility
2. Video (Appears to be self-PROMO): "BraveTheWorld"
3. Image: Cafe in Delft
4. Images: Various bitcoin wallet images
5. Image: Legal status of Bitcoin

Before making a change of removing these images/video, I wanted to give notice here. ILoveFinance (talk) 22:18, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

1. Not sure how it contradicts the OI policy. The text in the section reads: "The process requires significant computational power and specialized hardware." The image depicts such hardware. It doesn't "illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments."

2. The video is used in the cited source to make a point. It makes sense to link to the video itself as well. Perhaps, this can be removed as WP:UNDUE. I would like to hear what other editors have to say about this.

3. Yes, unless the section it's placed in is rewritten to mention such a usage.

4. See point #1. The section describes different kinds of wallets citing references. The images illustrate those wallets without introducing any new arguments.

5. Agreed, unless its author (@Manabimasu) adds a list of citations they used to build the map. Vgbyp (talk) 11:57, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

1/5 -- per guidelines for crypto article sourcing, all content must come directly from RS. The issue with 1 isn't the text, it is the images themselves. ILoveFinance (talk) 12:41, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Stop your nonsense. This is not how OI/OR works. Did you even read the links you pointed to?

WP:OI: "Original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the "No original research" policy."

So photos don't need to come from RS. Do you think images of lions on Lion come from RS? No, it's just someone who took a photo of a lion. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 12:53, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, actually. So rather than coming out swinging, perhaps consider WP:AGF and see below thoughts:

Crypto articles have a higher standard of RS, and the idea for new images has been mentioned before. Such as with the price chart discussion above: Talk:Bitcoin#Bitcoin Price Chart.

1. I'm generally fine with this, however to note, the source is a Senior Marketing Manager of Argo Blockchain. Not a new idea, agreed, and I think that is a reliable source to say what an Argo Blockchain facility is mining (Bitcoin), but could this be considered WP:COI (Supplying photographs and media files)?
2. I don't see how an external video link is warranted -- agree that it would probably be WP:UNDUE. The line referencing the journal/research paper can be tweaked to stand on its own.
3. Is the cafe ok to keep even if not mentioned in the body of the article for context? That doesn't seem "nonsensical" to point out.
4. Agree with @Vgbyp entirely -- no qualms here, was tired and did not consider this at time of edit (did not mention in original post iirc).
5. Without a list of WP:RS citations for each datapoint, including dates, this is WP:OI.

ILoveFinance (talk) 13:27, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

WP:RS and images are unrelated here. 1 to 5 are all perfectly OK:

1. WP:COI: unrelated, really, read the pages you're linking to.

2. The Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence is mentioned in the article so it's OK to have an external link to it. Unless you think we should link to another URL?

3. Yes it's OK to illustrate "Use for payments".

4. OK.

5. The list is in Legality of cryptocurrency by country or territory where the image is from. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 13:42, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

2. Per reading the cited source, even though it starts with reference to the video, the video is just one of 26 endnotes, aside nearly 3 pages of general references. This hardly supports the idea that "the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control" was specific to that video. This idea stems from a wide range of references, that video included in them. So I stand by the fact that the video should be removed and the line should be revised (by removing the mention of the video).

3. This is helpful context, thank you.

5. Not sure how I missed this in its entirety, thank you very much for pointing it out. ILoveFinance (talk) 14:13, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

2. We have Sociologist Nigel Dodd, citing the crypto-anarchist Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence, argues that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control. The source seems RS to me. The source very first paragraph starts like this: "On 13 August 2014, a five-minute video was posted on YouTube called “The Declaration of Bitcoin’s Independence”. 1 “When we say Bitcoin”, the accompanying note explained, “we mean the idea: the birth of cryptocurrency”. The note continued: “We know it’s not perfect. But we’re not after perfection, we’re after progression. We’re after a way out. And we will not stop”. The video consisted of a series of talking heads from varied Bitcoin evangelists and luminaries such as Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Kristov Atlas and Trace Meyer, all reading segments from a single text. 2 Bitcoin is more than a currency, was the central message: it is an “animal of anonymity” that “basks in shadow”. “Bitcoin is sovereignty. Bitcoin is renaissance. Bitcoin is ours. Bitcoin is.” Bitcoin was trading at US$5443 on the day that video was posted." Later on in the paper: "Scott subsequently qualified that view by suggesting that Bitcoin might also be seen as a “Techno-Leviathan”, which he defines as “a deified crypto-sovereign whose rules we can contract to”. 21 This is not a contradiction in Scott’s interpretation of Bitcoin, but rather a reflection of its own peculiar ambiguous properties, as a network that sits somewhere between, on the one hand, a structureless, quasi-anarchist, quasi-libertarian space that is free from state regulation – much as celebrated in the “Declaration of Bitcoin’s Independence” with which this paper began – and on the other, a system that simply replaces human agency, and therefore human autonomy, with machine code. Arguably, Bitcoin’s essential strangeness – and the difficulty we have in defining it sociologically –is that it fits both descriptions up to a point. But the argument cannot be left here, because there is much more to Bitcoin than can be gleaned from focusing on its technological features alone."

So it's not just "one of 26 endnotes". It's a central feature of the paper. So it's totally OK to link to this video. However, is it necessary? Maybe not. In that case, we should not mention it in the article and just say "Sociologist Nigel Dodd argues that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control." I'm OK with both options. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 14:20, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

If referencing the paper itself, agree, it seems like RS to me as well. And the video is absolutely used in the opening paragraph, no dispute there, but my point is that the way it is written suggests it is entirely based upon the video, which it is not.

I support your suggestion, as that more accurately reflects what the paper lays out. Thanks! ILoveFinance (talk) 14:35, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

3. The current text in 'Use for payments' suggests that it's rarely used for payments and is poorly suitable for small transactions (which would be the case for a café). The image, on the other hand, suggests that it's, in fact, used for payments. In my opinion, the image should only stay if the text of that section is updated with some statement about the use of bitcoin in retail with either existing or new citations.

5. Perhaps, it makes sense to link that article (Legality of cryptocurrency by country or territory) from the image caption used in this article? I believe that will help to avoid similar confusion in the future.

Vgbyp (talk) 15:33, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

3. That makes sense to me.

5. If you click the tiny two box file icon at the top right of the text, at the bottom it will mention the reference. That's why I didn't see it before. Not sure if there is a clearer way to reference it, though, as that would be very helpful. Perhaps adding a footnote to the "Legal status of bitcoin" text that links to the page? ILoveFinance (talk) 15:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

3. The image is perfectly OK and does not contradict the text: the use of bitcoin for payment in "real life" is so low that a café has to advertise it (you wouldn't see ads like "Credit cards accepted"!).

5. There's already a link in the paragraph. I added a link in the image's description. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:53, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

• We use images all the time across so many wikipedia pages, this is absurd and I oppose removal. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:48, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

RFC on bitcoin/Bitcoin capitalization

Shall we continue to use lowercase or capitalize the first character, and thus use Bitcoin? Note Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ says to use lowercase bitcoin in all cases, and this dates to 2014. And does this consensus apply to inbound wikilinks? Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Polling

• I vote "Bitcoin" rather than "bitcoin" - see discussion for my rationale. (My first time participating in an RfC please remove this comment if I should not have left this comment here) Artem P75 (talk)Artem P75
• No strong opinion; the status quo of lowercase bitcoin is fine with me but I'm amenable to change should a new consensus emerge. As outlined below, all I really care about is consistency across articles. GhostOfNoMan 21:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Status quo actually has been to use the large B for more than a decade. Its only a recent change that changed it to small character. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:04, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Other way around. :) You acknowledge it in the opening of this RfC. It's been lowercase bitcoin since 2014, applied quite consistently to this article. Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ. GhostOfNoMan 23:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• I'd actually prefer lowercase bitcoin for the units of account (e.g., 10 bitcoin) and uppercase Bitcoin for the technology/blockchain (e.g., the Bitcoin network). Vgbyp (talk) 10:47, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

  I prefer "bitcoin" always lower-case and while I admit I don't like the idea of "Bitcoin" for tech and "bitcoin" for unit, I would still MUCH prefer that to the other option of always upper-case "Bitcoin". The unit of account should always be "bitcoin". 45.42.141.34 (talk) 14:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• I vote for consistency and simplicity. So either "bitcoin" or "Bitcoin" but not something like "lowercase for the unit and uppercase for the technology". a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
• I vote to stick with only "bitcoin". I will write my rationale in the discussion. To put it briefly: No compelling reason to change from lower-case after more than ten years, changing will cause confusion and it will mean massive updates to many pages even though we gain nothing and 90% of crypto-page contributors are used to lower-case and most articles use lower-case already. 45.42.141.34 (talk) 13:07, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
• Consistency should be kept, in my opinion. With that, as Bitcoin is more than just a currency (technology/otherwise), uppercase in all cases should be used. While this might make less sense for unit accounting, Bitcoin is not just a unit, it's much more, and we should use standardized capitalization that fits most scenarios. ILoveFinance (talk) 13:33, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
• (from WP:RFC/A) My primary opinion would be bitcoin for currency, Bitcoin for technology platform. Failing that, I would prefer always lowercase. I would strongly object to always uppercase. Fieari (talk) 05:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
• bitcoin. — Consistency would add clarity and would be much less distracting. It would also bypass debates over whether or not the 'technology' or the 'currency' is being discussed, which can be a lot more subjective than it might seem.

Bitcoin is not named after a person, nor is it a company or brand owned by a company, so MOS:TM doesn't apply. We do not typically capitalize the names of either technologies or currencies, why make this the exception? By way of comparison, in an international context when people say "the dollar" they usually mean the US dollar and its accompanying financial institutions. This wouldn't mean that 'dollar' should be capitalized in that context. Sometimes sources do capitalize 'Dollar' in that situation to make a political point (or by mistake), but this kind of editorializing isn't appropriate for Wikipedia. The same applies here. Grayfell (talk) 20:06, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I looked at a couple of other technology articles trying to find something similar, and I see generally the use of capitalization of the first letter in both the article name as well as throughout the article. For example, Linux, Gnutella, and to an extent Unix with Unix being a bit more complicated as there is a trademark for UNIX (in caps). Do we have some examples of open source software projects that tend to use the lower case? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:12, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

As I said, bitcoin is not named after a person. Linux is named after Linus Torvalds. Bitcoin is also not a trademarked name, as both Linux and Unix are. Gnutella is a pun on Nutella (another brand name) and GNU (an acronym). Both Linux and Gnutella exist specifically because Unix is proprietary software, and trademarks are typically capitalized, so there is a certain sense in continuing this capitalization. Bitcoin, on the other hand, exists as a cryptocurrency, and currencies are not typically capitalized. Grayfell (talk) 19:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• (from WP:RFC/A) bitcoin. Currency names are lower case. Discussions over at Ethereum decided to use "ether" (Talk: Ethereum/Archive 4#Uppercase currency name? and Talk: Ethereum/Archive 3#Ether or ether?) so there is precedent. As one of those discussions points out, MOS prefers lowercase when sources are mixed. Grayfell's reasoning above is sound: by using lowercase there is no risk of debates about technology versus currency. CareerDoofus (talk) 23:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
• bitcoin/status quo - I'm new to this debate/question, but after a very quick glance at 3 RS's, it seems like the lowercase is the common practice. NickCT (talk) 18:44, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
• Capitalized Bitcoin is my preference. I would think we would follow WP:COMMONNAME that would tell us to took at what is more common. a455bcd9 (talk · contribs) pointed out above in comments that the larger B was 3x more common. Here a bitcoin.org primary source (albeit a very important one it that it is the somewhat official website on the domain created by Satoshi) puts it clearly and states "Bitcoin - with capitalization, is used when describing the concept of Bitcoin, or the entire network itself. e.g. "I was learning about the Bitcoin protocol today." bitcoin - without capitalization, is used to describe bitcoins as a unit of account. e.g. "I sent ten bitcoins today."; it is also often abbreviated BTC or XBT." As I think this article is about the network and not the unit of account, I think we should use capitalized "Bitcoin". For us to use the lower b will confuse reader that we are referring to the unit of account, and this is bordering on WP:JARGON. To help create some discussion of a broader policy we can follow, I think if we are referring to the plural, we could mostly use bitcoins but if we are referring to the unit of account (which is rare). Please note this is not a WP:STATUSQUO issue as we have been using capitalized version for a decade or more and the term was changed by an apparent SPA. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  Please note this is not a WP:STATUSQUO issue as we have been using capitalized version for a decade or more and the term was changed by an apparent SPA. – Other way around, actually. It's been lowercase bitcoin since 2014: Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ. GhostOfNoMan 15:11, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  No, it wasn't the case in practice. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  It was – just look at revisions of the page from various years: 2017, 2019, 2022, etc. (chosen at random). All of these are overwhelmingly using bitcoin. GhostOfNoMan 21:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• Bitcoin, as this is the WP:COMMONNAME, and thus the most likely expected formatting by our users/readers by Google Ngram. I don't find the arguments to split b and B for denomination and technology, respectively, very persuasive. It seems to be an issue of technicality, and would soon run into various issues in implementation. Overall, WP:KISS reigns here. Don't make rules so complicated they will inevitably result in issues. Capitalized is the way most users (and readers) likely think about it, and thus makes the most sense to implement as an overall rule. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:39, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

• a455bcd9 (talk · contribs) above has noted that "Google ngram viewer, Bitcoin is 3x more common than bitcoin and both are growing": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=bitcoin%2CBitcoin&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false :Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 21:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

  Are there any advantages / disadvantages to either? From my perspective it just seems like a semantic difference. Unless someone comes along and rationalizes why either may be better, my two cents is that it doesn't matter, and I therefore support either at this time Artem P75 (talk) 03:13, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe in that with the small b the term is being used as descriptive rather than as a proper name. Thoughts? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:10, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

My train of thought would be that it doesn't really make sense as a descriptive? I wouldn't refer to Ethereum as "a bitcoin" but would refer to it as a crypto-currency... I guess Bitcoin is Bitcoin. I guess in relation to BCH, BSV and BTG, BCH is a fork of Bitcoin, with the other two being forks of Bitcoin Cash - which I would still not describe them as different "bitcoins" but would again describe them as different crypto-currencies Artem P75 (talk) 04:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I also dont really see the use case for a descriptive bitcoin either. So then why would we drop the large B for a small b? For example the name John, is there really a use case for the name john? I would think if we are dealing with the name of a thing, it would normally be capitalized unless there is a clear convention to not capitalize (say a company name that is not capitalized in the company's branding). In that train of thought why would the article be named with a capital name, but all of the inbound link across wikipedia be changed to bitcoin (as ILoveFinance (talk · contribs) recently BOLDLY changed). Seems incongruous and a likelihood of creating confusion. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:59, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I did see the change to "b" it looks to me as though the edits were made in good faith by ILoveFinance and GhostOfNoMan under the direction of this FAQ... I would still think that this direction is out-dated / makes things confusing and should be over-ruled Artem P75 (talk) 05:20, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I wasn't arguing bad faith. Just dont see the point either. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 05:27, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed - well yeah with having this discussion I would change my "I don't mind" position to:

A lowercase "bitcoin" does not really make sense, I think it would only confuse the reader with the assumption that there is a "bitcoin" adjective, when from my understanding, there is only "Bitcoin" the proper noun. Other crypto currencies that share the "Bitcoin" name are not "bitcoins" but are separate crypto-currencies Artem P75 (talk) 05:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Why does a lowercase euro or dollar make sense while a lowercase bitcoin doesn't? Vgbyp (talk) 07:27, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

You have a point there! I too dont know. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting point. I would assume it would have something to do with being a unit (of account) (like grams, or liters, or meters). This article suggests that Bitcoin/bitcoin is less of a unit of account (for now, anyways).

I mean, how far do we look into it? Is cash more or less fungible? Cash generally has serial numbers, Bitcoin/bitcoin has UTXOs, so they are pretty equal there, I would say. But is it a commonplace unit like the metric/imperial systems? Like other currencies? No, at least not as of yet, as it is not a unit of account today, I would say.

Given this, I would vote for a capital "B" and say "Bitcoin" should be used going forward. ILoveFinance (talk) 13:55, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I would think because many countries have the dollar as their currency, with different value per dollar per country - it is not a single consistent unit of currency - Bitcoin however is Bitcoin, there is only one Bitcoin and only one price relative to Bitcoin Artem P75 (talk) 22:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there's any deeper logic to the style of lowercase currencies beyond it simply being convention. There's only one renminbi, shekel, som, etc., yet we still wouldn't capitalise those in any instance. GhostOfNoMan 22:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

That is a good point, I suppose then it is just a matter of semantics and does not really matter as long as we can reach a conclusion to have uniformity between articles? Artem P75 (talk) 23:10, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree – the uniformity is most important, to me. Something we can apply consistently. GhostOfNoMan 00:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's worth keeping in mind that the one thing that most style guides can agree on is that the unit of currency is always lowercase (bitcoin), much like dollars, euros, pounds, and so on. GhostOfNoMan 21:25, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd say, though, that since bitcoin/Bitcoin is not currently used as a unit of account, in most places, that it is not a standardized unit (like others) and a capital B should likely be used.

Then again, if it is considered a commodity, I think most are classified with a lowercase letter (as not a proper noun)? ILoveFinance (talk) 23:35, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd say, though, that since bitcoin/Bitcoin is not currently used as a unit of account, in most places, that it is not a standardized unit (like others) and a capital B should likely be used. I can definitely see the reasoning, but at that point wouldn't we be departing from the majority of style guides, if we were to use Bitcoin even for the currency unit? At least to my eye, it looks wrong to say I gave him two Bitcoins. I think the convention to render currencies in lowercase doesn't have that much to do with their specifics, per se. Bitcoin might not be a stable, widely used unit of account, but nor are complementary currencies and other 'money-like' things which (with some exceptions, mostly for branding) typically don't receive capitals (e.g. stelo, Totnes pound, eusko). GhostOfNoMan 00:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

The thing is, Bitcoin (and this would apply for most if not all cryptos) is more than just a currency. It is a technology, and idea, a platform. The other currencies, or even other units, I don't think can say that.

Saying "Alice gave Bob two bitcoins" surely makes sense, but what if you were to say "Steve built x technology on bitcoin" or "Lightning Network is built on bitcoin." That doesn't look right to me. Repeating the three examples with "Bitcoin," looks better in my mind. Sure it is a unit, but it much more than that too. So for consistency, I think "Bitcoin" would make more sense. But this is more colloquial/conversational to say "Bitcoin" when referring to it in units. In text, the common abbreviation is "BTC" or the unicode character (though that is not frequently used that I have seen). For instance in writing, more often than not text is written or displayed (even when used for payments) as "...received 0.047 BTC" rather than "...received 0.047 bitcoin." ILoveFinance (talk) 02:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Saying "Alice gave Bob two bitcoins" surely makes sense, but what if you were to say "Steve built x technology on bitcoin" or "Lightning Network is built on bitcoin." That doesn't look right to me. – Yeah, it does feel a little... off, in those contexts. I can see why the distinction between the concept and the currency is so often made. Then again, it's only fairly recently that Blockchain became blockchain, so I suppose these things do change over time – I'm curious whether there's any way to assess current usage and trends beyond just Google Ngram. GhostOfNoMan 08:57, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Ngram should never be used when case is important. You search "Bitcoin" and it has 500 results but you can't make a fair comparison to "bitcoin" because "Bitcoin" might start a sentence but "bitcoin" lower-case never could. And headlines using caps would always be "Bitcoin". So it's an unfair comparison. "Bitcoin" is also used in brand-names, company names, compound-words like Bitcoin Cash that have their own case. Also tens of thousands of quotes regurgitated of Satoshi who always wrote "Bitcoin" because in the early days all new tech gets upper-case haha. 45.42.141.34 (talk) 14:01, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Across articles, "Bitcoin" and "bitcoin" have been used interchangeably, within the same articles often times. I'm not sure how standardizing across articles would be considered "BOLD," especially when the established consensus (Bitcoin FAQ) is "bitcoin." Maybe this is just a difference of how we define capitalized "bold." But I appreciate you recognizing that it was not in bad faith. ILoveFinance (talk) 13:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd hesitate to call these changes WP:BOLD; they're minor stylistic updates to bring articles in line with an existing consensus, with appropriate discussion started by ILoveFinance and me. As for: In that train of thought why would the article be named with a capital name, but all of the inbound link across wikipedia be changed to bitcoin – an interesting point, but that's simply because Wikipedia article titles are written in sentence case (with some exceptions like trademarks, e.g. eBay). Per WP:LOWERCASE: Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default. That's why we have Euro (currency) but we write euro. The same applies here. GhostOfNoMan 21:41, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

• As I wrote above: "There's no established consensus on capitalization. As written in the article: "No uniform capitalization convention exists; some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network, and bitcoin, lowercase, for the unit of account. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary use the capitalized and lowercase variants without distinction."". Reliable sources use one or the other spelling. Ethereum and Solana are capitalized but euro, dollar and gold are not. So hard to decide. The only convincing argument is that B- is 3x more common than b- but that could well change in the future as well. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  There does appear to be consensus for Wikipedia, as per Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ, old as it may be. This is not to say we don't change this. ILoveFinance (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  This page itself has zero value unless it reflects a discussion that happened here and led to a consensus. Do we have such a thing? In any case, there might have been a consensus back in 2014 when the page was updated, but as of today (10 years later!), it appears that all across the English Wikipedia, and including on this article (until it was changed recently), the two spellings have been used. So, by definition, there's no consensus anymore. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 14:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  Makes perfect sense. That's all I was suggesting :)

  I provided a comment above with thoughts. ILoveFinance (talk) 14:10, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  There does seem to have been discussion that led to the current FAQ, and a consensus slowly emerged. Re and including on this article (until it was changed recently) – actually, as best I can tell this article has fairly consistently used bitcoin throughout since that time; only a small number of appearances of anything other. I agree that there is a lot of inconsistency across articles. GhostOfNoMan 21:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'd also add that, while editors regularly appear quite inconsistent, titles seem to stick to the current consensus: Economics of bitcoin, Environmental impact of bitcoin, History of bitcoin, List of bitcoin forks, List of bitcoin companies, and so on. Whether the capitalisation is consistent within the articles themselves does vary a lot, although I do note a general preference for bitcoin in most related articles including the aforementioned (and well prior to any recent edits). GhostOfNoMan 22:02, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  Ngram is bad for searches when case matters. Even with the case sensitive option. It uses OCR (optical character recognition) for some books and newspapers and for images of text inside books, OCR is bad for case and makes alot of mistakes. And, you get no insight into how the word was used. Like, are we looking at people writing "Bitcoin" in mid-sentence or when it starts a sentence or when it's in a headline or part of a brand or compound-word etc etc? Ngram is useful but should not be a major reasoning for anything where case is important like this IMO. 45.42.141.34 (talk) 13:36, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• To me, what matters most is that we're consistent. This discussion began when I noticed this article using lowercase bitcoin throughout, but other articles varied: some used bitcoin at all times, others Bitcoin at all times, some made a distinction between Bitcoin for the concept/network/software and bitcoin for the unit of currency, and some were all over the place. I discovered that lowercase has been the preference for this article since 2014 (Talk:Bitcoin/FAQ) and adhered to quite faithfully since that time. The current consensus wasn't the result of an RfC (that I can find) but simply a number of smaller discussions where a general consensus emerged over time. Prior to 2014, it looks like the style was Bitcoin for the network and concept and bitcoin for the unit of currency. I'm honestly not convinced that honouring this distinction particularly benefits the reader (standard English makes no shade of distinction when referring to euro and euros which are always lowercase), but nevertheless it's the style that AP and the BBC use (The Guardian appears to suggest lowercase).

But again, in my view the most important thing is that we have a style we can apply consistently in this article and others. If the point is to benefit the reader, we need to be consistent; why bother making reference to style guides and usage statistics if we're going to have thousands of articles many of which use varied capitalisation, leaving an unfamiliar reader befuddled? I don't have a strong opinion (I'm honestly fine with the status quo of bitcoin) but I do hope we're able to agree that whatever the outcome is, we can apply it consistently and throughout Wikipedia. GhostOfNoMan 21:17, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

It is not true that articles vary that much TBH. They are not completely uniform but most crypto articles write "bitcoin" 90% of the time. This is what crypto editors are familiar with and why changing it suddenly now is pointless and it will cause alot of confusion 45.42.141.34 (talk) 13:29, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I do think bitcoin is more frequent on Wikipedia, but I have very little confidence in that 90% claim. I don't think I could put a percentage on it, but there is absolutely more inconsistency than that. That's why I bothered to raise it here in the first place. GhostOfNoMan 18:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• I strongly think we should remain with "bitcoin".

1) It has been lower-case for a very long time. It's what most editors in the crypto space are familiar with for bitcoin. Do not underestimate this and please don't undo things like this lightly.

2) No strong compelling reason to suddenly change it after +10 years?

3) Changing it will cause confusion. The "Bitcoin for technology and bitcoin for unit" is even more confusing. There is no need for that because it does not add clarity. A sentence so confusing that capitals would clear up the confusion is obviously a bad sentence that needs rewording. It is just a bad idea.

4) It is an easier task to begin updating pages to use "bitcoin" uniformly because most of them already use lower-case 90%. If we change then we have to change so many article names and texts. For no reason!

For those reasons we should continue to write "bitcoin" IMO. (I apologize if I got the format wrong or made typos) 45.42.141.34 (talk) 13:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• Also a strong argument is other currencies like has already been pointed out. It's dollar, pound, euro. It doesn't matter if we mean the "concept" or the central bank or the fiscal policy or anything else? A euro is always a euro. Yes bitcoin is different (it's also a technology and a network and a blockchain) but none of those are so special they need a different case. They're just associated things. Fiat currencies have things bitcoin doesn't too but we don't randomly switch lower-case to upper-case for those. The bitcoin network backs bitcoin, the bitcoin blockchain records bitcoin transactions, Satoshi wrote the bitcoin software so now we can send bitcoins to buy bitcoin merchandise and alpaca socks. Just my two cents. 45.42.141.34 (talk) 13:50, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

If the United States Patent Office continues to refuse to register bitcoin as a trademark that would be dispositive for lower case bitcoin, right? A few other countries have registered bitcoin as a trademark—some of those registrations are not for the financial instrument. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 04:13, 21 October 2024 (UTC) —

• Ping a few more editors that edited here in days of yore, see if they care to contribute. @Retimuko:, @N2e:, @David Gerard:, @AndyTheGrump:, @Kiwi128:. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:31, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
• fwiw, I used to capitalise "Bitcoin" all the time but gave up cos AP style is to lowercase the names of cryptos, so "bitcoin" is more common now it seems to me. Compare the lowercasing of "internet" even though it's a single entity and you could argue it's a proper name - David Gerard (talk) 19:02, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 5 November 2024

Change: "In the blockchain, bitcoins are linked to specific addresses that are hashes of a public key."

to: "In the blockchain, bitcoins are linked to specific addresses that are hashes of a public key or redeem script."

This is because in general, bitcoin addresses are not only hashes of a public key. Tannmauser (talk) 11:54, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi, can you please provide a reliable source to back this change? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 14:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/keys/address

https://river.com/learn/terms/r/redeem-script Tannmauser (talk) 09:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

These are not considered reliable sources per Wikipedia's standards unfortunately. Please provide an academic paper, a book, or an article from a mainstream media. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 10:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Mastering Bitcoin (Chapter 7)

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Mastering_Bitcoin/IXmrBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 Tannmauser (talk) 10:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Bowler the Carmine | talk 18:11, 5 November 2024 (UTC)