The currency sign for Bitcoin (₿), added to Unicode in 2017 after real demand — not to be confused with the Thai baht ฿ or the BTC ticker. Click any symbol to copy it instantly.
The Bitcoin symbol (₿, U+20BF) marks an amount denominated in Bitcoin — a price, a tip jar, a donation line. But unlike the older currency signs Unicode absorbed as routine formatting, ₿ was added in 2017 in direct response to organic demand from a fast-growing user base, and it's worn as an identity badge in bios about as often as it's used to write a number.
The Unicode Bitcoin sign, ready to paste into a bio, display name, price, or donation line.
Characters ₿ is regularly mistyped for — same B-with-a-vertical-stroke silhouette, entirely different characters and codepoints.
The rest of the world's money signs — the neighbors ₿ sits beside in the Currency Symbols block and in most price fields.
Most of the currency signs you can type were encoded by Unicode as a matter of routine text formatting — the character existed in the world, so it got a code point. The Bitcoin sign arrived differently. ₿ was added in Unicode version 10.0, released in 2017, notably recent next to the older signs it now sits beside in the Currency Symbols block. It was included specifically in response to real, organic demand from a fast-growing user base — not because a standards committee was tidying up currency formatting, but because a lot of people had started needing a symbol that didn't yet officially exist.
That origin shows up in how the symbol is used. Beyond writing a price or a tip line, ₿ functions as an identity marker — a tribal badge for "Bitcoin maximalists," people who believe Bitcoin specifically, not crypto in general, is the future of money, and who signal that belief by dropping the ₿ straight into a bio or display name. The style leans ostentatious and half-ironic-half-sincere, the kind of bio that jokes about "minimum brain, maximum Bitcoin" while entirely meaning it. In that role ₿ behaves less like ¢ or ₩ and more like a flag emoji or a political symbol: it's there to say something about the person, not to denominate a number.
Two things are worth keeping straight. ₿ is not the Thai baht sign ฿ (U+0E3F): the two share a B-with-a-vertical-stroke silhouette but are unrelated characters with different code points and different origins, and it's genuinely easy to mistype one for the other. And ₿ is not "BTC" — ₿ is the symbol, BTC is the three-letter ticker or currency code you see on exchanges, the same split that separates $ from USD.
| Platform / Tool | Method |
|---|---|
| Word / Windows (Unicode input) | Type 20BF, then press Alt+X |
| Windows (legacy NumPad Alt code) | Not available — ₿ isn't in the Windows-1252 code page |
| Mac | Character Viewer (Cmd+Ctrl+Space), search "bitcoin" |
| iPhone / Android | No dedicated key — paste it from here, or save a keyboard text shortcut |
| HTML | ₿ (decimal) or ₿ (hex) — no named entity exists |
CSS content | content: "\20BF" |
| LaTeX | No widely-adopted package ships a dedicated \bitcoin command — use the Unicode character directly with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX |
The Bitcoin symbol is ₿, formally named BITCOIN SIGN and assigned the code point U+20BF. It lives in the Currency Symbols block of Unicode, alongside signs like the euro (€) and the Indian rupee (₹), and it was added in Unicode version 10.0, released in 2017.
Most currency signs were encoded as a matter of routine text formatting, but ₿ arrived in 2017 specifically in response to real, organic demand from a fast-growing user base — notably late compared with the older signs already in the block. That demand-driven origin is unusual for a currency character and reflects how quickly Bitcoin's own community grew before it had an official symbol to type.
They look almost identical — both are a B-like shape with a vertical stroke through it — but they are unrelated characters. The Bitcoin sign is ₿ (U+20BF); the Thai baht sign is ฿ (U+0E3F). Different code points, different origins, different currencies. It's an easy one to mistype, so copy the exact character you want rather than trusting the shape alone.
No. ₿ is the symbol, while BTC is the three-letter ticker or currency code used on exchanges and in price listings. The relationship is the same as $ to USD — one is the glyph you place next to a number, the other is the abbreviation used in tables and trading pairs.
The quickest way is to copy it from this page. In Word on Windows you can type 20BF and press Alt+X; there's no classic NumPad Alt code because ₿ isn't in the legacy Windows-1252 code page. On a Mac, open the Character Viewer (Cmd+Ctrl+Space) and search "bitcoin". In HTML use ₿ (decimal) or ₿ (hex) — there is no named entity — and in CSS use content: "\20BF".
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