What’s the latest on capitalization rules for “Bitcoin”? It’s my understanding that “Bitcoin” the network is capitalized and “bitcoin” the currency is lowercase. However, that seems to have fallen out of favor with the preference to always have it lowercase.
Anyone have an opinion on this? I’m writing some copy for a project and want to follow the most widely used convention.
I always use "Bitcoin" to reference the network/concept, and "bitcoin" when referring to the currency itself.
I think its a pointless distinction. But if I have to choose, I prefer lower case, simply because plural bitcoin is bitcoin, so its an uncountable noun, like milk, and I don't think proper nouns can be uncountable. And that actually reinforces the argument of Bitcoin being the network... except that its a pointless distinction.
Read this first as capitalization of bitcoin, as in markets.
Yeah I like lowercase but sometimes the autocorrect capitalizes it and I’m too lazy to switch it.
Seeing someone else wonder about this is pushing me to give up on the capitalized version
Hah!!! Same. Did you see this reply? It makes a good argument for that.
Nice, good enough for me!
For Mastering Bitcoin, the publisher wanted to go with Bitcoin-the-network and bitcoin-the-currency. I was fine with that, as its what I normally used, but I discovered when working with the non-Bitcoiner editor and proofreaders that they had a hard time guessing which was which. I got a lot of queries about whether I really meant to use caps (or vice versa for lowercase), especially since I did occasionally use the wrong case. Next time I work with normies, I'll probably ask to just use common noun casing throughout.
Thank you for sharing this! Nothing like being repeatedly asked “did you mean to capitalize this?” 😭😅 I think your experience makes a good argument for common noun casing, something I’ve been starting to think about more.
If I recall from Major Jason Lowery’s book #software he distinguishes the two just as you did
Uppercase for the network
Lowercase for the coin/token
I've always used it the way you describe.
We switched the Bitcoin Design Guide to all lowercase a few years ago. The lowercase/uppercase distinction might be a nice subtle approach, but will most people really get that? Isn't it easier to read when things are a bit more explicit, like using "the bitcoin network"? And does it translate across languages (for example, Germany has very different capitalization rules)?
Makes sense to me! I’m sure you can imagine the context in which I was asking this question 🤗 I should have come straight to you, haha!
