Jack Dorsey adds Bitcoin emoji on Twitter

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter and the founder and CEO of Square, has announced that users can now use a bitcoin emoji on Twitter appearing the hashtags “#bitcoin” and “#btc", CoinDesk reported.

Dorsey also tagged the Twitter handle of The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organization based in California that is dedicated to maintaining and publishing the Unicode Standard.

Bitcoin’s symbol “₿” was added to the Unicode Standard back in 2017. However, the symbol has not been Recommended For General Interchange (RGI), CoinDesk reported. This basically means that there is no emoji for the leading cryptocurrency that is supported across popular social media networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The activation of the bitcoin emoji on Twitter could be the first step of turning it into an RGI emoji.

At present, the bitcoin hashtag only works for conventional tags but not for tags like “$BTC” which are often used by Twitter users while tweeting about cryptocurrency trading.

Twitter reportedly charges brands or companies up to $1 million for them to add their emoji or symbol after a designated hashtag. Big companies love this because it boosts their marketing campaign. For instance, #PokemenLetsGo purchased one in late 2018 and #Coca-Cola did the same in 2015. However, the addition was temporary and it only lasted while their marketing campaign was still on-going.

Dorsey’s efforts in making an emoji for bitcoins isn’t surprising. The computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur’s Square platform has supported bitcoin trading since 2014.

In October, Dorsey also invested in cryptocurrency startup CoinList. The amount was not disclosed but was part of CoinList’s $10 million funding.

“Crypto needs a trustworthy platform for launching new projects. CoinList leads the industry in that role, and trading is a logical next step,” Dorsey said.

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