What Does A Bitcoin Look Like?

By Prashant Jha

Ask a citizen of the United States, and he or she would be able to describe to you a dollar bill without so much as blinking. An Indian would have the picture of Mahatma Gandhi on an INR note memorised from his or her early childhood years. But will all the Bitcoin enthusiasts be able to tell you what a Bitcoin even looks like?

What does a Bitcoin look like? This question is bound to stump even the most dedicated of crypto enthusiasts.

Bitcoin, after all, is not tangible, it is simply transferred to one wallet address to the other, and accessed using a complicated string of numbers called the private key.

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How Is Bitcoin Represented?

Bitcoin, is of course represented by its ubiquitous symbol, the letter “B” within a circle, with a pair of lines running above and beneath the letter a little like how they would in a “$” symbol. Online, you will often see souvenirs in the mold of this symbol being sold in colours such as gold or silver.

When you try to see or represent an actual Bitcoin, it shows up simply as lines of code, full of statements that few except computer science geeks would really get a grasp on.

A Bitcoin is sent to a wallet, which may be a tangibly physical hardware wallet in some cases. Even so, the identity of that wallet comes through via the wallet address, which is nothing but a string of alphanumeric characters.

You May Also Read: Top 50 Richest Bitcoin Addresses

Is There Any Physical Representation Of Bitcoin?

Anyone is absolutely free to come up with a physical rendition of Bitcoin but that would have to be absolutely unofficial.

This is because Bitcoin is primarily hinged on being a decentralized currency. To have printed notes would necessitate control by a central authority that goes against the very premise of Bitcoin.

Several internet users have come with physical versions of actual Bitcoins, representative of what a Bitcoin is worth at a given time.

Long back, about half a decade ago, an entity by the name of “Casascius” was involved in manufacturing physical versions of Bitcoins in the “coin” form. These were available in the form of gold-plated, silver-plated and brass coins.

In recent times, another netizen has designed a physical Bitcoin: resembling a currency note this time.

With a picture of Alan Turing, a QR Code, the private key and denomination, this Bitcoin is sized quite similar to most fiat notes around the world. Designed by Carlos Bueno, this was made available on GitHub by the name “bitcoin-printer” on GitHub. The picture is as follows:

Therefore, you see, Bitcoins have often been represented physically in jest but they really look like a string of codes.

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Prashant Jha

As a content writer Prashant believes in presenting complex topics in simple laymen terms. He is a tech enthusiast and an avid reader.

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