Ahem: Dear AP,
TLDR No. 1: Must we type out “too long, didn’t read” to explain the anacronym to readers on first use? Adding nuance, I’m a columnist, not a real reporter.
Which is why I can get away with an exclamation point now and then, for instance.
TLDR No. 2: Lower-case bitcoin maximalism reigns! Upper-case B only when starting a sentence or with a proper noun, such as Bitcoin News, Inc.
TLDR #3: The plural of bitcoin is bitcoin.
Signed,
Bitcoiners (which, being a distinct people group, can be capitalized, but since lower b maximalism reigns, defer to the author’s choice; just edit for consistency within the piece. Capital B to start a sentence, of course)
P.S. Hey AP, I didn’t put a period after that closed parenthesis because I normally wouldn’t after signing my name. But tell me, do you think it looks weird?
So, hi. Let’s catch you up.
Previously, on your bitcoin guy’s column:
“’What is bitcoin?’
“Other than ‘hope’ possibly the best, most concise yet 100% correct and conclusive, near-perfect mechanical definition of bitcoin that I believe has ever existed is:
Bitcoin is the world’s first decentralized, cryptographically secured digital currency.
Maybe I’m biased, as I helped craft the above definition. Well, I helped a little. Very little. I was later given access to the Gdoc, OK? I can’t tell you who the actual author/authors behind it are, as their names and mine go unpublished, but some were brilliant bitcoin news and finance writers I was already following.
Believe it or not, discussion actually went into whether the word “secure” needed that letter “d” or not. Is bitcoin cryptographically secure, or is bitcoin cryptographically secured? Well, both are true, but which is the truth?
And shouldn’t there be maybe one other comma, somewhere? Or a hyphen? Or does the chocolate chip cookie rule apply?
“Welcome to my brain.”
So you can see I take this all seriously and as professionally as possible. For further context, “previously” continued:
“I shared last week that in 2024, I was privileged to freelance for bitcoin financial tech firm Lorenzo Protocol, copy editing their bitcoin tutorial series, dubbed Lorenzo Academy. In my year of freelance-editing these articles, I can say that Lorenzo has produced some valuable educational resources for ‘the bit-curious.’”
And cutting to the chase — finally — when I started for Lorenzo, they were also in the process of trying out freelance writers as well. Top experts in the industry, as I said, but after our grueling first round of submissions, I knew that I had to get them all writing from the same page. I’d worked with two style guides prior, and now I had to produce one. It’s eight pages long, by the way; I can do this all day.
Of course, I defaulted them immediately to AP style. I was quite accustomed to working within your guidelines, as I spent 18 months also freelancing as a copy editor with Bitcoin Magazine, my first paid AP work, followed by others.
A quick aside: When I’m selling myself on “Why hire me?” as a freelance copy editor, I always pitch the companies with, “Well, if you write your blogs, articles, press releases, etc., in AP style, that kind of makes it so much easier for, say, a hurried content editor to just grab your work, credit and link back, or whatever. But if they know they don’t have to clean it up at all, it’s already in perfect AP style for them … . Well, I can’t promise anything, but you know?”
Works. Every. Time.
To B or not to B; that b the question
So, on this style guide, first off, thank you so much for towing the line on keeping the “b” in bitcoin lowercased. Before I darkened the Roswell Daily Record’s door, in fact, I sent a letter to the editor here when I noticed they were capitalizing bitcoin.
I sent the newspaper the AP rule on bitcoin (link embedded for online readers) and quoted your same words in my style guide:
Bitcoin — all currencies are lowercase, always: bitcoin, dollar, euro, gold and silver, yen, ruble, ether, xrp … .
Also: “We now use lowercase bitcoin on all references.” AP 56th Edition, June 2022.
My “bitcoin entry” above continues: “Exceptions will include proper nouns, like Bitcoin Magazine or Dollar General. …”
“Old-school” publications may still occasionally differentiate between capitalizing references to “the Bitcoin Network” proper, and that’s okay, but really, this has all gone the way of the Internet and E-mail (to internet and email); lower b maximalism reigns!
Even if trying to honor that old-school “Bitcoin Network” way of writing, most of my readers don’t even know what a bitcoin network even is. “Computers? The community of people who like bitcoin? Is that where I plug in my bitcoins to charge them?”
STOP confusing people, people. Take the pride hit and communicate well. Like a hyphen or comma, default to clarity. No further discussion; they cut my word count.
Also, with the letter “s” in red, like the “Cigarette-smoking Man,” of TV’s “The X-Files” fame, said of the Buffalo Bills winning the Super Bowl:
Bitcoins — “As long as I’m alive, that doesn’t happen.” Popular industry tech/editing consensus is to treat bitcoin like water, sheep, deer, etc. The concept of owning one full bitcoin is being lost to society, so grammatically, as ocean or lake (which yes can be plural) is to drops of water, bitcoin is a large mass divided into measurable units called satoshis (sats okay on second use).
Also, according to AP, “crypto” is already the longstanding AP style short jargon for cryptography, the secure communication technology which gave us bitcoin. As I wrote last week in “No, Satoshi Nakamoto is not a time-traveling alien from Narnia,” it is quite disrespectful to the human time and effort, the proof of work, that went into bitcoin’s origin to simply replace these great pioneers with “alt” coins.
While “good luck getting any writer” to obey that, AP, I beg of you, please continue to tow this line, as long as you are able and willing.
Be inventive writers: Say digital assets, tokens, mix things up. When most say crypto, the term can incorporate broader topics like NFTs, Web 3 and DeFi platforms, etc., things which are not currencies. So crypto really isn’t short for cryptocurrency; it literally means something else, twice.
Oh, and TLDR? Well, dear AP, since I’m also an editor I already know: Yes, I’d make a writer type it out on first use. “Your internet chat lingo doesn’t work here, Buster. And neither does your magical internet money.”
And while I’m at, journalists, Satoshi Nakamoto isn’t your buddy, pal. He’s not your friend, guy. Last name on second use, and always. Never Satoshi.
I have spoken.
Now everybody go have fun playing with your bitcoins.
Guy Malone, a certified bitcoin professional, holds three certifications in digital currencies and has written and edited for publications such as Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin News and Cointelegraph. Reader input for future columns is welcome. Contact Malone via copyedit@rdrnews.com and/or @RichNFrenz on X. The views expressed in this column are those of the author.
