[GNC] Bitcoin Lightning payments

[Peter West]

The existing structure of 4217 codes will not work for crypto. It uses the two-letter country code plus one letter for the currency. (Do any of these conflict with he three letter country codes? As it happens, yes: BTN, CHE, MKD) All these codes are mnemonic. (There may be a few for which that is stretching the point, but not for lack of wanting a mnemonic.) One letter will not do for crypto; there are too many, and they are proliferating. The upshot is that whatever happens to crypto designations through ISO, the structure will be different.

One might select an otherwise unused first letter (X is the only contender) and provide two letters for designating the currency. That will severely restrict the mnemonic value of the code. There may well be competing schemes, but every exchange uses one – three or four letters from my observations – and that situation will soon enough resolve to a single set. Who knows what ISO will eventually come up with to accommodate crypto, except that it will not be the same structure?

Does GnuCash make ANY use of the internal structure of 4217 codes? If so, there’s a development problem right there. If not, things are easier. As we speak, exchanges are providing cross-currency quotations for both ISO currencies and crypto. How do they do it? As long as the crypto designators (like BTC, BUSD, ETH, DOGE) are distinct from the currency designators, the indicated currency is unambiguous.

If you wait for 4217, you’ll be waiting a long time.

Or so it seems to me.

—
Peter West
pbw at pbw.id.au
And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.

> On 19 Jun 2022, at 7:32 am, Michael or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
…
> I'll reply not a a developer but as somebody whose done LOTS of software design in my day.
> 
> a) If the developers did the job right, the ISO currency codes are not hard coded but in "app data" read in when the program starts << that means they can be changed without changing the code in any program, just data in a file.
> 
> b) NO, not a "lame excuse". Misunderstanding of what the ISO is/does. It sets STANDARDS. In other words, "for currency X use ABX" (or whatever). Dr. David, if there is no agreed standard for what the three letter currency code for "bitcoin" is, what should the developers use? Should they simply use ANY three characters not already in use for some currency that has an ISO currency code? There are > 17 thousand three character codes possible and only the order of a hundred or two in use. Whatever they pick the odds are worse then 10,000:1 it won't agree with the code chosen by any other team of software developers OR with what eventually become the standardized currency code for bitcoin if/when the ISO chooses one.
> 
>    Your beef should not be with the gnucash developers but with the ISO. You bitcoin users need to lobby THEM to choose a code for bitcoin. Actually, there are TWO standards you need them to choose. One one is the two character prefix to be used when a currency that is not the currency of a nation state (or union of states, like EU in EUR). Then the third character that means "bitcoin".
> 
>        Actually, there ARE several codes (competing codes) in use for Bitcoin. Any of those might end up as the eventual code except BTC (which violates ISO 4217 because BT is the code for an existing nation state). When I was suggesting that a two character code first, note that "CC" (for "cryptocurrency" will not do as "CC" already assigned as a "country code".