Thank you for the response and explanation.

I wish the marketing power of the name choice did not compel me to choose it, because I would prefer not to use something that anyone else had attempted to market. Unfortunately, I see this as the best name by far in order to take on Bitcoin which is what I intend to do. I am not just building a niche, but intending to replace Bitcoin in some potentially large markets where it had decided to ignore the market (e.g. micro-transactions, anonymity as a key property of fungible money, friendly developer APIs, block chain features other than just Bitcoin, etc).

It is clear that the first proposed use of 'BIT' or 'bits' was the proposal to use it as an alias for µBTC, which is a prior art on your use of Bitz as a currency unit. However this was not widely adopted by the millions in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Your coin is not even a smidgen of widely adopted (certainly not users, and only a modicum of investors) so there will be no confusion if Bits gains wide user adoption. And Bits doesn't gain wide adoption, then both of us failed in the user market. As for confusion in the investor speculation market where your adoption could be claimed to be not totally zero, I want to assure you I will not be marketing Bits on these forums nor to the investment speculators, thus there will be no confusion in the market where you have some small (perhaps growing) but not zero market share.

So in other words, there will be no confusion because while Bits is nascent, it won't be promoted (not by me at least) in these forums where you promote Bitz, but rather directly to users via other distribution channels where you do not market Bitz. And if Bits becomes a widely adopted user phenomenon that is on speculators' radar, then there won't be confusion which Bits the speculators are interested in by that juncture.

I was aware of Bitstar and their technically incorrect use of BITS as the currency code (XBT or XBS would be correct), but I didn't know they were using BITS as the currency unit. Bitstar uses the currency symbol ฿ and I proposed Bits use Ƀ. Indeed Bitstar uses the 'BITS' currency unit whereas I have proposed using the 'bits' currency unit:



Also we should note that the name of the coin is Bitstar and not Bits, which is not confusing at all. If someone searches for "bits coin" or "bits cash", they will end up at my project's website and not at Bitstarcoin.com. If they search for "bitstar", "bitstar coin", "bitstar bits", they will end up at Bitstarcoin.com.

So we have two prior arts on using the term 'BITS' (even the Coinbase capitalized the 'BIT' for the µBTC alias) for the currency unit, but no prior art for using the term Bits as a crypto-token protocol name.

And what matters in the end is whether there will be confusion due to two very similar names having similar levels of market awareness. I don't think there is much confusion between Bits and Bitstar. If someone says "pay me some bits" at this time, no one would have any clue whether they mean Bitcoin BITS, Bitstar BITS, or Bitz bitz. So at this time since these projects or usages are very rare, then someone would need to qualify which kind of bits they want. So in that case they would say "pay me some Bits' bits". If one of these usages becomes very widely adopted in the user market, then no one will be confused which bits someone is referring to. As for investors, there won't be any confusion between Bits and Bitstar.

I really don't see great confusion between Bits and Bitstar. Bitz and Bits could be very confusing if both are well known in a market. I think I explained to you that for the nascent investor speculation market, Bits won't be competing with Bitz for eyeball share. If Bits becomes very popular as I hope in user markets, then Bits will have won and there won't be any confusion. If Bits dies on the vine in user markets, then you will keep your small share of the investor speculation market exclusively.

It is not a perfect situation, but I think it will work out okay. If I am successful as I hope to be, you may get more from selling your domain than from your crypto-token project. If not, your efforts won't be diluted in the meantime.

To protect the Bits crypto-token protocol usage, I registered the following domains:

bitscoin.org
bitscoin.us

I am amazed the first domain is available, because it is a one letter misspelling of bitcoin.org which is taken to be the official domain of Bitcoin. So if people start using bits and get confused with Bitcoin, they might type bitscoin and end up at my site. Note it appears bitscoin.com and bitscoin.net are both for sale (the latter for $1500).


Remember up thread it was smooth (but more so another Monero supporter) who were stating I should shut up and code instead of focusing first on choosing a name. I understand the priority of marketing and even apparently the Bitcoin community did not.

Edit: there is more discussion about the adoption of "BIT" or "bit" for Bitcoin's µBTC alias, as well the need to adopt XBT instead of BTC as the ISO currency code. I believe it would make much more sense for Bitcoin to use XBC and for Bits to use XBT. But if Bitcoin is going to claim XBT, then Bits can choose XIT, XBC, XBI, or XBS.