| Well, without hitting up the Google I
| have no idea how to type that B-with-a-line-through
| it, either.
Guess why?
Designers of currency symbols have silently agreed to use two bars to mean just that: "this symbol represents a currency". So the B with two bars, for Bitcoin, is perfect.
The real solution (that may need a website too, to advertise it to the masses, least not the peeps @ HN) is obviously to agree on some free unicode slot to occupy and to get font designers to incorporate this two bar 'B' into existing fonts, in this slot.
That is not correct. There was not a transition from "two vertical bars" to "one vertical bar" [1]. Please document yourself before posting.
I did not talk about the history. I talked about a typographical design trend that pertains to currency symbols. Also not that better typefaces sometimes have both versions on the $ sign. One and two strokes. The default is admittedly still the single bar one though.
Expert discussion re. the one bar/two bar $ sign, that could be an interesting read: http://www.typophile.com/node/17976
"Ƀ (U+0243) is a unicode character used as a "capitalized alternate symbol for the voiced bilabial fricative in Americanist phonetic notation"
Plus, yeah, I'm standing by my first reaction that it looks, if not like crap, than kind of random. It doesn't really communicate anything on its own. A bystander won't see it and think "this is a currency symbol." Which I would think Bitcoin proponents would want!