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The connection between Bitcoin and “Bitchan” likely originated from a July 14, 2011 thread on the Bitcointalk forums titled “Explain Bitcoin to My Kid,” where a user posted a wide-eyed, coin-cheeked mascot to make hash rates and wallets feel less intimidating. Because the forum crowd tended to be both pedantic and playful (the top reply nitpicked block interval math while another asked if “-chan” was short for blockchain), the Bitchan meme coalesced quickly.
Bitchan
The thread linked to a tiny PNG hosted on an image bin and to a print-on-demand sticker shop experimenting with bitcoins. Within forty-eight hours, a “0.50 BTC for a sheet of Bitchan stickers” listing had sold out, and bloggers used the episode to contrast using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange with the friction of early small-batch e-commerce. Follow-up posts framed Bitchan as a “visual wallet fairy” that made cold storage less scary, and the character began appearing in forum signatures alongside paper-wallet guides.
In late July 2011, a community wiki added a 32×32 favicon of Bitchan, and a hobbyist client skin placed the mascot’s outline on its splash screen. A well-known core contributor quipped on IRC that they “didn’t review any patches with Bitchan on them,” which was screen-captured and circulated as tacit canon. The line between joke and identity blurred.
By August 2011, a Tumblr roundup titled “Things You Can Do With Bitcoin Right Now” featured panels of Bitchan helping a parent buy a domain, tip a podcaster, and order curry, situating the mascot among everyday purchases rather than arcane math. When the community’s What is Bitcoin? explainer video was refreshed that fall, a corner-frame Bitchan sticker appeared during the wallet-backup segment-blink-and-you-miss-it, but enough to trigger a wave of remixes.
References to Bitchan subsequently appeared in blog posts, wallet README files, and conference slides throughout late 2011 and early 2012.
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