Digital currency destabilizing effect on the Chinese Yuan currency due to speculation. Recent interest in cryptocurrencies has prompted renewed interest in digital currencies, with bitcoin, introduced in 2008, becoming the most widely used and accepted digital currency. According to the European Central Bank's 2015 "Virtual currency schemes – a further analysis" report, virtual currency is a digital representation of value, not issued by a central bank, credit institution or e-money institution, which, in some circumstances, can be used as an alternative to money. In the previous report of October 2012, the virtual currency was defined as a type of unregulated, digital money,
Currency symbol Currency symbol A currency symbol is a graphic symbol used as a shorthand for a currency's name, especially in reference to amounts of money. Although several former currency symbols were rendered obsolete by the adoption of the euro, having a new and unique currency symbol implementation of which requires the adoption of new Unicode and type formats has now become a status symbol for international currencies. The European Commission considers the global recognition of the euro sign part of its success. In 2009, India launched a public competition to replace the ₨ ligature it shared with neighbouring countries. It finalised