On September 19, 2011, genix proposed standardizing the protocol improvement process. Genix adapted PEP 0001 of the Python programming language to Bitcoin, suggesting the name BEP – "Bitcoin Enhancement Proposal".
Later, during correspondence in the bitcoin developers mailing list, Gavin Andresen proposed changing the abbreviation to BIP – "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal". The reason was that the abbreviation BEP was already used by the BitTorrent protocol – "BitTorrent Enhancement Proposal".