Kanye Doesn’t Like Coinye, Which Responds To Legal Action With Early Launch

As you may have heard, seven anonymous hackers have been planning to make the dream of Kanye West-based coinage a reality. The joining of music’s foremost self-proclaimed trendsetter and one of 2013’s most fascinating technological trends seemed a natural union. The founders clearly thought so. Perhaps they hoped West, who is notoriously in a constant state of disbelief that his genius is not roundly recognized, would appreciate some folks who may actually appreciate his genius.

“We’re really not sure how Kanye is gonna react to this,” said the Coinye creators in an interview with Noisey. “We hope he loves it, but if he doesn’t, he really isn’t someone we want to piss off.”

It seems that the creators opting for anonymity was a necessary precaution. News broke yesterday that West’s lawyers filed a cease-and-desist order on January 6 against Coinye’s creators, citing alleged trademark infringement. Their reasoning is that the use of both West’s name and face, both quite ubiquitous worldwide, would lead coin(ye) collectors to believe that it was West who was responsible for their new favorite thing. The document also cites “misappropriation of Mr. West’s music videos embedded in the <coinyewest.com> website.”

The document is available in full via the Wall Street Journal.

Much as their inspiration would do in the face of scrutiny or a negative response, the Coinye creators have only redoubled their efforts. The project’s domain is now registered in India: www.coinyeco.in, with the “West” being dropped from all things Coinye. The launchdate was also moved up to last night, with the website’s site reading, “Due to legal pressure, we will be launching today January 7, at 7:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time.”

The image on the site has also changed, with the more flattering, traditional cartoon depiction of West’s face being replaced with a riff on South Park’s more fish-based take on the rapper.

“We want to release this to the public before the man can try to crush it,” said one of the coders to the Wall Street Journal. “They’ll still come after us, but that’s OK.”

Unlike some recent forms of digital cryptocurrency,  Coinye is more than just a one-note joke. The Coinye coders are selling more serious goals than the name would suggest. In the afore-mentioned interview with Noisey, the coders explained the goals for and inspiration of Coinye:

Our goal with Coinye West is to make it easier for people to use cryptocurrency. Right now, it’s kind of a dark art for people to mine coins. We plan on releasing a front end to the “mining” programs called CoinyeMiner. It will make things a lot more simple and people will be able to make their own coins. We’re working round-the-clock to get everything going as smoothly as possible.

We chose to represent Kanye because he is and always has been a trendsetter, and he’s always keeping things unique. I can picture a future where Coinye is used to buy concert tickets, with cryptographically verified virtual tickets, and other ideas I can’t give away just yet.

The interview also includes details about cryptocurrency and mining for the uninitiated.

Whether West will appreciate this very West-like strong-headed contrarianism is yet to be seen, but this initial legal action and West’s own history seem to dash any hopes for peaceful coexisting.

Tyler Hanan
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