Kanye West Unamused By New Currency 'Coinye West'

Kanye Westhas instructed lawyers to shut down a new virtual currency called Coinye West, which launched today.

The virtual currency – similar to Bitcoins – is named after the rapper and features a cartoon version of Kanye on a gold medallian.

After the concept went viral this week, Kanye had his lawyers send the anonymous currency creators a cease and desist letter, reports the Wall Street Journal.

“Given Mr. West’s wide-ranging entrepreneurial accomplishments, consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Mr. West is the source of your services,” read the letter to the seven coders who are working on the project.

However, in response, the coders simply dropped the ‘West’, changing the name of their currency to Coinye, and moved up the release date of the currency to today.  

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

The people behind Coinye have also changed the appearance of the new virtual money. Whereas before the coins featured a cartoon of Kanye wearing his trademark shades, the new version depicts Kanye as a fish, a reference to a South Park episode that parodied the rapper’s sense of humour.

However, ‘Ye might come to regret his response to the virtual currency created in his honour, if Lily Allen’s experience with Bitcoins is anything to go by. 

A few days ago the singer wrote on Twitter: “About 5 years ago someone asked me to stream a gig live on [website] Second Life for hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, "as if" I said. #idiot #idiot.”

The value of Bitcoins has exploded over the last 5 years, with the virtual coins now worth over £500 each.

Image © Facebook/CoinyeWestNews

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