Kanye West has filed a lawsuit to stop production of Coinye West digital currency, saying they unjustly cash in on his fame.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Manhattan, seeks to stop companies and unidentified people from exchanging the digital currency.
It is also asking for damages for hurting the rapper’s reputation.
However, its makers appear to have backed down from a court case after a message was posted on Twitter.
“#BLAMEKANYE Coinye devs have dispersed. New ownership, better things coming,” the @CoinyeCoins tweet said.
One of the websites linked with Coinye also posted a message on its homepage reading: “Coinye is dead. You win, Kanye.”
Kanye West has filed a lawsuit to stop production of Coinye West digital currency
Kanye West’s lawsuit says the creators of the digital coins “brazenly admit” they used his name and likeness to associate their new currency with the rapper.
Its creators used a cartoon image of a coin featuring the musician in large sunglasses.
The lawsuit also claims the people behind the currency boasted it couldn’t be stopped whether it “looks like a dollar, a dog or a cartoon picture of a rapper”.
Coinye West, also known as crypto-currency, is similar to Bitcoin, a paperless currency people can use like cash anywhere in the world.
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A new virtual currency inspired by Kanye West is set to be launched, and has been dubbed Coinye West.
The rapper is not involved and has yet to comment on Coinye West’s inception.
Coinye West will follow in the footsteps of Dogecoin, another virtual currency based on the popular Doge meme.
The value of Bitcoin, the most famous virtual currency, peaked at over $1000 at the end of 2013, but is currently worth around $850.
Various alternatives to Bitcoin have sprung up, such as Litecoin, Namecoin and PPCoin.
Virtual currencies are often linked to the purchase of illegal items, namely drugs, thanks to transactions being extremely difficult to trace.
However, more humorous currencies like Dogecoin are used for more tongue-in-cheek transactions.
One user, posting on Dogemarket, a section on popular link sharing site Reddit, offered Dogecoins in exchange for ideas to name a company.
Coinye West will be launched on January 11
“I thought the whole Dogecoin thing was interesting,” said Jeremy Bonney, from virtual currency news site Coindesk.
“It grew into something somewhat legitimate. There are people that genuinely believe in it out there.”
The makers of Coinye West have lofty ambitions for the currency which they described as a “cryptocurrency for the masses”.
Speaking anonymously to music site Noisey, they said: “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.”
They said they planned to give away a number of Coinye to early users when the currency launches on January 11.
“It will get people who are on the fence interested and help them to start using the currency, and we hope they’ll share it with their friends, too.”
However, one Bitcoin expert urged caution in investing in new virtual currencies that were as yet untested in public use.
“There’s been a number of people who have put out ‘joke’ currencies in the past,” said Johnathan Turrall, chief technology officer at Metalair, a cryptocurrency start-up based at the University of Sussex.
“There were some coins in the past that seemed to be a <<pump and dump>> operation.
“In one case, the original developers launched on obscure websites, but when they took it mainstream, and the price spiked, they sold up and disappeared. Estimated earnings in one instance were $800,000.”
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