Coinye, formerly Coinye West, is a

scrypt In cryptography, scrypt (pronounced "ess crypt") is a password-based key derivation function created by Colin Percival in March 2009, originally for the Tarsnap online backup service. The algorithm was specifically designed to make it costl ...

-based

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It ...

that was issued cease and desist letters for using the likeness of American hip hop artist

Kanye West Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...

as its

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fic ...

despite West having no affiliation with the project. The project was abandoned by the original developers following West's filing of a trademark infringement lawsuit against them.

History

Release

Coinye was originally slated for release on January 11, 2014, but legal pressure prompted David P. McEnery Jr. and his development team to release the source code and mining software on January 7, a few days ahead of schedule. Early press materials promised a proper and fair release, with no pre-allocation of coins. However, later statements from the developers confirmed that approximately 0.37% of the maximum money supply of Coinye had been reserved for the creators of the coin before launch. The developers claimed that this was to cover unexpected legal and development costs.

Trademark infringement lawsuit

On January 6, 2014, Kanye West's lawyers sent the development team a

cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...

order on the basis that the then-unreleased currency constituted trademark infringement, unfair competition, cyberpiracy and dilution. In response to the legal threats, the development team changed the name of the currency from "Coinye West" to "Coinye" and moved to a new

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. ...

. By January 10, 2014, the development team stated that they had removed all references to West but instead "to a half-man-half-fish hybrid," a nod to a ''South Park'' episode in which West fails to realize why people are jokingly calling him a "gay fish." These actions were not sufficient to appease West's legal team and a lawsuit was filed against the creators of the coin, prompting them to sell their Coinye holdings and leave the project.

Developer departure and community takeover

On January 14, 2014, a representative of Coinye announced on

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news news aggregator, aggregation, Review site#Rating site, content rating, and Internet forum, discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") subm ...

that "the developers basically dumped all their coins on the one exchange and left the scene." Coinye's official site was replaced with text reading "Coinye is dead. You win, Kanye." and the original website is now down.

Decline (2014-2020)

Coinye has been called "defunct" by numerous publications. Coinye's global block difficulty fell from 78 to 1.012 between January 18, 2014, and May 7, 2014, indicating that the network's total processing power fell by roughly 99% during that time. Had West not sued Coinye, some predictions put the hypothetical value at approximately twenty times its original worth, as of 2017. By 2017, few were trading or mining Coinye.

References

External links

* {{Kanye West Cryptocurrency projects Currencies introduced in 2014 South Park Cultural depictions of Kanye West