Kanye West Gets His Own Mysterious Bitcoin Competitor

Coinye West

Kanye West Gets His Own Mysterious Bitcoin Competitor

Coinye West

I have only the vaguest idea what Bitcoin even is, but the so-called cryptocurrency is apparently doing big business, and it already has a few imitators. And now it’s about to get another one, with the crucial caveat that this one will bear the name and image of one Kanye West. The details on all this are shady at best, and hopefully it won’t all turn out to be some internet prank, but apparently Coinye West is set to launch at 11PM on 1/11. It appears as though Kanye himself is not involved; the creators are merely taking inspiration from him. (Kanye probably never would’ve signed off on the name or on the shutter-shades in the logo anyway.)

Noisey has an interview with the anonymous creators of Coinye. On the subject of why they picked Kanye as their inspiration, they say, “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.”

They also claim that they’d love to get Kanye personally involved, noting that “he really isn’t someone we want to piss off” and making Kanye a generous promise: “We’d love if Kanye named dropped Coinye. I think he’s gonna love that there’s a CURRENCY named in his honor. We don’t want to pay him off to name check us, but it’d be sick if he does so. In-fact, we’re making an open invitation to Kanye: Get hold of us at coinyewest.com and we’ll send you 100,000 COINYE on launch. A hundred thousand. Bitcoin started small too, and now look where it’s at.” Read the interview here and check out the Coinye West site, if you’re sufficiently intrigued, here.

more from News