Kanye West-Inspired Digital Currency to Launch This Month

BY Alex HudsonPublished Jan 2, 2014

A lot of people still seem to be sceptical about the whole Bitcoin thing, but here's a digital currency that many rap fans will be able to get behind: Coinye West, a monetary system inspired by Kanye West.

The currency activated its Twitter account on New Year's Eve (December 31), and the currency is due to launch on January 11. The folks behind the currency tweeted, "Coinye is set to become to next #bitcoin."

Kanye West hasn't endorsed Coinye, nor has he commented on it publicly. The folks behind the currency told Noisey, "We're really not sure how Kanye is gonna react to this. We hope he loves it, but if he doesn't, he really isn't someone we want to piss off."

Coinye will allow users to mine for coins with CoinyeMiner. The makers said it will work like this: "Basically, people's computers try and figure out math problems. Hundreds of them work together and when there's a payout, about half a million coins get released from a block, and they get shared between everyone who helped open them. They then get paid out to a wallet, which is a software that people will keep on their computer. They can send or receive coins from there, sorta like Paypal."

As far as we can tell, this is a sincere attempt to launch a real cryptocurrency. While the whole idea of a Kanye-inspired currency seems a bit ridiculous, that doesn't mean it won't work; after all, Dogecoin was inspired by the internet meme "Doge."

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