There's Kanye West-Themed Crypto-Currency On the Way 237
Nerval's Lobster writes "A bunch of anonymous developers are working on 'Coinye West,' a crypto-currency named after rapper Kanye West. Coinye West isn't an official production of Kanye West, and the developers are staying anonymous because they probably fear the inevitable copyright lawsuits. (Of course, if the currency hits the online market and proves a success, it's always possible the real Kanye West would drop any suit in exchange for a massive amount of Coinye West coins—every hip-hop artist on the planet might claim to drive a Maybach, but how many can claim a currency?) 'DROPPING JANUARY 11, 2014. 11 PM EST,' read a note on Coinyewest.com. 'No premine, no screwed up fake "fair" launches, shyster devs, muted channels, and f**ked up wallets,' it helpfully added. 'We will be releasing password protected, encrypted archives containing binaries and source for the wallet and daemon BEFORE LAUNCH, with the passwords to be released at the specified time.' Just to emphasize the supposed fairness of this particular crypto-currency, the note repeated: 'We will work with multiple pools to orchestrate a PROPER and FAIR release.' A chat room is available at irc.freenode.net. Technical details for the crypto-currency include: Algorithm: Scrypt; max Coins: 133,333,333,333; block time: 90 seconds; difficulty Re-Target Time: 12 hours; block Rewards: 666,666 COYE; every 100k blocks, the payout halves. In the future, will every major celebrity will have a crypto-currency named after him or her? And how long until Jay-Z decides to launch something similar?"
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure you can copy the concept, but not the actual coin. The US dollar doesn't actually have that advantage, but bitcoin does.
Racist Web Site (Score:5, Interesting)
There *IS NOT* another "alt-coin" launching. This is a joke site that contains racist imagery, using Kanye West to bait gullible young people.
The site graphics open to a cartoon image of a "stereotypical" big lipped black man, presumably Mr. West. In the all black background, three sets of black-face eyes show up. The black background then drops to reveal three brack men in black KKK garb.
This is not the kind of crap Slashdot or Dice should be promoting.
Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Interesting)
To really understand why this is wrong, you have to fundamentally understand what a fiat currency is. It's more or less simply a store of value.
Take for example the ruble after the collapse of the USSR. Supposedly communist right? Well, people had already been trading in currencies (sorry but Marx is wrong and always will be wrong, no matter how hard you try, private property and therefore money will never go away) and during the lifespan of the USSR that was the ruble. However when the USSR collapsed, the ruble went with it. People still needed to have a store of value until something came to replace it (barter only systems are simply incapable of fostering even seemingly dead economies -- liquidity is required for any kind of fast trading to occur, which barter does not provide.)
So what do they do? Well, turned out that people resorted to using cigarettes and vodka as currency. A single cigarette was the smallest division, a pack was larger of course, and a bottle of vodka was worth the most. You really didn't need a country or any large organization to keep this afloat and regulated. The problem with vodka and cigarettes is that they're rather easy to make, so a more well defined currency eventually replaced them (the new ruble,) but meanwhile the Russians didn't have to have somebody step in and say "use this."
This isn't the only example -- things that have been used as currencies also include coffee beans and shark teeth. These don't require governments to regulate the supply of, but they are inherently inferior because there's basically a limitless supply of them.
Bitcoin is the same deal as these, only it doesn't have the problem of being easy to create more (the total number of bitcoins that can exist already exist, by the way, just not all of them have been claimed yet.) Because of that, it is interesting to see where bitcoin will go that these previous currencies have not because they could not.
More important than just taxes (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with Bitcoin as a currency isn't that you don't pay taxes in it, but that there's no functioning debt and bond market in it. A medium of exchange from one good to another is necessary but exchange from now and the future is critical.
That's what really makes it a problem. It will never be a currency. Bitcoin is more like a commodity like Rembrandts, without the advantage of looking good, and with the advantage of being useful to evade laws against contraband.