The creators of a Bitcoin-style currency named in "honour" of Kanye West - known as Coinye West - say they will launch the project early, despite a threat of legal action sent by the rapper's lawyers.
The creators of the puntastic 'Coinye West' say that the rap star has issued a cease and desist latter calling on them to halt the project due to infringement - but they aren't listening.
The website and promo materials for Coinye West feature a cartoon image of the pop star.
The Wall Street Journal said that the coders were told to cease their plan ahead of the launch:
"Given Mr. West’s wide-ranging entrepreneurial accomplishments, consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Mr. West is the source of your services," the letter reads, according to Wall Street Journal.
The code for the currency was originally scheduled to be released on 11 January, after which it would seemingly be impossible for Kanye to stop it. And that appears to be the intention of those behind it, who posted a message on their website that they would bump up the release to January 7 to try and get around the threat of pre-emptive legal action.
"We want to release this to the public before the man can try to crush it," the coders said in response. "They’ll still come after us, but that’s okay."
In an interview with Vice, the minds behind the currency said they were "not sure" how the real Kanye would react but said they were working hard to make it happen.
"Right now, it's kind of a dark art for people to mine coins. We plan on releasing a front end to the "mining" programs called CoinyeMiner. It will make things a lot more simple and people will be able to make their own coins. We're working round-the-clock to get everything going as smoothly as possible."