Chill Guy, a memecoin that soared to a $500 million market value, is in jeopardy.

Phillip Banks, the digital artist who created the character used for the memecoin, said he plans to issue takedown requests for “for-profit related things” over the coming days.

“Just putting it out there, Chill Guy has been copyrighted, like, legally,” Banks said in a November 21 X post.

It’s not clear if Banks’ copyright applies to the image of the Chill Guy character, the name Chill Guy, or both.

In any case, pursuing legal action may be difficult.

In crypto, creating new tokens is permissionless. Anyone can do so without going through an approval process of revealing one’s identity.

The identity of the Chill Guy memecoin creator, who only goes by the pseudonym “mrowl,” is unknown, meaning Banks will have to find out who made the token to get any potential takedown request to stick.

Failing that, Banks could still petition known entities, such as decentralised crypto exchanges, to avoid the token, crippling traders’ ability to buy and sell it.

In 2021, decentralised exchange Uniswap restricted access through its website to a small number of tokens that potentially violated US securities laws, although those tokens could still be traded by interacting with the Ethereum blockchain directly.

Later that year, Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie succeeded in getting NFT marketplace OpenSea to take down the project Sad Frogs District, which Furie claimed rips off the Pepe character.

Takedown requests may also discourage centralised exchanges like Coinbase or Binance from listing Chill Guy. Popular memecoin Pnut surged in value after top crypto exchange Binance listed it for trading.

Banks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Who is Chill Guy?

Banks created the Chill Guy character in October 2023.

“His whole deal is he’s a chill guy that lowkey doesn’t give a fuck,” Banks said of his creation at the time.

Over a year later, Chill Guy reappeared when users on social media site TikTok began referencing the character in videos and creating memes embodying his carefree personality.

As Chill Guy went viral on TikTok, someone used memecoin platform pump.fun to launch a Solana token named after the character on November 15.

Within days, Chill Guy soared to a $500 million market value as traders piled in, according to data from GeckoTerminal.

It has since dropped to around $347 million following Banks’ X posts.

Banks said on X that he doesn’t really care about brands or TikTok users using Chill Guy in posts, asking only that they credit him.

But he said he plans to take action against those profiting from Chill Guy in the form of “unauthorised merchandise and shitcoins.”

Copyright issues

While some attempts at copyright takedown in crypto have been successful, such as Pepe creator Furie’s action against OpenSea, others have failed.

Last October, supermarket chain Trader Joe’s sued a decentralised crypto exchange of the same name, claiming that its creators had infringed on its intellectual property and degraded its “wholesome and high-quality brand.”

In February, the judge presiding over the case agreed with the exchange’s request to dismiss it “for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”

Basically, Trader Joe’s couldn’t identify exactly who it was suing.

“These are decentralised crypto operators,” intellectual property lawyer Jonathon Hance told DL News at the time. “They use aliases, they don’t necessarily have a corporate headquarters, some of them are not even clear on who their employees or founders are, and they certainly don’t like to tell you where they keep their assets.”

Not so chill after all.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.