Coinbase is no longer seeking to trademark the term “BUIDL” following a critical response on social media.
As confirmed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the exchange moved to abandon its trademark application for the cheeky cryptocurrency misspelling on Dec. 14. The expedited request was approved on Dec. 17.
The move comes after Coinbase’s CTO, Balaji Srinivasan, issued a mea culpa of sorts following coverage of the Oct. 2 trademark application earlier this month.
Saw the commotion on Twitter & dug into this. Coinbase filed the trademark for BUIDL some time back. I learned about it today & chatted with team. TLDR is that @brian_armstrong & I don’t believe in trademarks for stuff like this so we’ll be giving this one back to the community.
— Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) December 6, 2018
BUIDL – in contrast to the more popular HODL – has come to suggest that building out real-world use cases is just as valuable as the hoarding of crypto assets.
CoinDesk first noted the term following a talk by Srinivasan in April 2015, when he was chairman of 21 Inc (which later rebranded as Earn.com).
Coinbase declined to comment further.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office image via Shutterstock