Rappers, Ravens and Lord of the Rings: In Crypto Coin Game, 'Dope' Names Pay

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "Mithril" is a rare, indestructible metal whose beauty never tarnishes; in the real world it's the name of three different blockchain projects, all of which are trying to score pop culture points with investors.

It's of little surprise that the name has proven so hot in the crypto world - "Lord of the Rings" is, after all, the geek culture equivalent to Shakespeare, and there's no lack of geeks in the cryptocurrency community.

Lastly, a crypto entrepreneur and veteran of the trade in URLs or domain names, Joshua Metnick, pointed to Neo as a power name.

The protocol's token shot up in value right afterward, from $1, and has remained around $65. Indeed, the interest is using monikers that are well-known throughout nerd culture raises an important question: just how important are these names to the evolution of a crypto token?

In the case of mithril, several crypto entrepreneurs are all hoping that name pays off.

Speaking to his choice of the token name, Huang told CoinDesk he is a big fantasy and sci-fi fan, and although he originally considered "Uru," the stone used to make Thor's hammer, uru didn't sound as cool as mithril.

The overlapping names could later explode into a mess of trademark wars and litigation, some of which we've already seen in the crypto space.

Looking back at the early days of the web shows how important securing names can be.

Any name attached to a ".com" dominated any other URL. Still, Metnick explained, there are ways to enforce trademarks.

For a cryptocurrency or crypto token, a name would be considered a "Trademark" under the law of most western countries provided it's actually in circulation, because trademarks are established by use.