The Kik app will shut down, according to an official announcement.
Kik CEO Ted Livingston wrote on the company blog that the headcount would be reduced to 19, & efforts would now be made to convert Kin users to Kin buyers.
The entire controversy started when the US SEC launched an investigation into both Kik & the Kin Foundation in September 2017, when Kik had launched the Kin cryptocurrency. Following an SEC subpoena in January 2018, & some more throughout 2018 looking into the Kik & the Kin Foundation, the SEC filed a lawsuit. However, it dropped the investigation into the Kin Foundation, focusing on Kik & its ICO, which raised $157 million CAD. Kik also decided to fight the SEC.
After 18 months of working with the SEC the only choice they gave us was to either label Kin a security or fight them in court. Becoming a security would kill the usability of any cryptocurrency and set a dangerous precedent for the industry. So with the SEC working to characterize almost all cryptocurrencies as securities we made the decision to step forward and fight.
While we are ready to take on the SEC in court, we underestimated the tactics they would employ. How they would take our quotes out of context to manipulate the public to view us as bad actors. How they would pressure exchanges not to list Kin. And how they would draw out a long and expensive process to drain our resources.
– Ted Livingston
These are hard decisions, said Ted, claiming that Kik was one of the largest apps in the US. He goes on to write that these changes “will drop our burn rate by 85%, putting us in position to get through the SEC trial with the resources we have.”
But the CEO was clear that irrespective of Kik’s fate, Kin was “here to stay.” Kin operates on an open, decentralized infrastructure run by a dozen independent companies, & is used by millions of people in dozens of independent apps.
Image Credit: Kik
