What Was Kin?

Kin was the cryptocurrency for the messaging service Kik. The service was created and maintained by Kik Interactive. Kik developed a cryptocurrency for the messenger community and kicked off an initial coin offering to raise funds for it. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Kik Interactive for an unregistered security offering. Battling the regulators drained the company's resources and caused them to accept an offer from MediaLab in 2019, saving the service. Kik Interactive continued to try to save its cryptocurrency.

Kin had special uses within the Kik messenger platform. Users could earn Kin for making contributions to the broader Kik community and then spend it on various goods and services within the Kik platform. The cryptocurrency was fully decentralized in July 2023 (handed off to the users), and as of January 2024 had a market cap of $40.28 million.

Understanding Kin

Kin first launched in September 2017 via an initial coin offering (ICO), raising roughly $100 million in investor funds over about two weeks. Upon its launch, the founders of Kin described the Kin Ecosystem as "designed specifically to bring people together in a new shared economy," with the cryptocurrency itself acting as a "foundation for a decentralized ecosystem of digital services."

While most companies that launch their own cryptocurrency don't necessarily have a ready-made user base, Kik had a key advantage, with millions of active users through its messaging platform. As such, the platform helped drive consumer adoption of the Kin cryptocurrency. The Kik app housed many of the traditional third-party services and features for the currency, including the Kin wallet. Although Kin was officially launched late in 2017, it comes on the heels of a large experimental campaign by Kik. Over a period of nearly three years, Kik ran a project called Kik Points. This was very similar to Kin in that it offered Kik users the chance to earn and spend points within the app itself.

Kin Rewards Engine 

Perhaps even more notable about the launch of Kin was its Kin Rewards Engine. Through this engine, Kik launched Kin as a daily reward distributed among stakeholders by an algorithm based on the community's contribution to the ecosystem. Ted Livingston—Kik CEO and founder—suggested that the Kin token was an opportunity to distribute value amongst developers. The idea is that Kik will give away value, incentivizing developers to "build an open and decentralized ecosystem of apps" on the Kik platform.

The Kin Foundation

The Kin Foundation focused on the governance of Kin and building an ecosystem of services. The ecosystem was not to be based around advertising, as many social media platforms are, but rather on users being able to provide value to themselves and be rewarded for that contribution.

Besides being a digital currency, the Kin website described the token as "different from other digital currencies because it [was] a cryptocurrency." Kin was similar to Bitcoin in that it made use of a public blockchain and had monetary value.

Future of Kin 

In 2019, Kik announced it would shut down its messaging service to focus on Kin. However, shortly after the announcement, the company was purchased by MediaLab. The messaging service remained intact, but this came shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Kik for raising money in its Kin ICO without registering it. 

In 2020, the SEC ruled that Kik violated federal securities law by selling Kin in 2017 and was ordered to pay a $5 million fine. However, the messaging service was not required to shut down the Kin network, nor required to register Kin with the SEC. Thus, sales of Kin can still take place as the tokens can still be found on exchanges.

Kin has a market value measure in thousands of cents, and development has ceased, but it maintains a user base that continues trading on a few decentralized exchanges.

The Bottom Line

Kin was created by the developers of the social media application Kik. It was among the first of many cryptocurrency projects that incentivized using services provided by a company. After several years, the company shut down Kik to focus on the cryptocurrency, but the project failed to take off, eventually shutting its doors in 2023.

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