By
Tolu Ajiboye
February 1st, 2024
Kik Interactive has recently declared the official start of its Kin Token Distribution Event for the sale of its cryptocurrency Kin on September 12, 2017.
Kik Interactive has recently declared the official start of its Kin Token Distribution Event for the sale of its cryptocurrency Kin on September 12, 2017. According to the words of its representatives, Canadian popular chat app plans to raise $125 million via its ICO.
Kik has already raised $50 million in a pre-ICO from institutional investors, including such well-known blockchain-focused investment firms as Blockchain Capital, Pantera Capital and Polychain Capital. An additional amount of $75 million is planned to be raised by distributing 1 trillion of total 10 trillion tokens.
Companies intended to buy the remaining allocation have an opportunity to take part in Kin Token Distribution Event by filling up a registration form on Kik’s official web-site before September 9. The form requires passport/social security details, an Ethereum wallet address and other basic information. After the registration all potential investors will be “white-listed” and ready to participate in the sale by sending Ethereum to the dedicated Kin ICO address on September 12.
For now, with a community of 50 million monthly active users, Kik’s chat app turns to be one of the first examples of a non-blockchain platforms turning to blockchain in order to keep up with the latest trends and open up new opportunities.
A great amount of interest is predicted to be aroused around Kik’s ICO. As a perspective startup, Kik was firstly presented in 2009 in Canada and has already raised over $120 million from traditional VCs with an imposing valuation of more than $1 billion. Now we can see Kik as the largest consumer userbase entering the world of ICO. In near future Kik plans to reach over 300 million registered users, and 15 million monthly users.
In the words of Ted Livingston, Kik Interactive founder, the company claims its Kin tokens to be “the first mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency”. In the official press-release he also adds, that “Kin will fuel new experiences in communications, information and commerce inside of Kik, and will also serve as a foundation for a new decentralized ecosystem of digital services, bringing a fair and sustainable business model to the market.”
Ryan Zurrer, principal and venture partner at cryptocurrency hedge fund Polychain Capital, one of Kik’s major investors, calls Kik “the largest consumer company to enter the cryptocurrency space.” According to his personal view, “this is a seminal moment for the industry.”
Comparing to Kik’s major rivals, such giant social networks and chat apps as Facebook and Telegram, which support payments made with debit cards or PayPal services, Kik tries to think ahead and design an entire economy based on its own cryptocurrency. What is more, Kik intends to develop a token-based reward system for its users and so-called Kik Foundation as a way to govern new blockchain ecosystem.
