What you need to know
- Kik Interactive founder, Ted Livingston, has announced that Kik will be shutting down.
- The messaging app is being shut down so the company has money for a legal battle with the SEC over its Kin cryptocurrency.
- There is no official date on which the shutdown will occur.
In a blog post on Medium, Kik Interactive founder, Ted Livingston, announced on September 23 that Kik would be shutting down. The news comes in reaction to the SEC trying to label the company's cryptocurrency Kin as a security — something Livingston says would kill the usability of Kin.
The only option left was to either allow Kin to be labeled as a security or fight the SEC in court. Livingston has chosen the latter, and in turn, will shut down Kik and double down on Kin as it goes to court with the SEC.
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.
By shutting down Kik, it will shrink the company down to 19 employees and cut the overhead by 85% providing adequate resources for the legal battle.
Going forward, Livingston says they are going "all in" with Kin and they will focus on accelerating adoption, growth, and "building a mobile wallet that makes it easy to buy Kin." At this time, Kin boasts two million monthly active earners with 600,000 active spenders. However, Livingston admits that by losing Kik, it will have a big impact on those numbers.
There was no date given in the post about when the shutdown of Kik will take place. However, the writing is on the wall. If you're one of the millions who currently use the Kik Messenger, it's time to start looking for a replacement.
