The Kik application is officially shutting down. The organization will lessen its employees to 19 people and will focus exclusively on exchanging Kin users into Kin buyers, as per a corporation blog post by Ted Livingston, the Kik founder.
He said though the Kik application will close down, Kin is “here to stay.” The rest of the team will keep the focus on “moving the Kin blockchain forward,” he added. It seems the organization is shedding its functioning costs thus it can battle the SEC (United States Securities Commission) in court, with Livingston mentioning the modifications will “drop our burn rate by 85 percent, putting us in position to get through the SEC trial with the resources we have.”
He stated that rather than selling a few of Kik’s Kin cryptocurrency, the corporation decided to focus its “current resources on the few things that matter most.”
Livingston wrote, “These are hard decisions. Kik is one of the largest apps in the US. It has an industry-leading engagement and is growing again.” “Over 100 employees and their families will be impacted. People who have poured their hearts and souls into Kik and Kin for over a decade.”
Adding further he said, while Kin was all set to get on the SEC in court, the organization undervalued “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.”
Formerly, it was initially accounted by CTech, the Israeli tech publication that Kik was thinking to shut down its application and that around 70 employees of the Kin Foundation, which is a cryptocurrency nonprofit roll out by Kik, had been retired on Monday.
From the day, the news came to the market; interactions sprung up on Reddit and Twitter with users asking for answers. A Kin Foundation representative denied stories that the company was closing down, noting that an administrator declaration was coming shortly.
The spokesperson pointed out at the time, “I can confirm a restructure is happening … [but] The Kin Foundation is not shutting down, and the development of the Kin ecosystem will continue.”
BetaKit has since verified with the companies that the present layoffs influence both Kik, as well as the Kin Foundation. As per LinkedIn, Kik before employed 213 folks, with the Kin Foundation, registered as a Canadian nonprofit company but is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, occupying 77 people, with 70 located in Tel Aviv.
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The SEC started examining both Kik & the Kin Foundation in September 2017, once Kik formally released Kin cryptocurrency. The SEC forwarded Kik its initial query, and afterward a subpoena in January 2018. It was pursued by eight additional over the opening half of 2018 & 10 testimonies, penetrating both Kik, as well as the Kin Foundation. Nevertheless, in June, when the SEC authoritatively filed its proceedings, it left the inquiry into the Kin Foundation, keeping its exclusive focus in Kik & its ICO, which lifted $157 million. In May, Kik released a “Defend Crypto” finance to get on the SEC, entrusting $5M in Bitcoin, Ethereum, & Kin to brawl its authorized battle.
Reports of the layoffs pursue Livingston’s other public declarations that he was positive Kik would triumph its SEC case.
He said earlier this year “Importantly for developers, it is clear from the SEC’s lack of action against the Kin Foundation that the transactions currently taking place within the Kin Ecosystem do not fall under the federal securities laws.”
The Monday blog post of Livingston said, “Despite these [recent] hard decisions my confidence in Kin only continues to grow,” “Together we will show the power of the Kin Ecosystem. Together we will get millions of people to buy Kin to use it. And together we will build a new economy that offers equal opportunity to billions of people. Together we will win.”
