Fighting against the US SEC? The Kik app will be closed and its cryptocurrency subsidiary will be laid off

According to Israeli media Calcalist reported on September 23, two people familiar with the matter said that Canadian social media company Kik Interactive Inc. is considering closing its communications application Kik. The company is moving all users of the app to an alternative platform. Seventy employees of its Israeli cryptocurrency subsidiary, Kin, received notice of layoffs on Monday, and some of them could choose to switch to a new company based on the same technology.

On September 24th, KID Interactive CEO Ted Livingstone announced that it would close the Kik app.

Livingstone confirmed layoffs, saying that the current legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) forced Kik to close the application. Livingstone tells CoinDesk:

“This is a direct impact of SEC legal action.”

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According to Livingstone, Kik's application will be shut down and the number of employees will be reduced to 19 core developers to "ensure KIN can expand into the real currency of the future Internet."

Kin is responsible for developing digital products that use KIN tokens.

He continued:

“Kin has more than 2 million active earners per month and 600,000 active buyers per month. Although the closure of Kik will have a significant impact on these numbers, the continued growth of the Kin ecosystem has fared to make up for this. ""

Kik is currently in dispute with the US SEC regarding the ICO of its token KIN in 2017. Its ICO raised $100 million, and the SEC said it was an unregistered issue of securities.

• Odaily Planet Daily Note: In June of this year, the SEC sued Kik. Stephan Schlegelmilch and David Mendel, SEC law enforcement officers who wrote the complaint, said that KIK Interactive did not inform investors about the company's financial position when it was conducting ICO. In the face of SEC allegations, Kik CEO Ted Livingston said, “The SEC has highly selective and seriously misleading descriptions of the facts and circumstances of our 2017 dollar pre-sale and distribution activities. We look forward to presenting complete in court. The story. We have been looking forward to this for a long time, we welcome the opportunity to fight for the future of the United States encryption. We hope that this case will let people understand that the securities law should not be applied to a number of applications in dozens of applications. The currency used by millions of people."

According to Messari, KIN tokens have fallen from $0.000036 to $0.0000105 since the SEC accused Kik in June.

Livingstone said the core development team is turning to developing KIN tokens.

“Kin is a currency that millions of people use in many standalone applications. So while the SEC may be able to control us, the broader Kan ecosystem will be a bigger battle. The ecosystem is about to increase. More firepower."

Regarding media reports, a Kin Foundation spokesperson at Reddit said:

“I can confirm that the reorganization is underway and an official statement containing more information will be released soon. The Kin Foundation will not be closed and the development of the Kin ecosystem will continue.”

This article comes from CoinDesk , the original author: William Foxley

Odaily Planet Daily Translator | Yu Shunzhen

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