Update on Kik's "Failed" Kin ICO*

Hello Fellow Crypto Enthusiasts,

I was approved to participate in the Kin ICO 25 days ago (as I wrote about here), and five days later, bought in the minute it went live (as I wrote about here).

The truth is, the only reason I found Steemit in the first place was because of of Kin.

When I first read about Kin, I realized immediately that it could be a Facebook killer, and for reasons outlined here, many including myself view Facebook as a grave threat to the Internet as we know it.

The more I thought about Kin, the more I wondered whether something like it wasn't already in existence, and that is how I stumbled upon Steemit. As soon as I found out about it (from this article in the Coin Telegraph) I high-tailed it over here and signed up for an account.

I'm super excited about this particular use case for blockchain technology, and I'm glad to have found Steemit while waiting for the Kin ICO.

So I was disappointed when the ICO failed to sell out. Its ICO was scheduled to hit during the height of the mania, when tokens were flowing like wine and random, no-name, no-use coins were selling like hotcakes.

Kin is no random, no-name, no-use coin. Kik is a well established chat app with 15 million active daily users, most of whom are kids!!! Not to mention that the $75 million ICO was preceded by a $50 million private placement with heavyweight VCs Pantera, Blockchain Capital, and Polychain Capital.

Unfortunately, the timing for Kik's ICO couldn't have been worse. It came just days after China banned ICOs, which had the effect of throwing a wet blanket on a raging hot fire. Kik had hoped to raise $75 million, but ended up selling only 2/3 of that amount, or roughly $46 million, before closing distribution.

But for participants in the ICO, there was a tremendous upside to this "failure." On September 24th, Kik sent out an email titled Redistributing Unsold Kin which stated, in part:

Given the current sale progress, we believe it is likely that a portion of the 1 trillion Kin allocated to the token distribution event will remain unsold. In order to ensure the token structure outlined in our whitepaper is maintained, Kik will take and redistribute the remaining tokens to all sale participants.

Great news! Participants got nearly 1/3 more tokens than they had bargained for, which created a tremendous amount of goodwill among the community.

@dragosroua makes some interesting observations in his recent article:

• with over 10,000 people subscribed, Kin may be one of the most widely distributed token in the world right now
• when I joined Steemit, almost one year ago, the total number of active accounts was around 5,000. Kik is "kicking in" with a much larger user base and that may be a consistent advantage
• with 15 millions daily active users, about 60 percent of whom are in the 13 to 24 age area, Kik is definitely targeting a very interesting demographic. These kids are tomorrow's heavy spenders and they start their journey with full pockets, so to speak.

Now that the money's collected, the work of integrating Kin into the Kik app begins. In his Thank You note on Medium, Kik CEO Ted Livingston reveals:

People who participated in the TDE will receive instructions to access a Kin wallet in Kik. We are also doing a Gmail style rollout of Kin inside of Kik, starting with 1,000 of our users. We will take a measured approach to our rollout, gradually increasing both functionality and the number of users who can access Kin as we solve the scalability and usability challenges that come with the blockchain.

Stay tuned for updates and announcements. This is the start of an exciting journey.

I agree it is the start of an exciting journey. At this point Kik is a social app for teens, but like Steemit, I think they have much bigger plans.

I downloaded the app to experiment, but don't have anyone to talk to! So if you're on kik, and especially if you're in Taipei, look me up @taipeibeat.

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*Of course the title is tongue in check. They raised nearly $100 million and have created a massively differentiated social networking product in a competitive and lucrative field. Stay tuned!

Follow me @taipeibeat