What does Kin mean?
Kin is the coin that the chat app Kik uses. Kin is valid in the Kik chat app in specific ways. Users can earn Kin by contributing to the Kik community as a whole. They can then use Kin to buy goods and services on the Kik app.
Getting to Know Kin
Kin first came out in September 2017 through an initial coin offering (ICO), which raised about $100 million from investors over two weeks. The Kin Ecosystem was “designed specifically to bring people together in a new shared economy,” according to the organization’s leaders. The coin would serve as the “foundation for a decentralized ecosystem of digital services.”
When a company releases its cryptocurrency, it doesn’t always have a ready-made user base. But Kik had a significant edge here because its messaging app has millions of regular users. In this way, the site helped people use the Kin coin. The Kik app can hold many of the currency’s third-party services and features, like the Kin wallet.
The actual launch of Kin happened late in 2017, but it came after Kik ran an extensive test effort. The Kik Points project ran for almost three years. This was a lot like Kin in that it let Kik users earn and spend points on things inside the app. When it peaked, Kik Points transactions were three times higher than Bitcoin’s.
The Kin Reward System
The Kin Rewards Engine may be even more interesting than the start of Kin itself. That’s how Kik started giving Kin as a daily reward to partners based on how much the community contributed to the environment.
Kik’s CEO and founder, Ted Livingston, said that the Kin coin could be a way to give creators value. Kik wants to keep things free so that developers will want to “build an open and decentralized ecosystem of apps” on the Kik platform.
The Foundation for Kin
The Kin Foundation runs Kin and is “growing an open ecosystem of digital services.”The environment won’t be based on ads like many social media sites are. Instead, it will depend on users being able to help each other out and getting paid for it.
It’s a digital currency, and the Kin website says that it’s “different from other digital currencies because it is a cryptocurrency.” For the same reason that Bitcoin does, Kin uses the public database and has value. Kin is part of a blockchain, meaning its creators can control how many tokens are made and how they move, so there isn’t a rise. Support for blockchain also makes it possible to secure a token for a long time.
Based on the market cap, Kin was the 323rd most valuable cryptocurrency as of July 12, 2021.
The Future of Kin
Kik said it would shut down its chat service in 2019 to focus on Kin. But not long after the news came out, MediaLab bought the company. The chat service didn’t change, but this happened soon after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Kik for not reporting its Kin ICO when it raised money.
The SEC said Kik broke federal securities law when it sold Kin in 2017. They fined Kik $5 million for this. The message service did not have to shut down the Kin network or register Kin with the SEC, though. In this way, Kin can still be sold.
Conclusion
- An initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017 gave rise to Kin, the cryptocurrency that the chat app Kik offers.
- Kin’s initial coin offering (ICO) raised around $100 million.
- An important thing that set Kik apart from some cryptocurrency rivals was that its chat app already had millions of busy users.
