Kik messenger may close due to pressure from the SEC

The Canadian company Kik Interactive, which developed the Kik mobile messenger, is downsizing its crypto unit in Israel under pressure from the SEC.

Notification of this was sent to 70 employees on Monday. Two anonymous sources told the Israeli daily business newspaper Calcalist that some of the employees were offered jobs in the new blockchain company. In addition, they added that the company is considering the possibility of completely closing the application.

Kik held
initial token offering (ICO) in September 2017, and as a result received funding of $ 98 million. In June, it became known that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suspected the company of violating securities laws. According to the regulator, at that time Kik had a poor financial situation and decided to rectify the situation through an ICO.

According to Calcalist, the Israeli division of Kik was opened in January 2017 on the basis of the acquired Tel Aviv-based firm Rounds Entertainment Ltd. Detailed information on the terms of the transaction is not available, but at that time data surfaced indicating that the company could be valued at $ 60-80 million.

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Kin Foundation Public Relations Manager Kevin Rick commented on the news:

“Information about the restructuring is true. An official statement with all the details will be published shortly. The Kin Foundation is not closing, the development of the Kin ecosystem will continue. ”

Earlier this month, renowned venture capitalist and investor Kik Fred Wilson expressed support for Kin and said he shared the opinion about the extreme popularity of the token.

It also became known that amid ongoing
Trial Living with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Kik CEO Ted Livingston may leave the company he founded in 2009.

“Livingston, probably under the influence of alcohol, sent a message to the wrong recipient, where he announced that he was going to leave the project,” CoinDesk reports.

“Will, I’m fed up with this shit. I know that I am drunk, but this is not a drunken conversation, ”the report said. According to the message, it can be assumed that the new manager of the company will be a member of the board of directors of Kik, William Mogayar (William Mougayar).

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“We will continue to talk about this morning, but I made the final decision that I was leaving. I’m not going to go to jail because of all this, ”Livingston allegedly wrote.

Soon, however, these messages sent to a reporter, also called Will, were deleted. In response to a request for clarification, Livingston wrote: “No comment.”

Livingston confirmed yesterday that due to litigation
With SEC on the ICO conducted by Kik in 2017, the company closes the main direction of the Israeli cryptocurrency unit related to the development of a mobile messenger, and reduces about 70 employees.

“This decision was made due to legal prosecution by the SEC,” Livingstone said.

“The company will leave 19 developers so that the Kin ecosystem continues to scale, and its token can become the true currency of the Internet in the future. Kin has about 2,000,000 recipients every month, 600,000 users spend cryptocurrency every month. And despite the fact that the loss of Kik will significantly reduce these values, the continued growth of the Kin ecosystem will soon make up for them, ”he wrote.

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Over the past day, the rate of the Kin token, which after the start of the proceedings with the SEC in June remains available to users of a small number of exchanges, has already fallen by 31%. Note that the token value has already depreciated already 3 times since the beginning of June.