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Messaging App Kik Shuts Down as Company Focuses on Kin, Its Cryptocurrency (techcrunch.com) 31

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Kik Interactive CEO Ted Livingston has announced that the company is shutting down Kik Messenger to focus on its cryptocurrency Kin, the target of a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. From a report: The company's team will be reduced to 19 people, a reduction that will affect over 100 employees, as it focuses on converting more Kin users into buyers. "Instead of selling some of our Kin into the limited liquidity that exists today, we made the decision to focus our current resources on the few things that matter most," Livingston wrote in a blog post, adding that the changes will reduce the company's burn rate by 85%, enabling it to get through the SEC trial. Kin launched two years ago, raising nearly $100 million in its ICO, one of the first held by a mainstream tech company. But in June, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Kik Interactive, claiming the ICO was illegal, as part of the Commission's wider crackdown on companies it alleges are issuing securities illegally.
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Messaging App Kik Shuts Down as Company Focuses on Kin, Its Cryptocurrency More

Messaging App Kik Shuts Down as Company Focuses on Kin, Its Cryptocurrency

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  • Readers may recall that Kik forced NPM, the Node.js package manager, to reassign the Kik package name to them and the developer retaliated by removing all his packages that also included the ubiquitous left-pad dependency [slashdot.org] that temporary broke the Internet three years ago.

    • "Forced" is a fake-news description of what happened. Kik merely sent a letter to NPM. Everything else was the result of NPMs response to that letter. If their response had been "go fuck yourself, you dirty cocksucker" then there would have been no impact whatsoever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

      Readers may also recall that you're full of it.

  • I thought for a minute that someone was bringing back another Kin entirely [wikipedia.org] from the dead...

    ...I seriously need coffee.

  • NPM: was it worth it? (Score:4, Informative)

    by jarkus4 ( 1627895 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @12:55PM (#59231200)

    was it worth it for NPM to temporarily break internet just for this company?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That was an unfortunate incident but hardly NPM's fault. Who knew that the majority of JavaScript programmers couldn't figure out how to pad left?

    • I was looking to ask this same question.

      "This package name is not currently in use, but was formerly occupied by a popular package. To avoid malicious use, npm is hanging on to the package name, but loosely, and we'll probably give it to you if you want it.

      You may adopt this package by contacting support@npmjs.com and requesting the name."

      Source: https://www.npmjs.com/package/... [npmjs.com]

      LOL! They totally fucked that one up.

  • What will all the perverts use now?

  • ..Messaging App Whatsapp Shuts Down as Company Focuses on Libra, Its Cryptocurrency

  • I really never paid a lot of attention to all of these mobile messaging apps, beyond the basic realization a lot of younger people use Kik or Whatsapp to communicate and basically "sext" each other, and they've all got shady reputations for enabling hook-ups.

    But it sounds like the developers of these things tend to build them as fronts for real goals of launching their own crypto-currencies? Seems weird to me.

  • Local Specialty Service to be spun off... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @02:55PM (#59231574) Homepage

    They're selling the Alabama only service "KIK with KIN" to Farmers Only.

  • The first time I heard about this app was a couple years ago. A client's 15 year old daughter was using it to chat with adult men and barter pussy for cash. Apparently this was not an uncommon use of the app.

    When my guy found out and put a stop to things, she accused him of sexual assault. It took two years to get that case dismissed.

    Every time thereafter that the app appeared it was typically someone (i.e. "a client of mine") using it to hide various illegal activities because they believed it was

  • As if millions of thots suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

    • Thots? I've only seen kik get referenced by bots spamming borderline or straight-up CP. As far as I'm concerned it's a company that panders to pedophiles.

  • Are we still talking about cryptocurrencies? (Score:4, Funny)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @04:10PM (#59231742) Homepage

    What I wanna know is, given all the hundreds (thousands?) of cryptocurrencies out there, how can any of them actually be worth anything? Especially given the reputation of fraud and all sorts of other shady dealings associated with them, plus the ever-present threat of government regulation.

  • KIK was always the choice for perverts on Whisper. Whisper? Oh it was this sort of blogging app thing where you post a picture and add some text, and then some guy sends you dick picks and ask if you have Kik.

    And then if you watch carefully long enough, you see the different message areas get repeat posts from the same people, every day, for months on end. And then you realize, the whole app is like 90% bots reposting the same crap just to make it look busy.

  • Do they really think that shutting down their main product product leaving only a low end volatile cryptocurrency is a good thing?
    This won't convince investors to trust them, it'll basically do the exact opposite of that.
    And if their cryptocurrency "kin" fails to pan out, they have nothing else to fall back to.
    I wonder if they'll bounce or if it will just be a big splat...
  • There's a sucker born every minute.
  • Crypto Tip # 1: if a currency is created by an entity that (a) you can identify the leaders of; (b) the SEC can also identify; (c) and sue; (d) causing them to shut down their product (assuming they even had one); or (e) colludes with a major exchange like Coinbase to "educate" users on their coin; and (f) gives away some of it in random airdrops, to drive adoption... etc, etc... well, you may not want to hold this money long term as a store of value

  • travesty.

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