Kik is the First Mainstream Company Planning an ICO

Kik has recently announced it will be launching an ICO sometime this year. The token – called Kin – will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain and its total supply will be 10 trillion. The Kik messenger has been looking for a way to monetize their platform without using ads, this token is their solution to the problem. Not only that, but users can earn Kin by completing various tasks relating to the Kik app.

I had the pleasure of meeting with the CEO of Kik, Ted Livingston in San Francisco. It was obvious to me that Livingston was excited about the recent ICOs and wanted to hop on the wave and take his company to the next level. When talking about Kin’s token distribution phase, he mentioned that his priority was to make it fair. He wanted to make sure that whoever wanted to invest in the ICO would have a chance to do so.

Examples of recent ICOs where the public was unsatisfied with the initial distribution include Status.im and Civic. During Status’ ICO the Ethereum network stalled, and during Civic’s ICO the queued version was also imperfect because the queue filled up before the ICO even began.

The method of distribution that will be used by Kin is yet unknown as the details are still being worked out. However, Livingston did say that there will be a total of 10 trillion tokens. At first it may sound odd that there will be such a high total supply. But Livingston explained that the goal was to have users trade Kin in numbers larger than one. Many people still don’t even know that you can purchase a fraction of a Bitcoin, which discourages them from investing in the cryptocurrency.

The tokens will be divided as follows: 1 trillion will be sold to the public, 3 trillion will released to Kik over a period of 2.5 years, and the rest 6 trillion will go to the foundation. For more details regarding the way Kin’s will be split check out page 22 of the whitepaper.

It is surprising to see no other mainstream companies have yet hopped on the cryptocurrency ship and taken advantage of blockchain technology. If Kik’s ICO succeeds it will set a trend and others will follow suit. The exact date of the ICO hasn’t been announced yet but keep an eye out for it, it may be the biggest one yet.

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