Kik Gets in Trouble Over Tokens
Also chicken blockchain and conference-room misdirection.
Here is how Kik Interactive Inc. described its digital currency, Kin, in a submission to the Securities and Exchange Commission last year:
You get the idea. “Kin is a thriving medium of exchange,” a digital currency that is widely used for actual transactions in a robust decentralized ecosystem. It is not a “security” that would be regulated by the SEC. People do not buy it for speculative profits, or as an investment in Kik; they buy it as a currency to buy, um, things in apps, or sunglasses. Or they build new apps that will accept and use Kin in new ways, ways that Kik hasn’t thought of and has no control over. Applying traditional U.S. securities regulation to Kin would be nonsensical: Kin is not a security issued by Kik, but a decentralized currency that is open to anyone for useful, not investment, purposes.