The Kin ICO begins tomorrow morning at 6am PST. This one has been mentioned a fair amount on various crypto blogs, by legitimate VC investors, and on more mainstream business news sites so it seems worth looking into.

The Kin token will be used on the Kik messaging platform, which started in 2010, got a million users in the first year, and grew the number of users until plateauing in Sept 2016. They have over 150 employees in four cities currently. Kik has tested a “points system” successfully and believe it’s a good sign Kik will be adopted by users. They are known for providing easy anonymity. Kik is especially popular with US teens (40% of users). The currency would be used for tipping, paid membership groups, premium paid content, and sponsored messages.

Kin in their own words:

A decentralized ecosystem of digital services for daily life.

Digital services, such as chat apps and social networks, are bringing together communications, information, and commerce in new and unprecedented ways. The assimilation of economic value into communication systems are making digital services essential to daily life.

At the same time, more and more of these services are being controlled by fewer and fewer companies, leading to a future with less choice, less innovation, and ultimately, less freedom.

Envisioned as a general purpose cryptocurrency for use in everyday digital services, Kin will be used for all transactions within the Kin Ecosystem. Implemented on the public Ethereum blockchain as an ERC20 token, Kin will serve as the basis of interoperability with other digital services in the Kin Ecosystem.

Whitepaper

Kin ICO info

• Symbol: KIN
• When: September 12, 6am PST
• How Much:
  • 5% in ICO
    5% private pre-sale (30% discount)
    90% to be allocated to users
  • Hard cap: $75 million
  • Soft cap: none
  • 10 trillion total tokens
  • If they hit hard cap of $75 million, along with $50 million from pre-sale, that’s 10% of tokens for $125 million, giving a market cap of $1.25 billion.
• Distribution: Immediately
• Exchanges: No info found
• Who is running ICO? Self run (Kik)
• Bonus: None

What Others Say about Kin ICO

CrushCrypto has covered the Kin ICO. They gave it a Neutral for flipping and a Negative for long term investing. Essentially they think the valuation is way to high for a product (Kik) that is declining in users and don’t feel there’s enough upside.

CrytoCompare has not yet listed Kin. They mentioned it in a blog post in email/blog post in May.

TokenMarket has listed the Kin by Kik ICO. They have 2227 followers which is a high number for that site.

TokenData has listed the Kin ICO in their upcoming ICOs list. Not covered on there blog.

ICORating has rated Kin as a High for hype, Medium for risk, and High for Investment scores. No an in-depth analysis. Also, the ICO details tab was never updated from TBA.

BitCoinTalk has a number of threads on this ICO. There are a surprising number of people skeptical of this one. Threads tend to be dominated by lots of hype typically.

ICO Tracker has surprisingly not listed the Kin ICO.

Picolo Research (included in one of the BitCoinTalk threads) rated Kin as Speculativewhich is a 3/5 stars on their scale.

Hacked has covered the Kin ICO. They cite a number of problems, including the company not being profitable and doubting the viability/need for the Kin token vs broader-use tokens. Yet, they are positive overall due to the people (VCs) involved with Kik.

In Summary

There’s a lot of hype and interest around this one. It’s covered more widely than of the ICOs I’ve looked at previously and there’s a lot of venture capital money involved.

While it’s nice to have that backing, it’s hard to get over the fact that the Kik app/platform seems to be struggling. They may be able to turn things around and make everything work, but the $1.25 billion valuation is awfully high, and there’s a number of token-holders that received significant discounts (30%), which always is a bit of a red flag.

In the short-term, Kin should do well, given the interest levels and people involved. However, the upside is limited given the extremely high valuation. There are serious challenges ahead, given the current state of Kik and it should be watched closely for signs of improvement.