KIK Closes Messenger and Lays off Staff to Continue SEC Lawsuit Fight

Kik ran an Initial Coin Offering in Sept 2017, raising almost $100 million for its subsidiary Kin by offering Kin tokens as a cryptocurrency.

As a result of the statemate, negotiations took place until early 2019, with the SEC requesting additional documents and information from Kik.

According to the Fund website, Kik have already spent $6 million to date and has committed another $5 million to bring regularity clarity to the Blockchain Industry.

"In terms of the pace of the litigation, this is one reason why KIK built a war chest on the front end of the dispute. KIK understood that this would be a protracted battle, and judging by the 130-page, earth-scorching Answer that it filed in response to the SEC complaint, KIK intends to attack the integrity of the SEC's investigation every step of the way."

Not all the feedback was positive, with some people calling this a money-grab by Kin, or the wrong approach and just a "Bandaid." Popular crypto Twitter influencer David Gokhshtein posted a video explaining that Kik had more than enough money to fund this battle and the Defend Crypto Fund may be fueled by motives other than bringing the community together to fight an injustice.

The latest report from the case came during a court filing on Aug. 6, in which Kik's lawyers claimed the SEC took quotes out of context and manipulated facts in order to support their allegations.

The blog post goes on to explain how the company will proceed and outlines all the changes to occur, starting with the shutdown of the Kik app.

In Livingstone's personal blog post, he emphasized his confidence that the Kin infrastructure is already an unstoppable force that even the SEC has no authority over, "But no matter what happens to Kik, Kin is here to stay." Livingstone finished the post with his promise to continue growing the Kin ecosystem that will be used by billions of people.

On Twitter, the official Kik official is surprisingly yet to make an announcement, while the Kin account simply shared the post without any mention of the closure.

The Kik app page also received some responses that the app was rife with adult content and needed a change regardless of the situation.