Messaging-App Kik's Big Bet On Digital Coin Offering (wsj.com) 25
cdreimer writes: According to a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled, alternative source), messaging app Kik is planning a $125 million coin offering to tap into the highly speculative cyptrocurrency market. Kik made the news last year by getting the JavaScript registry, npm, to give them the "kik" package name, prompting the developer to remove all his packages, including the popular "pad-left" package, and breaking thousands of JavaScript project for a week. From the report: "Messaging-app operator Kik Interactive said Tuesday that it is aiming to raise $125 million through a so-called initial coin offering in September, one of the first established companies to step into the mushrooming but highly speculative market for these digital tokens. In doing so, Kik, which has encountered growth issues, is trying to tap into the surging interest in cryptocurrencies and digital tokens associated with them. It also is experimenting with a potential way for its investors to essentially cash out of the company without actually selling their equity. The market for digital coins has exploded in 2017, with more than 100 firms raising more than $1.7 billion, up from 64 firms raising about $103 million in 2016, according to research firm Smith & Crown. Most of these firms, though, are startups and in many cases don't have a working product. In that, Kik is different. Its messaging app is popular among teens in Canada and the U.S. Kik also allows developers to publish games and services within the platform, a hook meant to keep users on the app for longer."
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Tulips (Score:2)
Not so much south sea but the holland tulip bubble
The internet is for porn (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is what kik mostly delivers. Personal, one-on-one porn experiences. What the article seems to miss is that by creating their own coin platform, they now have a way for people to purchase and then pay others with that stays wholly inside their walled garden. No need for any pesky Apple or Google to process the payment. This is what their investors want as it gives them a nice rental situation which puts the onus on the user and not them to provide a method of cashing out.
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The fantasy, the pot of crypto gold at the end of the delusional rainbow, the reality, flood a fad market and everybody drowns. The more that play, the sooner they all die, under very specific regulations. There were reasons why private currencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] were mostly outlawed, how can the US Federal Reserve have imaginary money they lend out that becomes real when the government pays it back (seriously what the fuck, how the fuck come I can not pretend to lend out money and get peo
Were you not listening? (Score:2)
The point of the post you responded to is that Kik has a pretty viable business model. They issue cryptocurrency that real people will buy so they can buy personal
sized porn on Kik, then the people receiving the virtual currency go off and trade it back for real money... I agree overall there is a bubble but it seems like the Kik currency has a built in level of stability to it.
Problem vs problem (Score:2)
Crypto currencies help solve one problem :
- As there is no central authority controlling the transaction, there no one who could block the transaction just because they object to it (eg.: PayPal and Visa could conider pornography amoral and refuse to process the payment. But there's no central "Bitcoin Inc" that could decide what you do with the money. - Just as nobody would prevent you to put cash directly into someone else's hand)
But they open another problem :
- Nearly all cryptocurrencies rely on consens
Z coin is anonymous (Score:2)
Allegedly z coin has a formulation that makes transactions provable but un tracable ( not just anonymous user ids like bitcoin). It's weakness is different
Peak crypto (Score:1)
We've just reached it.
This is the time the smart money gets out, as everyone else piles in.
For those people who post on every crypto slashdot with "it's a tulip fad etc" doom and gloom then, congratulations, your post is finally appropriate. Just a shame you missed the boat from $1 up to $4800 and aren't able to cash out ;)
Telephone santizer (Score:2)
I run a telephone sanitizing bussiness but I'm pivoting into Cryptocoin and want to announce my Initial Coin offering here.
Amusingly whopper coin solves the liquidity proble (Score:2)
You are right. Just like tulip bulbs the value of a crypto currency is not the cost of making it but it's liquidity. New coins are not liquid. And even in coins like bit coin the liquidity is ephemeral, here today yes but tommorrow?
Enter whoppercoin. Sounds like a pr stunt but it solves this problem. It's literally backed by juicy meat. It will always have an exchanable intrinsic value just as gold coins did. Only tastier .
Um, meta much? (Score:2)
"Kik also allows developers to publish games and services within the platform, a hook meant to keep users on the app for longer."
Kik *is* a game. And the ICO will be their first virtual currency for use inside the game.
In this context, 'the game' is Kik, using Kik, being interested in Kik, rewards (your credit card company calls these 'loyalty' programs...), and intra-app bonuses/kickbacks/spiffs.
Fun times. But having people buy with Ether is interesting. A kickback there maybe? Or they are using an Ethereu
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Tell that guy that governments have the freedom to print money like crazy and we get hyperinflation [wikipedia.org]. It's happened in modern countries so it's not only for places like Zimbabwe.
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The WSJ a paid advertiser here? (Score:1)
wtf (Score:2)
Kik is still a thing?
was Kik ever a thing?
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