Messaging App Kik Says It Will Fight SEC Over Any Possible ICO Action

The Canada-based messaging app and company Kik is in the latest cryptocurrency news for its apparent efforts to fight a likely US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement action over its 2017 initial coin offering (ICO).

As one report from The Wall Street Journal on Sunday noted, the founder of Kik and its CEO Ted Livingston said that the firm’s altcoin token, kin, right now works as a currency and is not “an unregistered security” as many (including the SEC) believe.

Meanwhile, Kik managed to raise almost $100 million via a sale of the token last September. With ICOs having dropped in terms of their total number (mostly because of the threat and regulatory actions) the final decision in this case could have an important knock-on effect on the crypto industry in general.

The SEC chairman Jay Clayton was in the news last February for saying the following:

“I believe every ICO I’ve seen is a security.” He added: “I want to go back to separating ICOs and cryptocurrencies. ICOs that are securities offerings, we should regulate them like we regulate securities offerings. End of story.”

This Sunday, Livingston added to the comments to the WSJ in a Medium post, saying that there are “dozens of projects at a similar point” with the SEC, and adding:

“We all believe that this industry needs regulation, but we also believe that this is not the way to get it.”

The SEC got in touch with Kik after the launch of their ICO and most recently sent a notice stating that Kik has violated the securities law, according to the post. Kik responded to this notice last month, saying that its ICO involves no fraud and that the claims “unjustifiably target a Company that made substantial efforts in good faith to comply with all existing laws and regulations when selling Kin in September 2017.”