Slashdot Mirror
Messaging-App Kik's Big Bet On Digital Coin Offering (wsj.com)
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."
Until the market implodes, there's a lot of money to be made with all these frivolous cryptocurrency announcements. I've been bouncing my money around from cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency as they are unveiled, riding the initial surge up and then dumping after a couple of days. It's been extremely lucrative; I started with about $400 and now have northwards of $2,500. I encourage /. to keep letting us know about these new cryptocurrencies as they are announced so I can continue this awesome ride. Peace, out.
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.
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 ;)
"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 Ethereum blockchain or contracts?
Anyways, this is essentially a game, with in-game currency and all.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I like turtles way more than this!
I run a telephone sanitizing bussiness but I'm pivoting into Cryptocoin and want to announce my Initial Coin offering here.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Cryptocurrencies are the Atari 2600 games of the Twenty-teens.
The other day a guy was telling me how serious of a threat the Crypto Currencies are to our freedoms. he said: "Any support or use of these crypto currencies helps to propagate the deep state oligarchy control over people. Supporting that in any way is an act of treason and subject to military response. Chose your side carefully."
How much digital currency are tweens and chatbots actually going to purchase? Because on kik, the other person is either a tween, or a chatbot. Or I suppose a sexual predator, answered my own question, sexpredators will spend gobs of money
Why so many WSJ articles??? This isn't even an interesting article.
PlanetVulkan.com
Kik is still a thing?
was Kik ever a thing?
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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 consensus to validate transaction. Meaning that every single node on the network will have a local entry stating that you paid a certain sum to the sex performer on your webcam. Although you're not mentioned by name/real identity, it's not beyond the capability of some big player (government-level agencies) to recoup the data and manage to guess who you really are.
Your privacy is toast (by design of the system).
Some 3 letter agency might come knocking at your door and try to blackmail you once they've discovered your irresistible fetish for scatophile midget porn.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not so much south sea but the holland tulip bubble
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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 .
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.