Kik Interactive CEO Ted Livingston announced that the company is shutting down Kik Messenger to focus on its cryptocurrency Kin, the target of a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s team will be reduced to 19 people, a reduction that will affect over 100 employees, as it focuses on converting more Kin users into buyers.
“Instead of selling some of our Kin into the limited liquidity that exists today, we made the decision to focus our current resources on the few things that matter most,” Livingston wrote in a blog post, adding that the changes will reduce the company’s burn rate by 85%, enabling it to get through the SEC trial.
Kin launched two years ago, raising nearly $100 million in its ICO, one of the first held by a mainstream tech company.
To get more people who buy Kin to use the currency, Livingston said the company will focus on three things: enabling the Kin Blockchain to support a billion consumers making a dozen transactions a day, with confirmation times of less than a second; increasing adoption and growth for developers who use Kin in their apps; and building a mobile wallet that makes it easier to buy and use Kin.
