Troubled messaging app Kik sued by SEC over initial coin offering
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing messaging app Kik over its 2017 initial coin offering that raised $100 million. Bloomberg reports that the SEC believes that the tokens issued in the sale, called Kin, count as a security, and, as a result, the sale should have been registered with the government agency. If it wins, the SEC could force Kik to offer its investors their money back.
At one time, Kik was a major messaging app in the US, and it was especially popular with children and teenagers. Unfortunately, this popularity contributed to it becoming “the defacto app” for child predators, according to a report released in 2017. As it lost users and its revenue declined toward the end of the year, the SEC alleges that...