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Comment by meowface | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, that sounds a lot less scammy than nearly every other ICO out there. Kik is an established company with a social network product used by millions. Given their market position, I think their idea isn't totally farfetched. I could be missing some aspects that indicate it is a total scam, but just from that paragraph alone (which is all I know about the topic), I could see warranted interest from investors.

Look at all the payment integrations that've been added to platforms like Facebook lately. It isn't cryptocurrency, but the idea seems to be pretty similar.

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There was no disclosure that they were hemorrhaging money nor that their product was significantly unprofitable though. I imagine interest would've been a lot less had that fact been public at the time. They were literally selling it as "invest now and we all make a lot of money later"

I think the SEC is interested in the conditions around their ICO, the misleading tactics, and the aftermath of it, more than the fact that they did an ICO

The only times I saw people use kik for anything is when I was in the mood for a little recreational degeneracy and made the mistake to browse 4chan's /b/ and suddenly spammy kik threads pop up left and right advertising "trades" "no rules" "teens".

That is not to say, this is the only kik users, it's just the only instances I anecdotally saw people advertise their kik handles, and it didn't leave a good impression. This ICO stuff made me think of that.

But not an established profitable company. This is a money-losing startup looking for another funding round.

Vast majority of people don't understand how Internet startups are run. Even here on HN, people need frequent reminders.

Myself, for a long time I believed tech startups are micro-R&D for new technologies. Couple years of HN and in the local startup community later, I finally realized that a lot of Internet startups tend to turn investor money into business model R&D - i.e. ever more innovative ways to break an existing market and siphon off enough wealth to get flipped and net the founders FU money. Regular people don't know any of that; they don't understand how the game is played, or why - they only enjoy free web services and cheap pirate taxi rides.

Myself, for a long time I believed tech startups are micro-R&D for new technologies.

They were from about 1970 to 1998. Then came the dot-com boom.

During that period, most VC firms made money. Now, VC funds as a a class are a net lose.

"business model R&D" used to be called "fraud"

Kin definitely isn’t a scam. My company has implemented Kin into our app with over 10 million users and many other apps have as well.

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