Kik CEO Alleged Drunken Texts Revealed as Clever Hoax Jonathan Ganor 2019-09-25 07:53:36 411 views

Coindesk Staff Falls Prey to an Elaborate Prankster

We at Crypto Markets News like to take pride in being a neutral, unbiased and accurate indie source of news in the world of cryptocurrencies. As such, we have to admit our own errors. In our previous article we made note of an article Coindesk reported, which now is known to be inaccurate.

The so-called drunken texts have been sent by an elaborate prankster who intentionally misled Coindesk. The prankster made use of a Telegram account under the username "Ted E Bear" which also bore the image of Kik's CEO.

Seeing that Kik was shutting down activity, these fraudulent texts seemingly had a level of credibility. It was later revealed that Kik's CEO Ted Livingston was on board a flight and didn't have internet access at the time.

Kik to Close, KIN token to Continue Operating

As we've previously reported, Kik announced that it is shutting down its activity. In their announcement, Kik will shut down all activity, the majority of their staff were fired, and only a handful of developers will continue working on Kin. About 100 staff were fired, out of which 70 of their Israeli Kin team as per Israeli publication Calcalist.

"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. So today we are announcing three things:

1) We will shut down the Kik app

2) We will reduce our headcount to an elite 19 person team

3) We will focus on one thing: converting Kin users into Kin buyers"

Kin Token's Future

The decision to shut down Kik as a social media messaging app is seemingly a strange one. Despite their monetization issues, Kik was a fairly successful app with a large install and userbase. One may also argue that without the app Kik, Kin serves practically no purpose.

Kin token was used as a method of transferring funds between Kik app users and for purchases. Without the app to support it, Kin has a shaky future a best. Essentially it is one of many ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum blockchain without much truly groundbreaking technology.

Let's hope Ted Livingston and the Kik team change that.

Back to Home