Kik, which was founded in 2009, has over 300 million users, 20,000 bots, and is releasing its ICO token, called KIN, to ICO investors tonight (9/26/2017) at 1:00am Eastern Time. It is expected to hit EtherDelta immediately afterwards as buyers and sellers eagerly exchange their tokens. Many are anticipating Poloniex to announce the trading of Kin on its platform in the next few days as well.

The KIN ICO has raised 100 million USD at the time of this writing and has just under 6 hours left in its ICO.

Why I Like KIN as a short-term investment:

1.) Kin was only available to those who signed up for the whitelist. While it’s whitelist was huge (over 17,000) it was asking for a lot of money from a small number of investors considering they were trying to raise $125 million in their ICO. The biggest reason the whitelist didn’t exceed 50,000+ users was due to the extremely strict Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements that Kin whitelist participants had to adhere by. “Small investors” were required to send in their social security number and Driver’s License, while “large investors” were required to send in their Passport with selfie if they wanted to invest over 100 ETH in the project. Most whales value anonymity and were not willing to comply with these requirements.

2.) Chinese and Canadian citizens were banned from participating. They could not get around this using a VPN either as a selfie with passport or a social security number was required. This left out a LARGE number of participants considering the sheer volume the Chinese market makes up and the fact that Canadians were kept out of a Canadian company’s ICO.

3.) When the ICO hits exchanges, expect a relatively quick rise. 3x-5x is CERTAINLY reasonable considering the large markets (whales, Canadians, and Chinese) that were banned from participating in the ICO.

4.) Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, and Blockchain Capital (the big 3 hedgefunds in cryptocurrency) bought into the pre-sale of Kin to the tune of $50 million dollars. This is crypto’s smart money, similar to the US Dollar’s Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. They don’t make $50 million dollar investments on a whim. They are confident they will be able to turn this into a successful investment. Generally speaking, if they invest, you should too. See 0x, where all 3 of these companies invested substantial amounts of money and turned 0x into a coin that traded 10x higher than ICO price three days after the ICO ended.

5.) Kin has a real use case and hundreds of millions of users already. While many ICOs have a fancy website and a promising idea or whitepaper, Kin is backed by a company with a billion dollar valuation and already has a userbase of 300 million that will be introduced to Kin within the next two months.

Why I Like KIN as a long-term investment:

1.) This is the first unicorn company (a company with a billion dollar valuation) to launch a cryptocurrency. This mass exposure will be most people’s first exposure to cryptocurrency in their lives. Let that sink in. Being the first to market will allow them to demonstrate to the rest of the world how cryptocurrency works and how it can be exchanged for goods and services in a similar way to traditional fiat.

2.) Kin has already tested their rewards engine (that users will use to exchange Kin for products, bots, celebrity chats, etc) with their “Kik Points” from 2014–2016. They have taken what they have learned from Kik Points over the past two years of testing to launch Kin, which will be the official currency of the Kik Rewards system, and will land in the hands of 300 million users in the coming weeks.

3.) With Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, and Blockchain Capital all invested, the chances of this getting listed on most large exchanges is nearly 100%. These three companies were able to get 0x listed on Poloniex in 3 days after the ICO closed when Poloniex had not listed any new coins in months. Their connections with large exchanges and their need for liquidity to exchange their coins nearly guarantees this coin will be listed on many major exchanges. “But but but, they’re just going ot dump all of their coins!!!”

Nope.

50% of the three crypto hedge funds listed above are locked up for a 6-month period to prevent this from happening.

4.) “Just because 0x got listed on Poloniex, doesn’t mean Kin will get listed!” True. But the reason Poloniex and Bittrex have not been listing coins recently is because they want to ensure they’re compliant with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission‘s (SEC) latest rulings . The only way exchanges can do this is with EXTENSIVE KYC requirements from ICOs. No ICO has ever had more strict KYC requirements than Kin. This, along with Polychain/Pantera/Blockchain Capital pressure, makes large exchanges listing them soon after the coins are distributed (tonight) a lock.

5.) Kik and Kin have done no advertising at all for their ICO. They have no announcement page on the BitcoinTalk Forums, no bounties, no Reddit shilling, and have not spent a dollar on advertising thus far. This is good because as news of it hitting exchanges is released tomorrow and in the coming week, people will hear about the coin and be eager to purchase, thus driving demand and the price up.

Reasons for concern:

1.) Their ICO is only selling 10% of the total supply of Kin tokens to investors. 30% is going to Kik, and 60% is going the content creators within their app. This is concerning considering most ICOs sell 50% or more of their tokens to ICO participants, however, most ICOs (or all in this case) have never had a platform with anything close to 300 million users.

2.) They didn’t sell the entire $125 million they were attempting to raise in the ICO. Generally, this means that the demand was not high enough to justify their evaluation. In this case though, since China was left out, Canada was left out, and whales were left out due to the extremely strict KYC requirements, many are waiting for it to hit exchanges to purchase. I feel this will ultimately increase the demand for KIN.

3.) The remaining 90% of tokens that were not sold in the ICO will be gradually released to users of the Kik platform in the coming years. While this is certainly a concern for ICO investors, as more supply generally results in a price drop, the distribution of these coins will be among Kik’s 300 million users. Kik is betting that the rapid adoption of Kin through it’s extensive user base is going to outweigh the additional token distribution.

Conclusion:

I am confident that Kin will 3x-5x in the short-term and will 10x-20x within the next 6–12 months. The short-term valuation is based on its limited availability to investors during the ICO period and the actual product and team behind Kin. The long-term valuation is based on the sheer number of users that will have access to Kin in the coming year, and the years of testing that Kik has done with it’s Kik Rewards system.

Recommendation:

Short-term: Strong Buy

Long-Term: Buy