Wow, what a week. And it’s only Monday 😉

First off, I want to say that I stopped writing when I realized the potential of the KIN project, as I wanted to keep buying more at the low prices (23-30 gwei), and any extra hype seemed to be contributing to a price increase. The recent KIN gains have allowed me to return to speculation; so here goes, what was Ted Livingston talking about in his AMA?

Blackhawk Theory:

A lot of attention was paid to the potential partnerships that the official Blackhawk partnership could unlock, but not to the most important section of their website, “prepaid telecom.” From their website:

PREPAID TELECOM No contract phones are more popular than ever. Blackhawk Network offers the leading brands in prepaid wireless to attract consumers who want to avoid long-term contracts or pay as they go. Our product suite includes airtime cards, SIM cards, handsets and online top-up.

How deep does the partnership with Blackhawk go? “Hawk Incentives will be providing gift cards to certain users in the ecosystem via an integrated order API.” is all that is mentioned. Do you know about m-pesa? The system that Kenyans use to transfer money? It all started with the ability to transfer minutes, which eventually became ‘money’, and it is now the most used currency in the country.

It starts with telecom credits. People earning $10-15 off of their verizon, at&t or t-mobile bills. It leads to people buying more prepaid cellphones with credits they earned on their phone! It leads to Kin integration in all new handsets. It leads to trading of digital credits, which leads me to my next point.

Kinit Exchange Theory:

Not only will Kinit launch with buying/spending opportunities, it will launch with a Bancor-style exchange, using KIN as the “base” token, and allowing partners to create smart-relays for their digital points. If users can trade any type of digital gift card points for any other type of gift card points, enormous value is unlocked. If you’re in a fast-food resturant, but only have telecom credits in your kinit account, it would make sense to have an exchange that allows you to swap one for the other. This would actually increase liquidity for KIN, as people would be constantly transferring money through KIN without even realizing it.

Kik Integration Theory:

We know from the Ambassador Event video, that Kin will be integrated into Kik in a few specific ways: paid themes, a themes marketplace, a place for users to create those themes, and paid chats. All of these things will massively increase user engagement within the app, and also create massive value, instantly, for the token.

What aren’t they allowed to tell us? They already have agreements with the managers of celebrities, bands, and actors. As well as an unpublished, tentative, schedule of the dates those highly-publicized chats will happen.

KIK knows its users, they already know which bands and actors their users have an affinity for. They also know what bands and actors could bring new users to the app. What KIK has told us about paid chats is only 50% of what they know will work.

Day 1 Coinbase Theory:

Coinbase is already a partner, and is waiting for Kik integration to launch their pilot ERC-20 token trading system. KIN/USD KIN/ETH KIN/BTC KIN/BCH pairs all launch on GDAX, day 1, with a simultaneous Coinbase integration, leading to a domino effect of exchanges copying Coinbase to prevent a torrent of volume moving from their exchange to GDAX to buy KIN.

Steam Integration:

Steam loves to be on the cutting edge of trying new gaming systems out, and if Kik can prove they have a consumer-scale blockchain for digital services, why wouldn’t steam integrate ASAP? Decoupling loot boxes from their USD value could prevent accusations of gambling, and allow loot boxes to become *a lot* more expensive.

Chaturbate Integration:

Chaturbate is a porn site that uses Chaturbate tokens for their active website commerce. It is the 114th most visited website on the internet according to Alexa. All they would have to do is switch Chaturbate tokens for KIN, and they would be receiving a KRE payout.

Yes, I know that all of my theories are ‘moonshots’ and unlikely. I don’t actually believe that any of these things *will* come true, I just believe they *could* be true. It sure is fun to speculate though!