This article is a direct opinion based on news, facts and current events seasoned with confidence as a full time trader and investor. For me, this is a new year and a new beginning and I wanted to simply share what I believe are nice opportunities as an investor. One of those digital opportunities currently is KIN.
I came across KIN in my search for low market cap coins that I believe are currently undervalued in the market. Kin fits the description perfectly in my perspective because of its history and future purpose. Kin is the transaction digital currency that will be implemented by the messenger app company Kik, Inc. Not only does an actual company back it but it’ll be fully integrated and launched in Q3 later this year. It’s also not listed on any of the major exchange’s like Binance, Bittrex, and Bitfinex; making it a prime candidate to benefit from these listings.
Kik has a registered user base of over 300 million users waiting to also benefit from the launch of Kin within the app. 40% of Kik’s users are millennials within the United States. Kik recently also received a $50 million dollar investment from Tencent, the Chinese parent company of the popular messaging/marketplace app WeChat last year (https://www.wsj.com/articles/tencent-invests-50-million-in-messaging-app-kik-interactive-1439928079). Kik was able to raise almost $100 million in a high venture ICO to establish Kin. Fine details such as these are what I look for when I want to invest in something new.
KIN: BRIEF INTRODUCTION
Kin is the cryptocurrency that is being created and develop by and for the use of well-known messenger app KiK, Inc. Since its’ inception, the Canadian company has made plenty of noise in the crypto sphere and in social media. The app registered over 1 million users within the first 15 days of its release back in 2009.
Much like some already known digital currencies bent on privacy, Kik is known for its user anonymity. Kik’s feature of allowing identity separation from the theirapp itself by un-allowing any storage of information and limited interaction between user data and Kik, Inc. This allows for users to share as little information possible when registering. The company itself prides itself in this aspect as a measure of good faith between its interactive messaging platform and its users.
Kin was announced by Kik “as the first step to launching a decentralized ecosystem of digital services” back in May of 2017, and they fully conducted a successful token ICO raising almost $100 million from a little more than 10 thousand people across 117 countries. Kik has since established The Kin Foundation and began its integration of Kin onto the Kik app Q4 last year.
After carefully reading the whitepaper and accessing the current events surrounding the company as well as the crypto space, I believe Kin to be a massively undervalued cryptocurrency that everyone should be considering investing in.
BACKGROUND
The motivation as stated in the Kin whitepaper can be narrowed down to the advancing technologies presented currently in society. It explains that just how previous technologies have aided advance mankind as a whole and has provided an abundance of newfound financial opportunities; the evolution still continues with the technology offered and empowered by digital “crypto” currency.
They state, “We are witnessing the next evolutionary leap: the assimilation of economic value into communication systems,” and credit how digital services like social media have transitioned and established themselves into our society. “Digital communications platforms are becoming the most important media in the ongoing development of a future economy… The reliance on advertising for digital media revenue has resulted in advantages for companies whose products reach mass audiences.”
In other words, large tech companies control the playing field. The most profitable asset right now is data. With so many people using services owned by tech companies, we (often unknowingly) give up much information about ourselves in the form of data. The medium for this can be on virtually any device with an Internet connection and by selling [our] data and advertising off of [our] content they profit off of us.
“Such companies can leverage network effects and economies of scale to apply intense pressure to smaller competitors, while also stifling competition by providing their services free of charge. As a result, large companies enjoy the compounding interest of incumbency concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few. This is often to the detriment of consumer privacy and user experience and almost always at the expense of new entrants to the sector.”
The growth of such digital services, we (the consumers) have given great powers to those companies who have already achieved a consensus is mass consumer adoption.
Thanks to advertising and consumer demands, it’s these companies that have become behemoths as digital media revenue has begot their rise. Companies such as Google, all profit from their user base through user content monetizing digital media advertising. The consolidation in such companies has potential to imperil consumer choice with such great wealth now being generated by them; catapulting these tech companies to grow large enough to have economic and political connections. While I do believe that this is very true, many people don’t really understand nor care to comprehend how this can affect society negatively.
As a direct result of digital services rise this century through the Internet, small businesses can’t compete over those first movers who took all advantage in social media integration when the Internet first blossomed. In order to remain relevant, new digital services introduced to society must have some innovation to a certain degree for consumer adoption such as Snapchat or Signal.
But even then, when companies such as these come to fruition and (1) show consumer adoption and (2) if innovating enough, then digital service giants such as Facebook will show now mercy in attempting to “copy” it or purchase the competitor. This was the case when Facebook purchased small messenger app startup WhatsApp. Even though the company had only been in operation for a little over a year and composed of less than 60 employees for $19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. Sometimes though, they can face retaliation when you know the true value of your company’s worth such as the case with the failed attempt by Facebook to acquire Snapchat. Instead, it (laughingly) failed to try to mimic Snapchats features.
EARLY ADOPTION = ADVANTAGE
I concur with everything the motivation states as the need for Kik to want to integrate cryptocurrency onto their platform for a simple reason. Advantage.
“Kik believes the time is right for a roadmap for a new ecosystem for digital communications and commerce that delivers more power to developers and consumers.” They believe that creating an overall marketplace ecosystem where both “developers” and “consumers” hold the power through monetizing efforts integrated into their app will revolutionize a new way of content creation and consumer marketplace. By creating such a digital ecosystem that is based of monetary relationships between everyone involved; they’ll “offer consumers a set of rich, diverse, and open digital services that put the user experience first.”
Kik is wonderfully unique on the position pro cryptocurrencies and how they feel about the growing space in the coming years. They credit this huge move to cryptocurrencies to the red flags they are currently witnessing regarding the tech giants. The company claims that the move to cryptocurrencies will launch them in a new unexplored path to consumer value, ultimately rewarding the consumer for the their contributions to the project. It aims at incentivizing consumers to want to use the platform because they can now profit from it. It’ll allow for the decentralization of social interaction by creating a platform on which all contributors are in a fair and equal position to be compensated for their contributions to the ecosystem.
KIK’S VISION: CRYPTO ALLOWS A NEW TYPE OF INNOVATION.
The whitepaper explains how building a new digital currency with fundamental value in an open digital ecosystem can aid for open governance. Throughout the young company’s history they show that they have been at the forefront of innovating communication. They were the first chat app to become a platform (2011), as well as the first Western chat platform to integrate bots (2014). Kik also showed to have had growing interests in cryptocurrencies early on citing experimentations on their platform with a form of digital currency (2015–2016) called Kik points.
Seeing success in the experiment was the ultimate the only sign they needed in making the final decision to move in a new direction stating “millions of Kik users participated, resulting in an average monthly transaction volume nearly three times higher than the global transaction volume of Bitcoin.”
Kik explains that as a company, they have found a medium that allows them to opt out of mass consumer advertising or the selling out of consumer data, all through the adoption of a decentralized model, ultimately in efforts to gain a competitive advantage to other companies. By creating an ecosystem in which everyone has financial incentives and is rewarded, the ecosystem can eventually grow and be adopted by those wishing to be compensated for their content.
In an Interview with Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik, Inc., on the Finance Magnates Podcast he explains how cryptocurrencies have now opened up new doors for the company as it looks to compete against tech giants Facebook and Google (
In efforts to create such an ecosystem, Kik will have to create a compliant series of new products, services, and systems with the ultimate goal to encourage development of the digital service ecosystem fair and open; metaphorically comparing their part of creating this ecosystem as a “participant” rather than a landlord in the new “user first economy.”
This will be a new way to monetize the messenger app and enable the company to become competitive against other well-established tech giants. Kik plans to create an ecosystem around Kin by providing a platform via Kik messenger to show people how to provide a value to a cryptocurrency. Because so many new people still have doubts about crypto, Kik understands that the first step to adoption is to educate the users. They plan to give achieve this in seamlessly providing value within the app.
KIN: THE TRANSACTION BACKBONE OF KIK.
The whitepaper states that Kin comes from the word kinship, emphasizing relationship between all who use it in the creation of a new shared economy. By establishing an economy based entirely around the cryptocurrency, it will become useful and valuable. Therefore the only way for this to occur is for Kik must establish Kin as the fundamental value in this ecosystem.
To do this, Kin will be the first service to be integrated onto the Kik’s Kin Ecosystem within their chat app. The integration of Kin happened during Q4 of 2017 and now are having select digital services join the Kin Ecosystem in Q1.
As we move forward, Kik users will be allowed to earn Kin by providing value to the ecosystem through their content, creation, and even commerce. The users will also be able to spend Kin on desired services, products, or digital assets offered by the participants, merchants, developers, and influencers.
The Rewards program will allow for economic incentives for the integration of other digital services and applications into their digital ecosystem. The whitpaper, “inspired by previous systems like Bitcoin’s block rewards and Steemit’s posting rewards, the Rewards Engine will create natural incentives for digital service providers to adopt Kin and become partners in the ecosystem. The ecosystem will not impose any unnecessary restrictions or tolls on monetization strategies, beyond ensuring common ethics and legality of content and transactions. As more partners join, the network effect of the Kin Ecosystem will grow, building the value of the currency, and in turn encouraging new partners to join this initiative.”
Introducing Kin as the transactional backbone will add value over time in the developing digital economy of Kik, increasing Kin’s demand value. Once the value has established, it will facilitate the launch of the Kin Rewards Program in efforts to grow the digital ecosystem.
KIN: NEWFOUND OPPORTUNITES FOR INVESTORS
At the current price, I’m claiming it as one of my top five for 2018. Being a crypto trader and investor for the past two years, you know a thing or two about buying into crypto. For me, this is diamond in the rough and offers a lot of potential with the integration of Kin into Kik; and at Kin’s current price of $0.001232, I think it’s a fine investment opportunity to enter a long position not to be evaluated again until after Q3 of this year.
After a successful Q4 last year, Kin has now been integrated into the Kik app. If you use the Kik app you can actually look at the balance of your personal Kin wallet. The oncoming of select digital services and the Kin rewards program this Q1-Q3. I believe that this is where I draw a lot of my speculation on the actual value of Kin as an investor. This is a long term hold position to evaluate Kin again after Q3. I believe Kin will experience a phenomenal ROI for anyone who buy’s in at the current market value.
Investor information:
They have received much attention from a variety of investors.
https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/chat-app-kik-raises-38m-and-makes-its-first-acquisition-buying-gif-messenger-relay/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tencent-invests-50-million-in-messaging-app-kik-interactive-1439928079