Kik, the popular messaging app, announced it will launch a new ethereum-based coin, Kin, as their primary transaction currency.
"This is something we've been experimenting with since 2014," said Ted Livingston, Kik's founder and CEO. "There are a bunch of ways to earn it: You could watch ads, you could host a great group chat, create a great sticker, build a great bot. So there's all these different ways as a consumer you could come in and earn value and then spend value. And how that makes money for Kik is, we create a new cryptocurrency for Kik such that there's only going to be so much of it. And we set some of that aside for us. So that if more and more people transact in this cryptocurrency, the value of it grows."
Messaging apps like Facebook Messenger already offer peer-to-peer payments, but Kik's usage of cryptocurrency provides a new twist, as most apps use local currencies for payments.