Kik, which raised $100M in an ICO for its Kin cryptocurrency, says some users can now earn Kin in its app via quizzes, tutorials, and polls to spend on themes
Context & Ripple Effects
Kik has been building toward this since its Kin announcement put an Ethereum-based token at the center of the app's economy, followed by a $50M private token sale that fed into the roughly $100M raise. The CEO had already flagged the limits of existing chains and Kik's plan for a hybrid Ethereum-Stellar blockchain of its own (Kik's own-blockchain plan).
What changes now is that Kin stops being purely a held asset: some users can earn it directly inside Kik through quizzes, tutorials, and polls, then spend it on themes — the first working earn-and-spend loop for a token that until now existed mostly as an investment.
First-order effects
- Some Kik users gain a way to accumulate Kin without buying it, giving the token its first concrete in-app sink in themes rather than exchange trading.
- Kik gets a lever to convert passive token holders into active participants, addressing the core problem facing any ICO-funded currency: demand that comes only from speculation.
Second-order effects
- A functioning earn mechanic creates the user base and transaction volume Kik needs before extending Kin further into the app — the tipping rollout for group chats later that year builds directly on this foundation.
- Every new use case deepens Kik's exposure in its dispute with the SEC over the 2017 token sale, since utility claims are central to arguing Kin is not a security.
Third-order effects
- If the earn-and-spend model holds, messenger apps shift from advertising-funded platforms to closed-loop token economies where engagement itself is monetized through the app's own currency.
- The outcome of Kik's SEC fight becomes a template case for how far consumer apps can distribute and operate their own tokens without triggering securities law.
The trend: Messaging apps are turning their own cryptocurrencies from speculative ICO assets into in-app reward-and-spend economies, with regulators watching how far that utility argument stretches.