Decentralization Advances, One Giant Corporation At A Time

The blockchain is out of the bottle, with Facebook the latest corporate giant to announce a native cryptocurrency. It won’t be without competitors, though.

Telegram’s TON blockchain is expected to launch by the end of the year and if Kik has its way, KIN could threaten to Facebook’s ability to monopolize peer-to-peer payments. The company has recently launched a $5M legal defense fund, apparently hoping others will help finance its court fight. 

As Kik prepares to square off against the U.S. SEC, the crypto community has to decide which is the greater threat to decentralization: big companies, or the regulators.

Facebook Tries To Cut A Piece Of The Pie

Zuckerberg and his colleagues put more time establishing ties with regulators than they did being creative with its crypto-to-be’s name. After holding talks with the Bank of England and the U.S. Treasury, according to Reuters, the company proceeded to announce the forthcoming arrival of the insipidly named GlobalCoin.

Facebook reckons it can up-end competing cryptocurrency projects by offering its users more convenience. One can imagine the social media giant tapping into the $2.9 trillion cross-border payments market by appealing to its enormous user base of 2.4 billion monthly Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram platforms.

But the cryptocurrency community is less likely to take the bait. Facebook’s woeful history of data breaches is unlikely to inspire consumer trust.

Kik’s KIN Set For A Bout With The SEC

Kik, the messenger platform, also has its sights set on a native token, KIN, though with broader plans. About two years ago, the Kin Foundation raised around $100 million in a token sale. Then the SEC came knocking.

Kik responded with a biting reply that:

“Kik is not willing to appropriate user data and sell it to advertisers and marketers [to resolve] Kik’s challenges in monetizing its business. Second, unlike a centralized currency used only inside of Kik Messenger, a true cryptocurrency would be decentralized, and could be earned and spent across an unlimited number of digital applications, products, and services, from an unlimited number of developers. This would eliminate concerns about a single entity (like Kik) erasing value by deciding to stop accepting the currency.”Wells Submission of Kik Interactive, Inc. and the Kin Ecosystem Foundation

The foundation has now sought donations from the crypto community to take the fight up to the regulator in U.S. courts. On his DefendCrypto.org campaign, Kik founder Ted Livingston told Laura Shin on her Unchained podcast that:

“When we speak to people in the industry, we need to stop living under this cloud of fear, what will the SEC think? What will the SEC think? Because we all know [crypto] is the next mega-trend of technology and by always having to ask ourselves, ‘What will the SEC think?,’ we are giving ourselves a fundamental handicap to compete on the global stage. Enough is enough, we need clarity, and the only way we’re going to get clarity is if we go to court, so let’s do that.”Kik founder Ted Livingston

Kik is not Facebook, but it still has its critics. Outspoken Crypto Twitter identity WhalePanda was pointed in his condemnation of the proposed court action:

 

Kin & the "defend crypto" fund: we did a shady ICO which was obviously a security. We took $100 million from idiot investors. Our negotiations with the SEC are going terrible.
Now we want to socialize it and use other shady ICOs/VCs to put pressure on the SEC.
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