The company will terminate over 100 staff and retain just 19, Livingston said in a blog post. Kik will build a mobile wallet for the token it launched via a US$100-million initial coin offering in September 2017. The app shutdown and layoffs will reduce the rate at which the company is losing money by 85 per cent, Livingston wrote. (The Logic)

Talking point: Livingston said Kik was forced to slash its burn rate because of the company’s ongoing legal issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is suing Kik over the Kin ICO. The case turns in part on whether Kik marketed the token as an investment, or as a currency to be used. Livingston’s future plans emphasize the latter. The company wants more Kin users to buy the coin in order to create demand for services on which they can spend it. That in turn would boost usage. Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor and partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, previously said the fact that Kin use increased following the token sale was a strong argument in Kik’s original response to the SEC investigation. In 2016, Livingston said the messaging app itself had stopped growing, but in Monday’s blog post, he claimed the user base had again started expanding.