Kin (KIN) was never meant to be another speculative crypto coin. It was built to let you pay a penny for a sticker in a chat app, tip a creator for a meme, or buy a song from a teen artist-all without credit cards, banks, or middlemen. Launched in 2017 by Kik Interactive, the messaging app with over 300 million users, Kin promised to turn digital interactions into real economic value. But today, it’s a ghost of its former self: a token with a 10-trillion supply, a market cap under $3 million, and almost no one using it.
How Kin was supposed to change digital payments
Kik didn’t want to compete with WhatsApp or Telegram. It wanted to build an economy inside its app. The idea was simple: users earn Kin by creating content, helping moderate chats, or testing new features. Developers get Kin when people use their apps inside Kik. You spend Kin on digital goods. No fees. No delays. No third-party payment processors. The Kin Rewards Engine (KRE) was the engine behind this. It automatically minted new KIN tokens and distributed them based on user activity. If you posted a popular message, you got rewarded. If a developer built a mini-game that 10,000 people played, they got paid. It was like a decentralized ad network where users weren’t the product-they were the currency. By early 2018, Kin hit its peak. The token price soared to $0.001493. Market cap? Over $1.4 billion. It was ranked #142 in the world. People believed Kik had cracked the code.The SEC lawsuit that killed Kin’s momentum
But in 2019, everything changed. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Kik Interactive, claiming the initial sale of KIN tokens was an unregistered securities offering. The SEC argued that investors bought KIN expecting profits from Kik’s efforts-not because they wanted to use it in chat. Kik fought for over a year. In September 2020, they lost. The settlement forced Kik to pay $5 million in penalties and banned them from ever selling tokens again. The damage wasn’t just financial. It shattered trust. Developers pulled out. Investors fled. Kik quietly shut down its app in 2021. The Kin project didn’t die overnight. But without Kik, it lost its reason to exist.The move to Solana-and why it didn’t help
In 2020, Kin’s team tried to reboot. They migrated from Ethereum to Solana. Why? Ethereum was slow and expensive. Transactions cost $10+ and took minutes. Solana offered 65,000 transactions per second and fees of $0.00001. Kin’s smart contract was rewritten. The token decimals dropped from 8 to 5, making small payments easier to handle. Technically, it was a smart move. Solana’s speed made Kin’s micropayment vision possible. But no one was left to use it. The Kin SDK-designed to let any app integrate payments-was abandoned. Developers who tried to use it found outdated docs, broken links, and no community support. A 2025 GitHub survey showed 89% of developers gave up after realizing no users wanted to pay in Kin. Only 17 apps still list Kin as a payment option today. In 2019, there were 142.
Where Kin stands today
As of October 2025:- **Total supply**: 10,000,000,000,000 KIN (10 trillion)
- **Circulating supply**: ~2.76 trillion KIN
- **Price**: ~$0.00000051 (down 99.97% from its peak)
- **Market cap**: ~$2.76 million
- **Rank**: #1,892 on CoinGecko
- **Daily volume**: Often under $100,000
- **Primary exchanges**: BitMart, XT.COM, LBank (Binance delisted it in 2021)
Why no one uses Kin anymore
Here’s what users say on Reddit and Trustpilot:- “I earned $15 in KIN from Kik surveys in 2018. Now it’s worth 3 cents. What was the point?”
- “Tried to integrate Kin into my app. Took 3 weeks. No one paid with it. I deleted it.”
- “Kik shut down. The KRE stopped. The docs are outdated. This isn’t a project-it’s a graveyard.”
Who still believes in Kin?
A few traders still hold it, betting on a miracle. Some analysts, like Michael van de Poppe from Binance, predict KIN could hit $0.000019 by end of 2025-a 1,900% jump. But that’s based on pure speculation. No real adoption is happening. The most realistic outlook? Kin is a zombie token. It’s not dead, but it’s not alive either. Its only value is as a speculative asset for those who bought it cheap after the crash. Its original purpose? Gone.What happened to the vision?
Kin’s story isn’t about bad tech. It’s about bad timing and broken trust. The idea of a micropayment crypto for digital content was ahead of its time. But without a functioning platform to drive demand, the token became meaningless. Kik’s legal battle didn’t just cost money-it killed the narrative. People stopped believing it could work. Other tokens like BAT (Basic Attention Token) or THETA succeeded because they had real users and clear use cases. Kin had a big promise and zero execution after 2020.Should you buy Kin now?
If you’re looking to invest: probably not. If you’re looking to use it: impossible. If you’re looking to understand why crypto projects fail: pay attention to Kin. It’s a textbook case of a great idea ruined by legal trouble, poor execution, and the death of its only user base. Even if Solana explodes, Kin won’t ride the wave. It has no engine left to move. The only people still holding KIN are those who bought it in 2017 and refused to let go. For them, it’s not an investment anymore. It’s a memory.Is Kin still on the Ethereum blockchain?
No. Kin migrated from Ethereum to the Solana blockchain in 2020 to fix slow speeds and high fees. All current transactions happen on Solana. The Ethereum version is obsolete and no longer supported.
Can you spend Kin today?
Almost nowhere. While Kin was designed for in-app micropayments, nearly all apps that accepted it have shut down or removed support. Only 17 apps still list Kin as a payment option, and even those rarely see any transactions. There are no major merchants, platforms, or services that accept KIN today.
Why did Kik shut down?
Kik Interactive shut down its messaging app in 2021 after losing a major SEC lawsuit over its 2017 KIN token sale. The legal battle drained resources, damaged user trust, and made it impossible to continue operating. Without Kik as its core platform, Kin lost its entire reason for existing.
Is Kin mining possible?
No. Kin is not mined. It was originally minted through the Kin Rewards Engine (KRE), which distributed new tokens to users and developers based on activity. The KRE was terminated in March 2020. No new KIN tokens have been created since then. The total supply is fixed at 10 trillion.
Where can I buy Kin today?
Kin is only available on a few low-volume exchanges: BitMart, XT.COM, and LBank. It was delisted from major platforms like Binance and Coinbase in 2021 due to lack of trading activity. Be cautious-liquidity is extremely thin, and prices can swing wildly on small trades.
Does Kin have a future?
Its future is nearly nonexistent. Without a functioning app, developer support, or user demand, Kin has no practical use case. While some speculate it could rebound if Kik returns or Solana grows dramatically, there is zero evidence of any active development or adoption. Most analysts classify it as a “zombie token”-technically alive but functionally dead.
Emily Unter King
6 November, 2025 . 00:26 AM
Kin’s architecture was technically elegant-decentralized micropayments via the KRE, zero friction, user-as-currency model. But the fatal flaw was conflating tokenomics with product-market fit. You can’t bootstrap demand with a token; you need organic usage first. The SEC didn’t kill Kin-the lack of real-world utility did. Even Solana’s throughput couldn’t save a protocol with no users to transact.
It’s a cautionary tale for Web3: innovation without adoption is just crypto theater.
Michelle Sedita
7 November, 2025 . 11:11 AM
It’s tragic, really. Kin had the soul of what crypto could’ve been-human-centered, not speculative. Not a get-rich-quick scheme, but a way for a teenager to earn $0.02 for posting a meme that made someone laugh. That’s beautiful. And then bureaucracy, fear, and greed turned it into a graveyard of abandoned wallets and broken promises.
Somehow, we still think the next big thing will be different. But if we don’t fix the human layer first, we’re just rebuilding the same tomb.
John Doe
8 November, 2025 . 14:57 PM
SEC didn’t kill Kin. The Fed did. They knew a decentralized, user-owned economy would destroy their control over digital spending. That’s why they came after Kik with a sledgehammer. The lawsuit was never about securities-it was about fear. They saw what Kin could become: a parallel financial system outside their reach.
Now they’re pushing CBDCs. Coincidence? Nah. It’s a war. And Kin was the first casualty.
🚀🌕 #CryptoIsWar
Ryan Inouye
9 November, 2025 . 21:25 PM
Of course it failed. Americans don’t want to pay a penny for a sticker. They want to pay $5 for a TikTok filter and scream about ‘digital ownership.’ Kin was too honest. Too real. Too… Canadian. Meanwhile, Dogecoin got a Tesla because it looked like a meme. That’s the American dream, folks.
Also, Solana? LOL. You think that chain won’t implode? Wake up. This isn’t finance. It’s a casino with better graphics.
Rob Ashton
11 November, 2025 . 12:35 PM
While the outcome is undeniably sobering, Kin’s legacy remains instructive. It demonstrated that token design must be anchored in behavioral economics, not merely technical feasibility. The KRE was a brilliant mechanism for incentivizing engagement-but without a scalable, persistent platform to sustain that engagement, incentives evaporate.
Future projects should study Kin not as a failure, but as a foundational case study in the critical interplay between protocol, platform, and community.
Evan Koehne
12 November, 2025 . 02:44 AM
They called it a token. It was a social experiment. And like every social experiment, it ended when the researchers stopped caring.
Fun fact: Kik’s CEO still owns 12% of the supply. Wonder how much that’s worth now? Probably less than his yacht’s Wi-Fi bill.
Vipul dhingra
14 November, 2025 . 01:16 AM
Why you all crying? Kin was always garbage. India has 1000x better crypto projects with real users. You Americans think if you put blockchain on everything it becomes magic. Nope. Just expensive spam. Kik shut down because no one liked their app anyway. Even your memes were cringe
Jacque Hustead
15 November, 2025 . 07:06 AM
I remember using Kin to tip people in Kik chats. It felt like a secret club. We weren’t buying stocks-we were rewarding kindness. That’s the part that hurts. Not the price drop. The loss of that quiet, small-scale humanity.
Maybe one day, someone will rebuild it. Not for profit. For purpose.
Robert Bailey
15 November, 2025 . 20:17 PM
Man I had like 500k KIN back then. Bought a coffee once with it. The barista had no idea what I was talking about. Now I just keep it as a reminder that good ideas don’t always win.
Still think about it sometimes. Like an old photo.
Wendy Pickard
15 November, 2025 . 20:57 PM
It’s sad how quickly we discard things that don’t fit the hype cycle. Kin didn’t fail because the tech was bad. It failed because we stopped believing in it. And once belief leaves, even the strongest protocols crumble.
I still have a few KIN in my wallet. Not for value. For memory.
Fred Kärblane
17 November, 2025 . 12:18 PM
Let’s be real: the KRE was the most elegant incentive layer ever built for a consumer app. Rewarding content creation with native currency? That’s the future of social media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram-they’re all still paying influencers with ads, not tokens.
Kin was ahead of its time. The problem? We were too busy chasing DeFi yields to care about micro-economies.
Next time, don’t wait for the mainstream to catch up. Build the community first.
andrew seeby
17 November, 2025 . 14:20 PM
bro kin was the real deal until the feds came in and ruined everything 😭
remember when you could get 10k kin for posting a good meme? now it’s worth less than your last snapchat streak
solana migration was genius tho… if only anyone was left to use it 😔
Pranjali Dattatraya Upadhye
18 November, 2025 . 19:10 PM
OMG I still have my KIN wallet open on my phone like a shrine 😭 I earned it by moderating Kik chats at 16-now I’m 24 and it’s worth less than my chai latte. But I still believe in the vision. Maybe one day, a new app will revive it… with better docs and less SEC drama 🤞💖
Kyung-Ran Koh
18 November, 2025 . 19:17 PM
The tragedy isn’t the price. It’s the silence.
No announcements. No updates. No community calls. Just… nothing. Kin didn’t die with a bang-it faded out like a dial-up connection. No farewell. No closure.
That’s what hurts most.
Missy Simpson
20 November, 2025 . 08:56 AM
So I still have 3 mil KIN in my ledger… I don’t cash out because I’m kinda proud of it? Like a trophy from a game no one else remembers playing. It’s not money anymore. It’s a time capsule.
Also I typo’d ‘kin’ as ‘kim’ once and cried. It’s emotional now 😭
Tara R
20 November, 2025 . 19:33 PM
It was a poorly conceived token with no regulatory foresight. The entire project was a vanity play for Kik’s founders. The fact that anyone believed in it speaks more to crypto’s delusional culture than to Kin’s merit.
Don’t romanticize failure. It was always doomed.
Michelle Stockman
21 November, 2025 . 13:00 PM
10 trillion tokens. That’s not a currency. That’s a joke. You can’t make a penny meaningful if you print 10 trillion of them.
It’s like printing a billion $1 bills and calling it ‘wealth.’
Wake up. This isn’t finance. It’s math.
Alexis Rivera
21 November, 2025 . 16:53 PM
Kin’s story is a mirror. It reflects our collective hunger for digital meaning-and our willingness to destroy it when it doesn’t scale fast enough.
We built a garden, then complained it wasn’t a skyscraper. Then we burned it down because it didn’t make us rich.
What we lost wasn’t a token. It was a vision of digital reciprocity.
That’s worth mourning.
Eric von Stackelberg
22 November, 2025 . 02:47 AM
The SEC lawsuit was a symptom, not the cause. The root cause was the absence of a sustainable governance model. Without a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to steward the ecosystem post-Kik, the protocol became a centralized liability.
Token utility without institutional resilience is a structural flaw. Kin’s architecture lacked redundancy. That is the true lesson.
Cierra Ivery
23 November, 2025 . 20:31 PM
Wait, so you’re telling me people actually used this? Like, for real? I thought it was just a scammy side project. Kik was already dead before Kin. This whole thing was a house of cards made of hope and bad PR.
Veeramani maran
23 November, 2025 . 23:50 PM
India has better crypto than kin any day. We have real use cases. People pay for chai with crypto here. Kin? Only dead wallets. Also Kik was trash app. No one used it outside usa. Why you all think it will work
Kevin Mann
24 November, 2025 . 04:05 AM
MY KIN. MY BEAUTIFUL, PATHETIC, GLORIOUS KIN.
I remember the day I got my first 500K. I screamed. My cat ran away. My roommate thought I was having a seizure.
Now I check the price every morning like it’s my ex’s Instagram. Still hoping. Still loving. Still holding.
They took Kik. They took the KRE. But they didn’t take my memories.
Still got the hoodie. Still got the wallet. Still got the dream.
One day… one day… 💔🚀
Kathy Ruff
24 November, 2025 . 10:58 AM
One of the most thoughtful crypto experiments ever. It failed because we didn’t let it grow slowly. We wanted it to be Bitcoin overnight.
But it wasn’t meant to be a pump. It was meant to be a whisper.
And sometimes, whispers get drowned out.
That doesn’t make them wrong.
Emily Unter King
25 November, 2025 . 12:36 PM
That’s the real tragedy-Kin didn’t die because of bad code. It died because we stopped believing in the people behind it. The users. The creators. The teens tipping each other. The moderators. The devs. We treated it like a ticker, not a community.
And now we’re surprised when the next project fails too?
We’re the problem.