Canadian messaging platform, Kik rolled out its ICO in a bid to raise $74 m, with the investors from its homeland missing out on it. The sale for 512 billion Kin tokens started on Wednesday. Due to the regulatory failures investors from major markets for Kik; Canada along with the US, were unable to participate in the ICO sale.
David Livingston, the CEO, blamed the “weak guidance from the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC)” for the decision regarding the move in a blog post last week.
Livingston claimed that despite Kin having one of the fairest TDEs and Kik’s finest efforts to work with the OSC “they have failed to give us clear direction on when Canadian securities law will or, more importantly, will not apply.”
Canada has adopted similar regulations as the US for ICO regulations, where each sale would be dealt on a case by case basis.
To add to the misery of Kik, counterfeit impersonators of the ICO came around during company’s $50 million presales, adding to the increasing hurdles for token operators to now face when to launch their offering in the market.
The available tokens are however open to sales for registered users, and the left over token after the sale will be recycled for purchase above the individual limit imposed at the beginning – 15.2 ETH ($4393).
As of now, only 10,000 participants made purchases from 117 countries.