The judge accepted a joint proposal by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Messenger Kik to settle a dispute over the latter's $100 million ICO campaign. Kik said that all legal claims against the company have been dropped and a new chapter begins in the history of its token Kin.
Kik is required to pay a $5 million fine and comply with certain other conditions, but was able to avoid more severe consequences. "In short, Kik will be fine. Except for the fine, Kik's assets remain the property of Kik, including the reserves of Kin," writes the company.
The SEC, for its part, stated that the grant of the application in court was the result of its discovery of "undisputed facts that the sale of Kik tokens Kin was a sale of investment contracts and therefore securities". The regulator noted that the unregistered sale of securities was a violation of the law.
According to the decision, over the next three years Kik will have to notify the SEC 45 days in advance of its actions with digital assets, including the Kin reserves. At the same time, Kik is not obliged to ask the SEC for permission to carry out such actions.
"The SEC has not requested that Kin be registered as a security and has not imposed trade restrictions," notes Kik. - As long as there was no solution, exchanges were asking if they could list Kin. This limited the opportunities for Kin to be listed on leading exchanges. The judge's decision and the terms of the agreement made it clear that the Kik crypto currency does not violate any securities laws and should be freely traded on exchanges.