SEC ‘twisted facts’ and took comments about token sale out of context, claims Kik

Kik Interactive Inc., the Canadian instant messaging company, was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] two months ago, with the SEC accusing the firm of an unregistered token sale which raised $100 million. Kik has now filed its response to the complaint, accusing the SEC of “twisting the facts by removing quotes from their context and misrepresenting the documents and testimony that the Commission gathered in its investigation.”

According to the SEC, Kik offered unregistered Kin tokens to investors as a ‘Hail Mary’ pass, when the revenue of the organization dipped. Kik argued that the public offering of Kin tokens was not a securities sale. As a response to these accusations, Kik had launched the ‘Defend Crypto’ to fund various crypto-projects in light of growing ‘regulatory uncertainty’ in the United States.

The response filed by the Toronto-based company also claimed that the SEC’s complaint painted a distorted picture of the circumstances of the sale.

The development was welcomes by some in the cryptocurrency space, with one of them, @katherineykwu, tweeting,

“IT HAPPENED!!!!!: Kik filed their answer to the SEC’s complaint today and it’s 100+ pages long.”

While claiming that Kin’s public offering was never intended for a token sale, Kik argued that it empowered users to earn tokens from watching advertisements, along with completing surveys. Further, Kik claimed that it does not have to comply with the strict regulations formulated by the regulatory body.

This isn’t the first shot of retaliation by Kik against the SEC. CEO Ted Livingston had previously accused the United States’ SEC of ‘playing dirty’ and making Kik look bad.