Kindred Spirits: Why Hardcore Early Adopters Are Dead-Set on Kik's ICO

That's how Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures and one of the most widely respected VCs working today, answered a question about the crypto market in general and specifically his outlook for Kin, the soon-to-be launched token created by the messaging app, Kik.

A part of his role there seemed to be to induct Kik's guests into an ever-widening circle of the true believers backing the new model for monetizing digital experiences enabled by kin.

An economy is, of course, one form a community takes, which helps to explain why Kik has invested in forging bonds between its early advocates, expanding the cadre from that early circle that sold the Kik board to a larger one that can sell lots of people using services online.

Here's the funny thing about it's early advocates, though: by and large, they don't use Kik.

During our interview with Livingston, we asked the crowd whether or not they were big Kik users before Kin came along.

The idea of kin is to create a way for all those companies to monetize without ads or user fees.

The strangest part of this whole kin idea is that second part, called the Kin Rewards Engine, controlled by the non-profit Kin Foundation.

The idea is that developers will try to build apps that encourage users to exchange kin with each other.

The artist would keep all her earnings, but the KRE would pay the app's developer every day relative to the amount of economic activity it created within the whole kin economy.

Photo of Ted Livingston welcoming kin supporters courtesy of Kik.