Keyword: Kik

The SEC Gets its Kiks out of a Successful Application of the Howey Test

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In a closely-watched cryptocurrency case, on September 30, the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the SEC in SEC v. Kik Interactive, Inc., holding that the Kin tokens Kik had offered and sold through a pre-sale and ICO were securities under the Howey test. The case illustrates the difficulties cryptocurrency companies face when they try to avoid having their tokens classified as securities; even though Kik intended to create a decentralized ecosystem for their Kin tokens on which third parties would supply products and services, the Court reasoned that Kik’s essential role in driving that ecosystem meant that token holders were reliant on Kik’s efforts to realize a profit on their Kin holdings.

Kin tokens were issued on the Ethereum blockchain, and Kik planned to develop an ecosystem of products and services that accepted Kin as currency. Kik stated in its white paper that Kin purchasers would profit through an appreciation of the value of Kin – as more products and services became available within the Kik ecosystem there would be a greater demand for Kin, but the supply of tokens would remain fixed. This increased demand against a fixed supply would drive up the price, which Kin holders could realize by selling their Kin on secondary markets. Kik would not be the sole developer of products and services in the ecosystem – third party participation was expected.

Courts use the Howey test to analyze whether a cryptocurrency is an “investment contract,” which is a type of security. The Howey test is comprised of three prongs: (1) an investment of money (2) in a common enterprise (3) with a reasonable expectation of profit derived from the managerial or entrepreneurial efforts of others.

Kik’s critical role to the development of the Kin ecosystem was enough for the Court to find that Kin holders expected to derive their profit from Kik’s efforts, thereby making Kin a security (the other two prongs of the Howey test were more clearly met). The Court found that “the economic reality is that Kik, as it said it would, pooled proceeds from its sales of Kin in an effort to create an infrastructure for Kin, and thus boost the value of the investment,” and that, while Kik planned for Kins to have a “consumptive use,” those uses were not available at the time of the Kin distribution and would “materialize only if the enterprise advertised by Kik turned out to be successful.” Growth of the company “would rely heavily on Kik’s entrepreneurial and managerial efforts,” the Court found, because Kik would play an “essential role…in establishing the market” and “Kik had to be the primary driver of [the] ecosystem”; Kik planned to provide significant resources to develop the Kin ecosystem, to integrate Kin into their Kik messenger product, and to provide incentives for developers to create new uses for Kin. Furthermore, if Kik did not follow through with the aforementioned efforts and no ecosystem developed, “Kin would be worthless.”

This reasoning around the “efforts of others” prong is similar to what the Southern District of New York said in SEC v. Telegram, where the Court applied a “Bahamas Test,” reasoning that were the Telegram team to immediately decamp to a tropical island after launching their blockchain, the TON Blockchain project and Grams would “likely lack the mass adoption, vibrancy, and utility that would enable the Initial Purchasers to earn their expected huge profits.” Telegram, like Kik, also had plans to integrate their token into their proprietary messaging product.

A determination of whether a financial instrument is a security based upon the Howey test depends of course upon the facts and circumstances of the particular matter. The Court ruled against Kik Interactive principally because the company disclosed that the value of tokens purchased could increase based upon the company’s efforts, and because at the time of the token sales the tokens did not yet have an immediate utility. A different result might have been reached if the company already had established a working infrastructure in which the tokens had a use independent of investment value. It is not clear that would be enough in all cases to defeat application of the securities laws, but it is at least one helpful argument.

The SEC Can’t Keep Kik-ing the Crypto Can

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The SEC’s Action

On June 4, 2019, the SEC sued Kik Interactive Inc. (“Kik”), a privately held Canadian company, in the Southern District of New York, alleging that Kik’s offer and sale of $100 million worth of Kin tokens in 2017 constituted the unregistered sale of securities in violation of section 5 of the Securities Act. In a nutshell, the SEC asserts that, although Kik filed a Form D exemption from registration for the offering, the Kin sale did not qualify for the exemption because the tokens were offered and sold to the general public, not exclusively to accredited investors.

Importance

This case could yield guidance from a court on whether and when tokens constitute securities, to substitute precedential law for the SEC’s pronouncements in settled enforcement actions and guidance issued by its Divisions. The SEC charges that Kin tokens are securities under the Howey test. As a result of Kik’s failure to register the tokens, the SEC alleges, investors did not receive the information from the company relevant for evaluating Kik’s claims about the potential of the investment, including current financial information, proposed use of investor proceeds, and the company’s budget. The Complaint emphasizes the reasonable expectations of “investors” in Kin that the value of their tokens would increase based upon Kik’s efforts, in terms that suggest that Kik’s statements about its projects lacked support and might even have been misleading. And although scienter is not a component of Section 5 charges, and the SEC did not charge fraud, the Complaint alleges that Kik knew or should have known that it was offering securities because, among other things: (1) the SEC had issued the DAO report that applies the Howey test before Kik began offering and selling the tokens; (2) a consultant warned Kik that Kin could be considered a security; and (3) the Ontario Securities Commission told the company that a sale to the public of Kin would constitute a securities offering. Kik’s primary defense is that Kin is not a security but a transaction currency or utility token akin to Bitcoin or Ether, which are not regulated as securities.

This appears to be the SEC’s first litigated federal action against an issuer solely for failure to register. Most registration cases have settled, and the ones that proceeded to litigation involved fraud claims in addition to failure to register. Since 2017 there have been over 300 ICO-related Form D offerings, so many companies may be directly impacted by the outcome of this case. Kik has stated that it intends to litigate through trial, and Kik and the Kin Foundation reportedly have raised a war chest of nearly $10 million (and are still seeking contributions to its defense fund).

Defenses

Although Kik has not yet answered the complaint or moved for its dismissal, the company’s position is well laid out in both a public statement from its General Counsel reacting to the filing, and an extensive Wells submission that Kik took the highly unusual step of making public. The General Counsel commented that the SEC’s complaint stretches the Howey test beyond its definition by, among other things, incorrectly assuming that any discussion of a potential increase in the value of an asset is the same as promising profits solely from the efforts of others. The Wells submission states that Kin was designed, marketed and offered as a currency to be used as a medium of exchange, taking it outside the definition of security, and that it was not offered or promoted as a passive investment opportunity. Besides extensively elaborating on its view that the Howey test is not met, Kik takes issue with “regulation by enforcement,” given the industry’s “desperate” need for guidance regarding the applicability of the federal securities laws.

Conclusion

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton stated last year that all ICOs he has seen are securities. And yet the SEC has pursued enforcement actions against only a small portion of ICOs – less than ten percent – most of which involved fraud or other intentional misconduct. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but this action might suggest that the SEC is now entering a new phase in its enforcement approach to ICOs.