‘DefendCrypto’ Fund Raised Just $89 in Four Months

The DefendCrypto fund was originally launched by social messaging firm Kik Interactive to help it fund its ongoing legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC accused Kik of selling an unlicensed security. However, Kik later announced that the fund was no longer to be used to finance its own defence. Rather, the firm confirmed that it was turning over control of the proceeds to the Blockchain Association — with the idea being that the donations could help the wider digital currency industry seek the kind of regulatory clarity it currently lacks.

Kik’d to the Curb

Kik made the announcement that it would turn control of the fund over for use by the industry as a whole at the end of June, just one month after it was formed. The company reportedly took back some of the initial donations that it had used to get the fund off the ground before giving control of the remaining money to the Washinton DC-based lobbying group. The poor response to the fund is shown via the fund’s own website, and was highlighted by Twitter user @CasPiancey earlier today:

Defend Crypto got an initial investment of 248 BTC or roughly 2MM dollars from big names.

After that? $89 pic.twitter.com/pPcoLM31PO

— CasPiancey (@CasPiancey) September 18, 2019

The above post reminds us that the DefendCrypto fund first received around $2 million, which, according to the project’s website, was donated by “Kik and other contributors.” In the almost four months since the company established the donation pot, the wider cryptocurrency community has donated a grand total of $89.

Suspect Motives

The donations have so far come from a range of cryptocurrencies, although the quantities of each have been more than a meager. Accounting for the lion’s share of the cryptocurrency contributed so far is Ripple’s XRP at $53. The next largest contributions to the came in the form of Decentraland (MANA), the Golem Network Token (GNT), and Loom Network (LOOM) tokens. Donations in these assets amount to $22, $7, and $4 respectively. Also making up a part of the total are Civic (CVC) and district0x (DNT) at $3 between them. Of course, the very idea of the DefendCrypto fund is somewhat suspect. After all, those in hot water with regulators at the moment are almost exclusively involved in projects that ran an initial coin offering (ICO). Many of these token sales raised millions, if not hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars, from public contributions. Given its own almost $100 million ICO, it seems a bit rich for Kik to have even requested any money to help it fight its own legal battles in the first place. What do you think about the DefendCrypto fund? Are you surprised it received so little from the industry? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.  Buy and trade cryptocurrencies with a 100x multiplier on our partner exchange, StormGain.