messaging service WeChat. The investment earned the company a billion dollar valuation. Company CEO Ted Livingston stated Kik's aspirations to become "the WeChat of the West" and said that attracting younger users was an important part of the company's strategy. In March 2016, the arrest of registered sex offender Thomas Paul Keeler II uncovered more than 200 Kik groups dedicated to the distribution and sale of child pornography on the site. In September 2016, CBS News published a story on the murder of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell, highlighting how easy it was to track and abuse children on kik and calling it a "predator's paradise". Kik released a public statement through CBS on June 3, 2017 stating, "We take online safety very seriously, and we're constantly assessing and improving our trust and safety measures. Nicole Lovell suffered a terrible tragedy and our sincere condolences continue to go out to her family. Since the time of the incident, Kik has taken a variety of proactive measures to help increase safety on our platform." In an online investigation in August 2017, Forbes staffers signed up for the service posing as 14-year-old girls and encountered 20 profiles of charged or sentenced pedophiles. In November 2017, Kik Messenger was silently removed from the Windows Store. As of 23 January 2018, neither the developers nor Microsoft have provided a statement or an explanation on the removal of the app. In January of 2018, Kik updated its Terms of Service and Community Standards to "make Kik a more respectful and fun place". The site also introduced a moderation and trust and safety team to enforce the new community standards. Also in 2017, Kik decided against more VC funding, instead raising nearly $100 million in a high-profile initial coin offering (ICO) on the Ethereum blockchain. In this crowd sale, they sold "Kin" digital tokens to the contributors. In June 2018, the Kin Coin was officially released on the Kik platform in Beta. In July 2018, the Kin Foundation released the Kinit beta app on the Google Play store, restricted to US residents only. It offers different ways of earning and spending the Kin coin natively; for example, a user can do simple surveys to earn Kin and spend it on digital goods like gift cards. In September 2019, Kik's CEO and founder Ted Livingston, announced in a blog post that Kik Messenger would be shut down on 19