KickEX Review: KICK token resurrection scheme
KickEX provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.
KickEX’s website domain (“kickex.com”) was first registered in 2014. The private domain registration was last updated on May 24th, 2019.
On their official Facebook page, KickEX describes itself as a “financial service in Moscow, Russia”.
KickEX appears to be part of the KICK ecosystem, headed up by founder and CEO Anti A. Danilevski (right).
Why this information isn’t disclosed on KickEX’s website is unclear.
Prior to getting involved in cryptocurrency Danilevski worked in the video game industry.
In 2015 Danilevski became an angel investor for Whirl. He transitioned into a Whirl Board Director in June 2017.
As per Danilevski’s LinkedIn profile, Whirl is
a socially driven, “pay it forward” crowdfunding platform built on the blockchain, designed to help individual projects, through mutual scalable support.
This sounds a lot like KickICO, the first launched component of the KICK ecosystem.
At the time of publication Alexa ranks Whirl’s website at over 2.3 million, which for an online business is pretty dead.
To the best of my knowledge Danilevski has no prior MLM experience.
Read on for a full review of KickEX’s MLM opportunity.
KickEX’s Products
KickEX has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market KickEX affiliate membership itself.
KickEX affiliate membership provides access to an in-house cryptocurrency exchange.
KickEX’s Compensation Plan
KickEX affiliates earn commissions when downline affiliates pay exchange trading fees.
These commissions are paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
KickEX caps payable unilevel team levels at ten.
Commissions are paid out as a percentage of trading fees generated across these ten levels as follows:
- level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 15%
- level 2 – 10%
- level 3 – 8%
- level 4 – 6%
- level 5 – 4%
- level 6 – 3%
- level 7 – 2%
- level 8 – 1%
- levels 9 and 10 – 0.5%
A number of recruitment bonuses (paid in KICK) are also offered. These promotions are running till KickEX launches.
I haven’t included them here because they aren’t MLM related and there’s no provided KickEX launch date.
Joining KickEX
KickEX affiliate membership is free.
Conclusion
The MLM side of KickEX is surprisingly legitimate.
Users sign up, use the exchange and commissions are paid on exchange trading fees.
What you do on the exchange has nothing to do with generated commissions, it’s purely based on collected trading fees.
The problem is what KickEX’s compensation plan is attached to.
KickEX began as KickICO back in 2017.
KICKICO is an ecosystem-based platform that provides everyone with an opportunity to buy tokens of new groundbreaking projects in their early stages.
KickICO launched with its own KICK token… which flopped.
KICK followed your typical crypto shitcoin pump and dump trajectory.
It launched at a hyped 24.9 cents value in late 2017 (early investors cashed out here). KICK then dumped throughout 2018 and 2019 to its all time low of $0.000062 in December 2019.
Things have picked up over the past two weeks or so, relatively speaking, to the current $0.000082 value.
And that brings us to KickEX, which is the likely driver.
Compensation explanations on KickEX’s website suggest referral commissions are paid in KICK token, or at least rely on them.
KickTokens will serve as a fuel that is used to receive the referral rewards, be it in BTC, ETH or other currencies.
For each $1, $0,1 worth of KickTokens will be deducted from the expense account.
KickEX affiliates having to buy into KICK to withdraw commissions probably accounts for the recent spike in activity.
Again not a problem in and of itself; KickEX appears to be a legitimate enough exchange, but that’s not the whole story.
The only measure of KICK token bagholders I was able to ascertain was this from a KickICO November 2019 press-release:
The Frozen Drop will be distributed among 167,375 users of the crypto industry according to our magic algorithm, so there is a possibility that you will be the lucky recipient of some of 888,888 KickTokens.
We cannot disclose how the algorithm works, but we can say that it takes into account many factors, such as the active use of your Ethereum wallet, whether you have moved funds in or out in the last 30 days and the number of popular tokens on your balance.
Magic algorithms aside (epic facepalm), there appears to be at least 167,375 KICK token bagholders.
What you’re essentially buying into, the “Kick Ecosystem” as it’s referred to, is a community of people who are desperate to cash out.
KICK in terms of token value isn’t going anywhere. Through trading referral commissions, KickEX affiliates are being coaxed into using KICK tokens.
Why? Because maybe that’ll temporarily increase the value.
For the record there’s no reason KickEX needs to charge “fuel” for commission withdrawals. The only reason they’ve set it up this way is to generate artificial demand.
In summary, if you want to buy into the KICK ecosystem and relieve early investors of their KICK tokens, by all means sign up for KickEX and start promoting.
Just know what you’re getting yourself into, and potentially anyone else you sign up.
At the end of the day KICK is just another worthless ethereum ERC-20 shitcoin. Someone’s going to be left holding the bag…
Footnote: Anti A. Danilevski’s KICK ecosystem is not to be confused with KiK Interactive, who the SEC sued last year for securities fraud.
Interesting take on the whole KickEX drama do feel you’re leaving out that they are putting in the work required to build a exchange, it works well for me so far.
They are having more annd more trading pairs too and i checked on coingecko they have a very decent trading volume in quite a few.
The whole referral program makes me a bit wary too. It does feel like a piramide scream but with the current value of their coint it doesn’t seem like they will bag enough for the early investors to have any value of meaning
Thats my take, let’s see.. they have the required licenses in the eu and they work hard, have decent trading volume. . . I’m just feeling they are amateurs when it comes to marketing campaigns and public opinion
What is the relevance of that? Bagholders are going to sell to who?
Nothing has changed since I wrote this review. Any KICK trading activity is tied to KickEX activity.
What licenses would those be specifically?
I still have 888,888 KICK (frozen) I’ll never be able to use, because I live in the USA and US residents are not allowed on the platform.
Anyone had their worthless 888,888 KICK burned yet? I’m waiting for it to disappears out of my iOS Coinbase Wallet.
Well, they did great job. They have new deflotionary token with changed smart-contract, they burn old tokens, made app, started the ruffle where you could burn your old tokens.
I’m sure its transparent project which plays by the rules. And whats importat they didn’t give up everything after KickICO, they continue to develop.
So KICK collapsed twice. What’s the new shit token? Nothing obvious on their website or socials.
On Facebook KickEX is banging on about a mobile exchange app. Such technology, much wow.
Also from the comments on a recent FB post:
Dunno what KICK’s internal value was in April but publicly its started at 2 cents early July and has since dumped to 1 cent.
Still a fair bit of KICKEX website traffic from Russian and Algerian bagholders.
Ugh, it’s not this Quasa “crypto crowdfunding” bs is it?
KickToken is an organic-growth token and I don’t think they can do anything with that, I mean manipulation, it depends on markets tendencies. But team is doing everything to have new users\traders\holders.
Of course they need time, because market is overloaded with lots of coins and projects.
KickICO launched in 2017. Pack it up, KICK is just another pointless “plz number go up” shitcoin.
Waiting endlessly for new bagholders to be conned into buying your bags isn’t a legitimate business model.
I understand that you are hater. but whats your deal? nobody forces you to hold tokens or trade on exchange.
why so agressive? if people want to buy them they will, kick has its community.
Facts are facts. Deploying hATerZ and other derails doesn’t change the facts.
Here we are four years later. Sorry for your loss.
well, I don’t have any losses. but I just don’t understand why kick is such tricky topic for you.
anyway, you have your opinion and people who hold or trade with kick have their.
I’ve been gambling on horse racing for ten years and never lost money.
I’ve got a sackful of betting slips that didn’t win anything, but as long as I hang on to them and don’t try to cash them in, I dOn’T hAvE aNy LoSsEs BrO!
@Malthusian:
I would like to sign up for your newsletter. Sounds like you have a foolproof system, bro!
Loser betting slip NFT MLM when?
I remember in 2017 I red about KickICO on the Bitcointalk. I invested in them then, and now I see that they didn’t cheat.
They have created an exchange which is good and I hope it will have good volumes. Of course it doesn’t differ from other exchanges.
They’ve made a new token. They also have some kind of project planned, it’s all cool.
I realized that their team is not some scammers, but really working people who make a cool product.
Totes sounds legit bro. Loved the part where you specifically addressed KICK wasn’t another pump and dump Ponzi shitcoin.
Despite a bunch of different reviews, I tried to trade on KickEx and didn’t notice anything bad there.
Yeah they need to do sth to increase volumes but in common its ordinary exchange.
Except for the KICK token pyramid/Ponzi scheme they’ve hooked up to it, uh sure.
But, if you discard this pyramid, then this is an ordinary project, which there are hundreds.
Of course, you shouldn’t mindlessly invest in everything, but kick is a relatively harmless project with its own risks.
Ignoring the pyramid scheme doesn’t make KickEX any less of a pyramid scheme.
And whether they’re hundreds of pyramid schemes out there or not is neither here nor there.
Pyramid schemes are guaranteed to cause financial harm to the majority of participants. There’s nothing harmless about them.
I see. And if I just buy tokens and trade on the exchange with the coins that I like?
I mean using their products and not to use the referral program? Is the project ok from this point of view?
Nobody outside of scams cares about scam coins.
If you trade a scam coin you’re participating in the scam.
As for me it’s not scam, maybe just token with low price, idk.
I don’t take part in referral program, so I can’t say that they cheat somebody.