Why ICON (ICX) is a solid shot for the long term

While China and Japan are rapidly building interesting blockchain projects specifically focused on a platform for Dapps and ICO’s , South Korea is lacking behind. While China got their ‘Chinese Ethereum’ called NEO [Source], Japan has it’s Cardano (ADA) [Source] but what exactly does South Korea bring to the table of blockchain platforms?

‘Hyperconnect the world’ ?
A very interesting and ambitious slogan, if you would ask me. But what does that mean for the average crytpo enthusiasts out here? and what is ICON exactly trying to solve? is this another ‘token’ to bring in funds in so it can publish a whitepaper, or is it trying to solve actually a problem? The answer to this question, could be only answered if we dig in the Deloitte report which was recently published in the end of 2017.

Deloitte states that hundreds of blockchain projects are erupting and that adaption is on it’s way for businesses and governments, but that a new problem emerges: uncoordinated value and information through entities and lack of integration within different blockchain (platforms). But then there was ICON.

ICON is purely designed to connect all blockchains with each other, to transfer value and information through entirely different countries, networks and for example universities and hospitals Source. The goal is to automate and kill any intermediary through the whole chain of blockchain A and blockchain B, as you can see in figure 1.

Figure 1: ICON 'Nexus'

Figure 1: ICON ‘Nexus’

But why ICON?
Ethereum and the Bitcoin blockchain cannot communicate with eachother, NEO and Ethereum cannot transfer information or value between eachother and bank blockchains cannot transfer information to the governements. ICON is trying to bring a solution to the table where private enterprise chains could transfer value and information between entire networks of blockchains. How would they achieve that, you may ask yourself?

Three letters: LFT
LFT stands for Loopchain Fault Tolerance, which continues the BFT23-Algorithm, which is even used in the NEO blockchain platform. According to Byzantine Fault Tolerance algorithm, it could be the most safest and scaleable solution to a blockchain platform from this day. But what does that mean in numbers? ICON Foundation has published that the Loopchain could achieve a theoretical speed of 9.000 transactions per second, as displayed in figure 2.

Figure 2: ICON compared to other blockchains
ICON recently launched their mainnet on 29 January, where the first block Genesis was minted. Their mainnet is working and undergoes a testing phase. The ICON team has published on their website the ICON tracker which you can find here. On 25 Februari 2018 a redditor found out the download URL to the upcoming ICON wallet called ICON DEX wallet. This means that the token swamp is not far away anymore. While the past months rumors were discussed that there is a big chance that ICON will be listed on S.Korean exchanges like Coinone, those rumors died quickly. The reason was when the South Korean government announced that a planned regulations was under it’s way for crypto currencies, ICON took a dive from it’s all time high of $12, to approximately $3.70 now. This gives investors currently a chance who missed out during the ICON ICO, for a good and cheap entry in this project.

Technicals
Marketcap: ~ 1.500.000.000 dollars.
Circulating Supply: 400.230. 000 ICX tokens
Total Supply: 800.460. 000 ICX tokens
ICO price: 1 ICX = $0.11 (0.00040 ETH)
ERC20 token. Swap end March
Exchanges (non-Korean):
Binance
OKEx
Huobi
Gate.io
Fundamental ‘value’ signals
Compared to it’s initial price before the beginning of 2018, it does have a fair price to buy and hop on this S.Korean ride, which makes it for the short and long-term interesting for investors and crypto enthusiasts.
Strong team, in fact it’s developed by a professional team and not in a garage by some students, but a Korean fintech company Dayli Financial Group Link gives it a somewhat assurance that this will not dissolve by a bear market or without hype from the community. In fact this same company owns subsidiaries Coinone, DAYLI Intelligence, Nomad Connection and theloop.
DAYLI Intelligence Developed ICON
ICON floats on top of Theloop project which is at this very moment a working blockchain solution, solving several actual problems for business partners.
Coinone is a subsidiary of Dalyi Financial.
Min Kim – Icon Founding Member is the CSO of Dayli Financial Link

Interesting list of partnersIcon ICX heeft een enorm netwerk aan partners. Dit plaatje laat zien welke samenwerkingen ICON allemaal is aangegaan en hoe dit met elkaar in relatie staat
Figure 3: ICON Partners
Future plans and the road map, for example ICON wants to host Initial Coin Offerings and Decentralized Applications on their network, which create in the future value for the ICX token itself.
The current ‘Phase 2’ where ICON find itself in this current market, which applies specifically to this project, where the ICON foundation is doing tests on their main net and where a ‘leaked’ web page was discovered by a redditor.
Figure 3: The Crypto J-Curve
Other investors are discussing ICON’s potential on social media sites like Reddit and 4chan. In figure 4 are the total “ICON” posts represented in the diagram.
Figure 4: Analysis by CoinGossip on Reddit Daily Discussion
Vechain will be listed 26 February on CoinNest, a S.Korea exchange where there will be a direct pair with WON. A direct signal that the regulation phase is almost over and exchanges will be soon allowed by the S.Korean government to list new crypto currencies on their exchanges. My personal hypothesis for ICON, that it will be when their Token swamp is finished, End March.
Korean Nationalism and impact on Fear Of Missing Out on Korean investors. I’ve done lots of research about Korean mindset and many peer-investors in ICON has concluded that Koreans tend to buy ‘their own’ products. Hyundai cars are for example over represented on the highway in South Korea, Samsung TV’s and ofcourse smartphones. Oh and by the way, S.Korea has quite the volume and they are a culture who is open for innovative things and they already love existing projects like Ethereum and Ripple.
The marketing has gotten barely priority by the ICON Foundation, expected is that this will improve when ICON approaches Stage three according to the Crypto J-Curve in figure 3.
Conclusion
At the time when this article was written, ICON was still a placeholder ERC-20 token, on the Ethereum platform, and holds the value between $3.70 – $3.80. All the resources and data I’ve collected in one week intensive research has convinced me that I’ll be holding ICON for a few years. A strong team, innovative LFT technology, Proof of Stake, Business intergrations and a leading dominance on their own home front, has given me a glimpse of the future where ICON will play a somewhat dominate-role to be an interconnected platform for different Stakeholders, Enterprises and Blockchains. Combined with a strong vision, innovative tech and home-made (not some dogecoin fork with a new logo) I have strong reasons to believe that ICON will all surprise the Alt-coin market. You’re only regret will be, that you didn’t bought more at the time!

Authors notes: This article is NOT financial advice, do not put in more money than you’re willing to lose. I’m personally invested in ICON, and I’m down – 38.69% on my initial investment, you as an investor and reader have reasons to believe that this article is not entirely independent or objecive. Crypto currencies might reward you with high Return on investment rates, there is a high chance that even a project like this has risks. I haven’t went too deep into the risks and cons of the ICON project, but they are always risks which you should analyse as an Crypto investors.

for anybody who is interested what my current portolio look like, i’ve compiled a list:

My main holdings in crypto are:

87.22% – Vechain

5.49% – Oyster Pearl

0.74% – AION

0.79% – IOTA

1.22% – NANO