Disclaimer: Basically what I wrote in Part 1. In this piece, I will make some rough price predictions and timing. Please note this is all “for fun”, for a lack of better term and not financial advice.
Introduction
As mentioned previously, Part 1 examined properties of the general crypto market as a whole rather than ICX itself. Nonetheless, it was important to establish some assumptions as a prelude for this section, which as promised, will focus more on ICX specifically. A lot of what I say in this article will probably be facts most of you already know, but hopefully framing it in different angles can help shed light on why I’m personally so bullish on this project. Excuse the many references to different sources, as it took all of them + many years of my own interpretation to develop this thesis.
Speculative vs Consumptive Demand: ICX takes the cake here
This excerpt is from an article back in early 2018:
There’s a very clear difference between speculative and consumptive demand. Almost all cryptos, including Ethereum, are still firmly in the speculative demand bucket. People are buying, not to use (i.e. consume) the token, but to speculate on its future consumptive demand. Undoubtedly, these networks have the potential to generate MASSIVE consumptive demand, but that demand may still be years away. In my opinion, that timeline is much, MUCH shorter for Icon than any other crypto I’ve seen. Icon had functional products up and running that rely on their ICX token months before they launched their mainnet product. Most projects haven’t even begun to actually implement real-world use cases.
This citation is relevant more than ever because the article basically called that ICX would have actual use cases being implemented much sooner in the scheme of things from a consumptive perspective and not for speculation purposes (though the latter will probably come hand in hand). If you’ve been keeping up with ICON news, you know that real life examples today include My-ID, Broof, and VisitMe with only more to come. We’re talking not about a few hundred random crypto enthusiasts using it for the sake of being crypto, but an entire nation, endorsed and encouraged by the government, who’s implied numerous times they do not want to fall behind in technological prowess. There’s not really much to speculate here, it’s simply the future of Korea. Anyone remember this Tweet? Min followed up stating clearly “ICONLOOP’s loopchain is Seoul Metro’s standard blockchain platform for all current and future applications.”
When I refer to value here, I’m not talking about the notional price it’s trading at, but rather, its utility and what it offers, which brings me to my next point.
ICONLOOP can’t succeed without ICON. ICX is needed and has more use cases than what you might think
This topic’s been beaten to death and arguably one of the biggest misconceptions people have regarding ICONLOOP’s relationship with ICON. I’m going to try a few different approaches to help elucidate why the former’s success is crucial for the latter and vice versa. Lets start with a visual aid:
I’ve already addressed broof, My-ID, and VisitMe. What about other areas like DApps and universities/hospitals/governments? Lets try to theorycraft some use cases:
DApps — As far as I’m aware, the most anticipated partnership with regards to DApps is probably the one with with LINE, or project “Unchain”. For those out of the loop, Brian Li of Rhizome gives an excellent breakdown here
Admittedly, there aren’t too many prevalent DApps on the ICX ecosystem right now (except maybe ICONbet, but I’ll save my shill for some other day). However, there’s a lot of promising ones in development, with Future ICX just having been recently launched. Lets do a quick preview of other exciting work in progress:
DeFi and gaming especially are two very promising high growth niches in the blockchain space and we already have two on its way on the ICON ecosystem. Balanced, in particular, have incredible potential and I wouldn’t be surprised to see people outside of just Iconists flock over to the platform once available. You know what’s needed to play/access them? ICX.
This is, in my opinion, just the tip of the iceberg. This piece I’m about to share is all “hearsay” and speculation at best, but can probably inspire many other powerful ideas. In a podcast (I timestamped, should go directly to the segment) with Corey of Ubik, Peter Saddington teased that ICX could be integrated with the internet or a search engine, which would be one of the prime epitomes of why Blockchain was developed in the first place.
All these DApps are just the beginning and developed by what’s arguably just a small, but growing developer community. Imagine what we can build out and the potential masses that would use them (LINE with their 200 million user base, nbd) in the future. That’s what you call mass adoption and when mass adoption takes over, more transactions-> more tokens burned -> decreased supply/increased demand-> appreciation in price. I think this is why it’s important for an engaging community and why the Foundation has been adamant about not getting too involved in this aspect.
Other use cases in hospitals/governments/schools — For some of the newer people to the ICX community, this example probably isn’t being used as much but I think it hasn’t lost any relevance, and if anything, is coming one step closer to being a reality. Here’s another excerpt from a wonderful report by Markus of Icon Hyperconnect:
Here’s how this plays out in real life. Imagine that a student requires surgery. She may check into a hospital, verify her identity on Chain ID and give permission so that the hospital can share her medical records directly with her insurance company. This will trigger a smart contract that will immediately transfer her health records and her surgeon’s medical certificate (signed digitally on ICON’s Chain Sign) to the insurance company. The insurance company can then immediately process the insurance claim as both the health records and the medical certificate are tamper-proof on the blockchain and do not require additional verification or the sending of official paper documents, steps which typically slow down the process of traditional insurance claims and make them more costly.
After her surgery, the student who needs to get hospitalized for a few days may then give permission to the hospital to share her records with her university so that she can get formally excused from attending classes. The information would again be shared immediately via a smart contract without the need of a third party ‘messenger’, without the need for paper (e.g., a doctor’s note), and with full assurance for both parties that the information is legitimate.
It should be noted that this scenario is theoretically possible on any smart contract blockchain protocol. However, the reason why it’s a uniquely plausible scenario for ICON currently is because ICON is one of the only platforms that have already secured and built the networks in the necessary industries (e.g., healthcare, banking, insurance). Building a blockchain can be as easy as copying and pasting code, the true challenge is building a network.
Hence, you see there are many core pieces to a successful, working product, but it seems quite clear to me ICON has ascended beyond any other entity in establishing this network via ICONLOOP. If anyone says ICON is dead and they got nothing going on, think again.
A lot of these examples are a bit older and maybe some people have lost sight of them whether due to the time, or being jaded by price action. In my eyes, everything’s been going according to plan and while we still are in the early innings in the scheme of things, it’s going to be massive when all of this comes to fruition.
My-ID looking very favorable to be Korea’s standard
If I haven’t already made a convincing case that ICON will be the key facilitator in South Korea’s cryptocurrency growth, I’m going to make a few more references that would suggest otherwise. From Iconographer’s detective report last year when a consortium of seven major Korean companies have agreed to develop a blockchain network focused on decentralized identification (DID):
Take a moment to evaluate two choices from the perspective of the companies who announced their partnership today:
On the one hand, you can choose to utilize a technology that has a) been implemented and tested with other similar companies for at least two years (through the KOFIA partnership) b) has regulatory approval from the Korean government (which is critical for the banks), and c) has patent protection.
Or, you could roll the dice at building your own technology from the ground up, without assured regulatory approval, in possible violation of patents and the associated legal risks that would bring.
Easy choice, right?
This is speculation — but educated speculation, based on the information above — that the entities may be planning to work together to ensure that their potential implementation of ChainID / my-ID technology (developed by ICONLOOP) will be compatible with one another, and other blockchain solutions they have in development.
How, technically speaking, would that happen?
If only there was some mechanism to hyperconnect private blockchains…
I’ve seen many articles of individual Korean companies announcing they’re launching their own blockchain. The most frequent question I see is “why isn’t it on the ICON blockchain”? Hopefully this explains why any blockchain addition is another potential use case and dispels the notions of being a “competitive threat”.
And to top it off, here’s Markus’s interpretation:
What do you think? Purely coincidence?
Tying it all together
I’m sure that was a lot to digest so lets try to summarize all my theories and information we have so far:
- Crypto bull and bear markets come and go typically in the form of 4 year cycles. While I doubt it’s going to play out exactly (who knows though), it gives us a relative checkpoint that we would peak sometime late 2021/early 2022.
- Price appreciation is typically explosive, with a lot of the epic parabolic runs happening in the later stages of the market. The new bull runs exceed the previous runs exponentially, not linearly. Whether in a concave or convex fashion this time is unknown.
- The entire market seems to grow regardless of how “good” the project actually is, most, if not all even eclipsing their previous ATH’s. That being said, the “better” ones tended to have realized more price discovery than others.
- I postulate ICX has many use cases and unrealized potential than what the average person believes. Subsequently, ICX falls under the category of the “good” projects I vaguely worded earlier. Theoretically, it also helps that ICX has a high market beta which is indirectly reflected in how heavily it’s being underestimated and FUDded compared to other projects. The coil may be being compressed hard right now, but what will that lead to when it’s released?
Now for the fun part most people wanted to see, the price prediction and my reasoning. Lets bring back the previous peaks of marketcaps to compare:
Note all these are making large stretches of assumptions and have no hard, scientific backing. It’s speculation at best and for fun, but here goes:
More than 10 projects in 2018 surpassed the previous peak’s 2nd place Marketcap (LTC: $800m). This is a “conservative” measure and all arbitrary but I’m going to wager at least 10 projects will surpass the $25B mcap mark (Rank 5 Cardano in 2018) next bull run. Let’s assume ICX hits a $25B mcap with a 600m circulating supply. That equates to $41.66. For comparison, NEO had around a $10B mcap in the previous run. Not too crazy of a prediction right?
You can go either direction with this. If you want to lower expectations and say ICX only hits a $15B mcap, that’s still a $25 ICX, almost 2x its previous value. Again, keep in mind these marketcap points are arbitrary and this can be way far off the actual mark, for better or for worse. Now, if you’re like me and who thinks ICX is a top 5 project and the Korean mass adoption will do wonders this time on top of all these “technical” assumptions, then we can view it like this as well:
ETH had a $100B mcap. We already know ICX has some technological prowess over it as well as some other potential advantages as a high performance 3rd generation interoperability protocol. If ICX simply were to match the previous $100B mcap, you’re looking at well past a $100+ price. If ICX manages to defy all expectations and go above and beyond, that’s a potential multiplier of the $100B mcap and well, you know where this is going.
Adding some final hopium, I’m going to quote Markus again cause he has some amazing insights:
The crypto market isn’t rational. Everyday, millions are poured into ideas with no product, let alone a network. But in mid-late 2017, Ethereum had an explosive growth in value as people realized its utility/value proposition as a leading 2.0 blockchain smart contract protocol and all its corresponding uses.
I see parallels between ICX currently and ETH in early 2017, both in their initial mischaracterizations, and failure of the public to see their value. If ICON manages to do what it seeks to do just in Korea (and I’d argue they’ve done most of the heavy lifting), we can expect significant growth in demand for ICX. Not just among speculators and investors, but among those actually seeking to utilize ICON as a leading 3.0 blockchain interoperability protocol.
Some more friendly advice
I think it’s fine and fun to imagine what can happen in cryptoland but at the same time, it’s important to temper expectations. Just because I believe in a $100+ ICX doesn’t mean I’m going to refuse to sell until it reaches that point — I’m going to carefully re-evaluate all the information when the time comes: after all, it might just be a completely different landscape with unexpected circumstances by then. That being said, even if it doesn’t play out in the timeframe I anticipated, I’m perfectly comfortable keeping my hands in cold storage cause I know I’m in it for the long haul.
Not financial advice again, but the best time to be accumulating is when no one is paying attention or to quote the overused yet accurate quote “be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy”. I continued buying into ICX when it hit ICO prices again not because I’m a “hopeless bagholding moonboy”, but cause I know a good product when I see one. Taking advantage of these opportunities allowed me to build up a formidable stack as well become one of the top TAP holders (another fun separate story, maybe I’ll share the full ride sometime). Does this mean you should be going all in on every project that’s tanked 99%? Absolutely not, but I’d like to think you get my main takeaway message here. Don’t risk more than what you can’t afford to lose and in a few years down the line, you may or may not be in for a pleasant surprise.
Had a really fun time writing this, and I owe thanks to the wonderful support from the community. I emphasize the community here because we really are the engine that drives the success of this ecosystem. There’s a lot of unsung heroes out there that are doing incredible work behind the scenes as we speak so I encourage everyone to be more aware of what’s going on, get educated, involved, and help spread the word. Much love!
