ICX Is The Most Undervalued Crypto

ICX Will Be A Top 10 Crypto Asset

Nov 14, 2021

Time for an ICX Update

At the beginning of 2021, I made two posts about my investment in the cryptocurrency token $ICX.

These prior posts are linked here and here for ease of reference, but in short, I made one of my largest investments ever at the time into this crypto originally from South Korea. Before making the investment, I only did a couple days of diligence. I simply had a gut feeling.

Since making my initial investment, I have continued to hold my position as the price has appreciated. I have seen ICX execute at a very high level over a long-period of time relative to the crypto market and have learned significantly more about the project.

This had led me to believe that ICX may be one of the most undervalued cryptocurrencies in existence.

I am a biased investor and not a crypto expert but here’s my latest take.

The ICON Republic

It’s critical to understand that $ICX is the currency of the ICON Republic.

The ICON Republic is building an internet based financial ecosystem that anyone can join and improve on. This concept is hard to understand and extremely ambitious in scope.

This is how the ICON Republic defines what they are building,

ICON is a digital republic with a comprehensive governance system which allows you to have a say in network operations while receiving rewards.

They are basically creating an internet native financial nation state.

Through blockchain, they are setting the groundwork for a financial system that functions for, and by, it’s users.

On a side note, I think this might be the early model of how blockchain will support the governments of the future.

One of the reasons I think ICX is undervalued, is that it’s complicated to understand all of the things that the ICON Republic has developed that work together to build this digital nation state.

The Citizens of the ICON Republic: ICONists

ICONists refer to all the users, stakers and delegators of the ICON network.

By holding ICX, you’re a member of the ICON Republic and you’re called an ICONists.

Now that you’re a citizen of the ICON Republic, you can stake and delegate your ICX to a Public Representative of the ICON Republic. These are called P-Reps for short (more on this in the next section).

Staking your ICX to a P-Rep means that the ICX in your wallet becomes locked up for a period of time in return for getting a dividend of ICX. Your ICX isn’t sent to a P-Rep — it just remains locked up (typically for 8 days).

ICON provides one of highest staking yields in the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.

As you can see, about 48% of all ICX is currently staked because it’s generating users a dividend rate of 9.76%. If you hold ICX, it pays to stake. :)

Who Are These P-Reps You’re Staking To?

Public Representatives (P-Reps) are organizations or individuals that set up a validator node on the ICON ecosystem.

P-Reps are essentially a council of people that create and vote on network proposals to support the ICON ecosystem and blockchain. This ranges from code development to marketing.

The 22 P-Reps with the most votes become Main P-Reps. Those with less votes become Sub P-Reps who fill in for Main P-Reps when their nodes go down.

There are 78 Sub P-Reps and 49 Candidates to become Sub P-Reps.

Main P-Reps get 2.3% annual yield on all ICX staked toward them.

The ICON Incentives Scoring System (IISS)

The ICON government was designed to create optimal incentives for ICONists and P-Reps to maximize productivity on the ICON network.

ICONists are incentivized to vote for P-Reps that contribute most to the ICON network, while P-Reps receive votes based on their contributions.

There is also a fund with 1M ICX that the 22 Main P-Reps vote on to use to fund various projects. Main P-Reps use the funds to sponsor teams.

P-Reps are incentivized to make sure they allocate capital productively from the fund, or voters will vote for other P-Rep candidates.

ICON 2.0

The ICON blockchain was originally launched in 2017, but it was just completely revamped to ICON 2.0 in November 2021 which may be why you’re hearing about it now.

As a thought exercise, consider ETH 2.0. There is so much hype and noise around ETH 2.0 but it has taken years to come to fruition. That’s because upgrading an entire blockchain is a massive computer science feat.

When you think about it, how many people in the world have ever upgraded a blockchain at scale? These programmers are early pioneers…

With that, we can appreciate how significant it was that ICON launched their ICON 2.0 blockchain without any errors and much faster than ETH.

A key part of ICON 2.0 is the new Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP).

BTP

BTP is ICON’s way of achieving it’s true vision of Hyperconnecting the world.

BTP allows ICON to be the facilitator network of multiple blockchains.

With the rise of ETH, Solana, Terra and many other assets, you can see how a network connecting them all may be helpful.

At this time, BTP integrations are being developed on Polkadot, Kusama, Harmony, NEAR, and Binance Smart Chain.

ICON is commonly compared to Cosmos and Polkadot as similar tools for connecting blockchains. But, ICON is on a whole other level of connecting blockchains.

ICON’s BTP can be connected to any other blockchain without any algorithm requirements, while Cosmos/Polkadot is a network of independent blockchains.

This parts a bit confusing, but you just need to understand that ICON can do a better job at connecting all blockchains faster and at scale due to the way the blockchain was developed.

ICON has some truly badass engineers.

Overwhelming Amount of Information on the ICON Republic

Quite frankly, there is an insane amount of information published about the ICON Republic. The ecosystem is so vast it’s hard for me to put together one piece to even begin to formulate my thoughts.

Seeing the news of ICON 2.0 launching and starting to follow some people on Twitter that talk often about ICX, has led me to begin going deeper down the rabbit hole.

The more I learn, the more I thank my prior self for making a bold investment into ICX.

ICON Will Launch ICE

ICON will soon launch ICE, which will enable developers to easily port over apps on Ethereum. Many ICX holders will get air dropped ICE. We all saw the successful drop of ENS and what that can do for a community.

But more importantly, I am bullish that ICE will unlock tremendous value for the ICON ecosystem by connecting with ETH.

ICE is major catalyst for ICX.

The ICX Price Appreciation Is Just Beginning

ICX is currently at a $1.6B market cap and is ranked the 83rd largest cryptocurrency in the world. The price is currently trading around $2.40.

With the launch of 2.0, and the coming launch of ICE, I think the ecosystem is setting a brand new foundation for the years to come.

ICON has established business relationships with some of the largest businesses and government organizations in South Korea.

ICON has a lot of impact in South East Asia including Thailand and Vietnam. Since these countries don’t have the historical financial infrastructure like the Western world, but they are all plugged into the internet, ICON provides a valuable solution for their financial needs.

For example, ICON recently established a business partnership with RedFox Labs which is a company based in Vietnam focused on developing immersive metaverse experiences around retail, media, and gaming.