ICON

Opportunities:
The company is started by a Korean FinTech startup that is valued at $4 billion. It is now established as the market leader in Korea with the largest blockchain network, with over 40 organizations in the financial services, insurance, education, and hospital space.
The project has been under development for over 2 years and has real world applications. The first production blockchain service, a KYC authentication platform, was launched in August 2017 with 25 securities firms.
An experienced team is running the project. DAYLI Intelligence has over 100 employees and most of whom has contributed to the project in some way.
The interchain capability makes ICON a blockchain agnostic platform. It can benefit regardless of which blockchain becomes the dominant platform in the future.

Concerns:
It is uncertain whether ICX tokens will be tradable before migrating to its own blockchain (which is estimated to happen in November 2017). Therefore, it has a longer lock-up period than most other ICO projects.
ICON may face difficulty expanding outside of Korea due to language and culture barrier.
There are uncertainties around the regulatory environment for Korea regarding ICOs. If ICOs are not allowed in Korea, it would somewhat limit the use case for ICON.
The maximum inflation of 20% is quite high and dilutive to ICO participants.

Conclusion:
Overall, we are neutral about this ICO for short-term but like its long-term potential. Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
For short-term holding:
Neutral. The upside potential is great and the ICO should have no problem reaching the hard cap given market response, but ICX tokens will not be tradable until Q4 2017, which is longer than most of the other ICOs.
For long-term holding:
Good. The ICON project is one of the most advanced ICO projects out there, with an established technology and strong partnerships with various large enterprises and government affiliates.
We believe ICON can be a strong competitor to other blockchains like QTUM and NEO, which currently have a market cap between $500 million to $1 billion. Therefore, ICX has strong upside potential.

ICON is poised to be South Korea’s first big hit blockchain. Its connective design and A.I. pricing solution makes it a great value and data exchange platform. While a strong start, it still has a few bases to touch before scoring the run. Here’s what makes ICON 2018’s Rookie of the Year:

ICX is an ERC20 token, and ICON is an independent chain that connects multiple Community sidechains, enabling cross-platform data and value communication. It also supports dApps.
ICON was created by Dayli Financial Group, a well-founded FinTech firm that also owns a crypto exchange. It’s gaining acceptance in South Korea.
ICON Dex is an on-chain decentralized exchange for OTC exchanges. In addition, incentives are determined through an A.I. based on DAVinCI.
With these key pieces in place, ICON is poised for future success. However, anything can happen between now and then, so invest in ICON cryptocurrency at your own risk.

Strengths:
- Successful ICO – hard cap reached, strong & well-known investors attracted;

- Powerful partnerships have been established, business goals for Q4 2017 and Q1 2018 have been fully achieved;

- Commitment of the main technical partner to support ICON brand positioning;

- Mainnet & ICONex released;

- Relatively good token’s performance, despite strong bear market;

- Further stable growth opportunities if the market recovers.

Weaknesses:
- Mobile wallet applications and token swap procedure were postponed;

- Absence of the roadmap on the website and detailed project development plan;

- Strong competitors with an ‘Ethereum style’ solution across different geographies (although they do not usually offer interoperability);

- Bearish trend could continue to affect the token price, that is confirmed by NVT and trend-based approaches.