Why ICON could be the next NEO
Team:
Many of the people working on the project coming from Korea visited top universities there, such as KAIST or Seoul National. They also have lots of people from the us that worked at top tier investment banks (Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan)
Conglomerate entanglement:
After further research I discovered ICON is a project of Dayli Financial Group which is a subsidiary company to Yello Mobile, which is a huge company in korea with a valuation of more than $5b.
Theloop is another arm of Dayli Financial Group which built the underlaying blockchain tech.
Yello Mobile was the startup that created Kakao what is basically the WhattsApp of Korea.
They’re already having plenty of partnerships and side chains that they’re building themselves for clients with the goal of connecting the entire ecosystem using ICX.
They’re signing up industries and those industries are paying up for their own blockchain networks that will become part of the ICON ecosystem. We haven’t really seen something this “professionalized” in crypto yet.
Partnerships/Other:
Announced partnership with Ripple source
Furthermore, SBI (the company that partnered with Ripple to bring Ripple to Asia, source, also invested in Yello Mobile, e.g ICON. source
27 Financial firms in Korea
Korean Financial Investment Association source
The “Financial Firms” mentioned in the above article are VERY legit. Daishin Securities has close to a $1b USD market cap and 185 employees on Linkedin. Kiwoom’s market cap is well over $1.5b USD. The others also manage billions or hundreds of millions US.
Signed an agreement with Woori (appears to be the second largest bank in Korea) to create something like Tether but for the Korean Won. source
They own Coinone, the second largest crypto exchange in Korea.
They have a partnership with multiple universities including Sogang University source
The university group blockchain source showing a prototype vending machine at Sogang University. The other side of that vending machine has the ICON logo on it.
Insurance consortium with hospitals and insurance companies: source
The regulations brewing in Korea are good for ICON. First of all, they got their ICO in and finished before ICOs were banned (similar to NEO in China) and second, they’re doing everything by the book, working with regulators, etc. That’s why the KYC took so long. But remember, this is a long-term GOOD thing for the project. Regulations create moats. Moats keep out the competition.
The community didn’t seem to love the fact that the first exchange to list ICX will be OKEx. That’s because most crypto folks today haven’t been around long enough to know what OKEx is or was (OKCoin, one of if not THE largest crypto exchange in the world pre-China crack down.) It’s currently returning to it’s former glory and volumes are crazy high. Getting listed on OKEx is a big freaking deal for a brand new ICO. And Coinone is certainly coming. I think it’s a great idea that they aren’t launching with the exchange that they own. This shows more strength.
They also added Jehan Chu as an advisor. He’s a pretty big deal and has been around the space for a LONG time. Here he is on Bloomberg TV mentioning South Korea. He doesn’t mention ICON (and does mention two other investments) but I’ll give him a pass given that he’s on an American TV show.
Korea is obsessed with crypto (based on trading volumes) and they are early adopters of nearly every new technology – usually way before China or the US.