Welcome to the inaugural Iconic Insider, the first in what will be a monthly roundup of everything crypto and Iconic related. In each Insider, I will share my thoughts and insights on some of the most recent trends and hot topics in the crypto space as well as provide a recap of what has happened at Iconic over the past month. I may even offer a glimpse into what the future may hold from time to time.
TL:DR; Buckle up ICNQ Hodlers, we’re in for a wild ride to close out 2020!
A new chapter at Iconic has officially begun! With the closing of our Series A in early July, we have fresh capital to deploy to launch new crypto investment vehicles within the Iconic Funds group, scale the newly launched Iconic Multi-Manager Platform and continue to finance and foster the growth of some of the most promising early-stage blockchain/crypto companies through Iconic Lab. We also conducted a thorough analysis of our marketing and distribution channels and have formulated a full-blown strategy to reach the target audiences for our products and attract new members to the ICNQ community. We even moved into a new skyscraper office in downtown Frankfurt! With all the pieces falling into place, Iconic is ready to make some waves as we close out 2020!
The biggest development of the past month has been the formal launch of Iconic’s Multi-Manager platform, which empowers external crypto asset managers to leverage Iconic’s own infrastructure to launch and manage their own crypto hedge fund. We announced Napoleon as the first manager onboarding the platform and are happy to say we have agreed upon terms and closed with our second manager in less than a month already! We will dive more into this with the community next week, as well as share some other very exciting Multi-Manager related news next week as well!
With all the focus of the past year being on the Iconic Funds group, and now so much excitement built up around the Multi-Manager, it’s easy to forget how this all started with Iconic Lab. I am very pleased to say that Iconic Lab, as well as its portfolio companies, have seen resounding success over the past year, and especially the past few months. Our next Bar on the Block will bring back the founders from the initial Iconic Lab accelerator batch so we can see where they are now and how much they have learned over the past few years. I am sure it will be an invigorating conversation!
Iconic Lab’s most recent investment, Captain Bitcoin, successfully launched its Beta and now has more daily active users than any other dApp in the world. We recently completed an airdrop snapshot to distribute 105 million CAPT tokens to ICNQ holders, prorate based on their amount of ICNQ held, and will be distributing the tokens as soon as the withdraw mechanism is live on the Captain Bitcoin platform. The Captain has some very exciting things coming in August as the platform moves into phase 2 of its launch plan, and you’re definitely not going to want to miss what’s in store!
It isn’t just the most recent Iconic Lab investments that are taking the crypto world by storm, however. Unibright, Iconic Lab’s very first portfolio company, has become instrumental in the blockchain enterprise adoption scene. Not only have they become one of the members of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance, but the Unibright framework is one of the key components of the Baseline Protocol, a blockchain enterprise solution being developed in collaboration with Microsoft, Consensys, and E&Y. With all the well-deserved hype around Unibright due to the massive strides it has made as a company, it is no wonder its native UBT token has been the top performing cryptocurrency of 2020 to the tune of over a 2,000% return! There are massive developments coming from Unibright in the near future, and I cannot wait to see what it means for enterprise adoption of blockchain and the UBT token.
In fact, I cannot wait to see what the remainder of 2020 has in store for the crypto industry as a whole. At the time of this writing, Bitcoin has made a full V-shaped recovery from its annual lows in March. While I am not ready to say we are in a full-blown bull cycle quite yet, the stars are certainly aligning for 2020 to be Bitcoin’s Perfect Storm amidst the backdrop of endless money printing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Bitcoin’s value drivers will continue to propel it forward as it marches towards what may be a record year for the world’s most well-known cryptocurrency.
Interestingly enough, however, is this most recent Bitcoin pump seems to have been driven by the “alt” cryptos themselves, namely, Ethereum. The new crypto trend of 2020 is certainly DeFi (Decentralized Finance) which is drastically altering how we view crypto, and even traditional capital markets. The DeFi craze, largely driven by projects such as Uniswap and Curve, has led to novel investment and capital management products such as Yield Farming, Flash Loans and Automated Market Making via liquidity pool protocols. I am personally fascinated by DeFi and see massive potential, albeit with a few compliance risks that need to be ironed out. Iconic will be excitedly monitoring the developments in the Defi space to see what business potential there may be.
Of course, I would be remiss if I left out Iconic’s own native ICNQ token in our inaugural Iconic Insider. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the ICNQ token, don’t feel left out, there is a reason for that. Rather than “schilling” the ICNQ token, we have always taken the strategic approach to allow the community and token to grow organically with Iconic’s own business units. With the Funds’, Multi-Manager and Lab platforms now fully launched and set to scale, and the business case for the token being proven out, it is now time to make ICNQ great again!
This will begin with a redone and revamped ICNQ webpage with more clear explanations as to how ICNQ is used within Iconic’s business units. Remember, all Iconic issued investment vehicles are required to pay 20% of their management fees to Iconic in ICNQ tokens they purchase off the open market. All these tokens are then burned every month! With the ICNQ supply ever-diminishing, it is worth noting that one must still hold ICNQ en masse to trigger the VC-club membership benefits of the token from Iconic Lab, such as receiving the 105 million CAPT tokens and other benefits from Iconic Lab portfolio companies. I will be drafting an updated ICNQ economics paper this month to showcase these value drivers in a more succinct manner.
Finally, this initial ICNQ outreach campaign will conclude with ICNQ Uniswap trade pairings. We will begin with a small ETH liquidity pool to get our feet wet and understand its impact, then begin to add more liquidity with other pairings. Look for the initial pairing to begin very soon, with additional pairings added in the coming weeks. With further organic growth of Iconic and the ICNQ token, we will begin pursuing additional exchange listings and other means of reaching new audiences.
Iconic is really beginning to heat up, and the timing could not be more perfect with the crypto community being on absolute fire lately. 2020 looks awfully (Uni-)bright, and I cannot wait to share this adventure with the Iconic team, our amazing investors and the ICNQ community. Cheers to you all!
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