ICON’s native cryptocurrency ICX was trading at just under US$0.417 on Wednesday morning (Korea time), up 2.80%.
Against Bitcoin, however, it fell 1.71%. Trading volume was just over US$50 million, with a market trading cap of slightly over US$218 million.
The price of ICX has witnessed a bit of a correction since earlier this month when it was pushing US$.60. But compared to where the cryptocurrency was at the start of January, when it was trading at US$0.11 with daily trading volume at less than US$5 million, these are good days for ICX.
One of the more curious aspects of ICX’s bull run has been the bewilderment it seems to have engendered in observers.
For instance, CCN ran the headline “ICON (ICX) Goes Parabolic as Price Triples for No Apparent Reason,” while ZyCrypto wrote that “nothing fundamental has changed for the project even though its price has quadrupled in the last few weeks.”
While many elements are likely powering ICX’s current performance, the ICON project has certainly been helping itself, too.
At Altcoin Buzz, Deepika Garg examines some of what could be behind ICX’s rise. Reasons include:
- ICON has some market-ready projects ready to go. And they could encourage mass-adoption of blockchain.
- The South Korean government is promoting blockchain technology, supporting projects in a number of sectors favorable to ICON, i.e., decentralized ID.
- Staking rewards stirring interest
- Better marketing of the company’s achievements
- Alliances and partnership with government and corporate entities
- Lots of good local press in Korea.
Garg writes:
“Admittedly, nothing has changed fundamentally to flare up the ICX price. However, it still seems like ICON has a lot to offer and might be a highly undervalued project, which is reaping its hard work now. Let time be the better judge whether this is just another hype or something more.”
Meanwhile, the Korean-language business news outlet Bridge Gyeongje looks at the recent rise of the so-called Kimchi Coins, including ICON.
In particular, it notes that while the cryptocurrencies of Korean-developed blockchain companies — i.e., the aforementioned Kimchi Coins — have been riding Bitcoin’s bull run, they have also been expanding their use cases.
In particular, ICON’s technology partner, ICONLOOP, has been working hard to commercialize the “My-ID” DID solution and expand the related MyID Alliance. It has also been forming partnerships to expand the use of its blockchain-based ID services, fueling expectations that we’ll soon be seeing real-world usage of the technology.
