What is ICONOMI?

This post in a series of cryptocurrency investment reviews is very exciting. It is an Ethereum-based investment opportunity that is actually in the ICO phase right now. ICONOMI is a platform issuing its own Ethereum-based tokens (ICN). It is the first token to be used as an instrument purely for investment purposes. Investors (you) can contribute money in the form of BTC, Lisk, Ether, USD, Euros, or much more through the use of ShapeShift.io.

By creating its own financial instruments, termed Coin-Traded Funds (CTFs) and Coin-Managed Funds (CMFs), ICONOMI makes it easy to invest in literally the hottest opportunity at this time. These investment vehicles can be compared to ETFs, which you might be familiar with. They hold a basket of the best performing cryptocurrencies with the most potential, allowing you to realize capital gains in terms of not just percentages, but profit multiplication.

To me, the question is not whether or not you will make money investing in ICONOMI, but how much?

Strengths

It appears to be run by an experienced management team with a well-rounded and diverse set of skills. The team is experienced in everything from trading to development to marketing to investing to legal. I can’t think of an aspect of this team that is missing. They also have some great advisors and are working with some people that have proven themselves in the space before, such as the co-founder of Lisk and many other entrepreneurs.

The Cashila team—the company in charge of ICONOMI— is already established as a small payments company in the EU. It is already licensed by the Czech National Bank.

The CTFs offered include full transparency, so you will always be aware of where your investment is placed. It trades on pre-defined rules and is automatically rebalanced.

CMFs are managed by the team actively, and should theoretically provide higher returns. ICONOMI ambitiously claims that they aim to multiply the original investment with their skills in the crypto space and fund management. This is obviously associated with a higher risk associated with higher reward.

A thorough explanation of the CTF and CMF investment vehicles can be found in the whitepaper here.

Where It’s Headed

The ICO is out right now, and for the next week, the earliest adopters will receive a 15% bonus of whatever they invest. This seems like free money, assuming the funds do well.

The crypto space has been already proven to be the best investment of the past few years. There is a company called Lawnmower, which has integrated with Coinbase, that shows their own crypto fund. They have a great mobile app and their Lawnmower Blockchain Index (LBI) is doing very well. ICONOMI aims to do something similar, except it allows people to directly invest in their funds.

This chart shows the performance of the LBI since inception, based on a $100 initial investment

Speculation

The whitepaper here mentions the ICONOMI.INDEX (CTF) fund and ICONOMI.PERFORMANCE (CMF) will be listed on exchanges, but again lacks crucial details. Which exchanges? That is important for investors to know.

I cannot find anything about the fees structure of these funds. I would assume that CTFs and CMFs have small index funds for management and marketing, just like normal ETFs. I would also assume that the CMF would have higher fees associated with active management. More information would be nice.

This graph from the ICONOMI whitepaper shows the projected investment return of the current top 9 best-performing cryptocurrencies

Overall, ICONOMI seems like a great investment, and I will be putting a significant amount of money into the ICO to get the 15% bonus, as well as hopefully a multiple on my initial investment. The big leap of faith here is trusting the management team to invest wisely in a market that is largely comparable to the wild west right now. My trust is based on the experience of the management team, as well as the assumption that they have more time to contribute than me to perfecting these funds.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments below!