We have been getting a lot of questions lately about what has inspired us to create FutureICX and why do we think that the concept of the app is different from the already existing options on the trading market. In order to get into that, I think that we will need to go a bit into the basic nature of the trading process.
A lot of people that go into trading seem to have the mentality that once they study a few candlestick patterns, can draw a straight line connecting a specific pair’s tops or know what RSI or MACD is, the money will start flowing in. In reality trading is anything but easy. An average day trader or swing trader loses their money in 90% of the cases. The reasons for that are numerous, some involving market/position manipulation, exchange policies, software issues etc., but for the most part there is one single factor that dominates that statistic – inexperience. Even if put in a much more advantageous position, it would be exceedingly difficult for the average trader to beat the institutional traders and other professionals that do this for a living in their own game.
Trading is an extremely competitive zero-sum game and although it is a fun and addictive activity, the fact that the market is dominated by professionals usually means that the losing side of the trade is more often than not on the average traders’ side. Usually in order to counteract this and to gain the so necessary experience without losing their shirt, the traders are forced to go into shorter and shorter trading periods – trading practices that are influenced greatly by every small move of the market and get closer to gambling than actual market reading and analysis.
The aim of FutureICX was to counteract these problems as much as possible and create an environment where the skilled traders have a fighting chance to make gains, without having to outplay the institutional investors, while doing so in a safe and fair environment. We also wanted that platform to be light and slightly gamified so we can lower to a certain extent the pressure and frustration that are usually associated with the process of executing a trade. In order to achieve this there are several different core elements that we have set:
- On the standard daily and weekly predictions FutureICX rewards the top 40% of the prediction amounts placed for that specific period
No matter what they say, the majority of the traders lose money on more than 70-80% of their trades. Usually a good plan and a well-placed stop-loss are what is dividing the good traders from the broke ones. In order to make long-term profit from trading, persistence, discipline and ability to emotionally detach from the trade are a must as losing a large majority of the trades that you process is extremely demoralizing and could inflict a significant amount of self-doubt.
The FutureICX reward structure allows us to provide an option for all traders to have stable income from their trading career. As long as their market reading skills are slightly better than average, there is nothing that should be stopping them from profiting from every single prediction that they place and thus eliminating the need to go into unnecessary risks (by competing in an environment where you only have to perform better than the other players on the app)
- Decentralized blockchain-based operation and price fetching
A major problem encountered on the exchanges are policy and software issues. Im sure that most of us (if not all) have encountered high trading spreads, incorrectly processed requests or straight up market manipulation or countertrading.
Our trading app is built on Icon – a fast-response decentralized blockchain. All trades are processed and confirmed by a smart contract and fully transparent. The outcome price is pulled by a decentralized blockchain-based multiple source oracle solution, ensuring the results are fair and impossible to manipulate
- High returns of the investment for skilled players – up to 4.5x (up to 7x for Bullseye)
A major problem of the trading market is the lack of frequent trading opportunities. Large gain movements are sudden, difficult to predict and often so sudden that in case that you are not following the market 24/7, they are quite easy to miss.
They are also not as frequent as most traders think. In example for the ICX/USD pair, the most frequent move for more than 2-2.5x at once was in January, the next one before that was in January 2018, for BTC/USD there was not one since 2017. Exchanges are trying to provide better gain options by offering leverage trading but that is simply turning your trade into a huge gamble as the slightest flick of the market may result in your position being liquidated.
The tiered reward structure of FutureICX allows us to overcome that problem without increasing the risk for the traders. As our top return of 4.5x is achievable on every single daily and weekly prediction placed, this gives the players the opportunity to either do solid research and aim for the high returns whenever they feel confident in the outcome that they have projected, or if they are confident enough in their skills, to maximize their gains by participating as often as they feel comfortable with in each possible prediction and potentially having a huge return even on a daily basis
For the extra confident traders, we have designed our Bullseye option, which rewards you with 7x your investment as long as you are in the top 10% most accurate prediction. Although the risk for that type of trade is higher as only 15% of the placed predictions are rewarded, as long as you are certain in your skills and are able to predict the outcome accurately even 1 in 6 times, you would be in profit. If you are able to achieve more than that, with each additional accurate prediction, the rewards scale pretty fast
- Indifference to market stagnation or bear markets
Most traders know that one of the greatest challenges in trading aside from picking good entry/exit points is to be patient enough to go through the planned strategy. As some of those trades take a significantly long time and could be extended indefinitely by the market losing volume or going sideways with almost no bull nor bear activity, often the position is cut by the trader earlier or not executed at all because of the limited market action. This market inactivity often results in blank stares at the same pair values for days, weeks or even months without the option for a clear position where an entry and exit of the market could be executed
This is an absolutely valid point for the bear dominated markets as well as if the trading pair that you are looking to trade does not offer a ‘short’ option on the exchanges, your only opportunity to trade it profitably in such market is to hope to time some short-term small jumps in value and that is usually a very risky endeavor
This is where FutureICX really shines – as there is no actual ‘buying’ and ‘selling’ of the currency, it does not matter if the pair’s price goes up, down or sideways with limited action. As long as you can accurately predict what will happen, the result will be absolutely the same and you should be able to profit from your skills on a very frequent basis
- Lower investment needed – trading with your stop-loss values
Let’s take a look at conventional trading – you decide on a strategy, your investment, your entry, exit and where your stop-loss will be, and you execute the trade. So let’s say in example that for a certain trade you have set your strategy for a value that is supposed to be reached next week, decided to go with 100$ investment, your target exit is the next Fibonacci retracement for an approximate 25% gain and you have set your stop-loss at 10% as you think that that’s the next support that should not be broken
If you execute the same trade in FutureICX you can easily do a similar trade with only the stop-loss value invested and the rest of your funds would be free. So, in the previous example we take the stop-loss value – 10$ (10%x100$) and we place a prediction with it. If the prediction is accurate you are able to receive a gain of 45$ (4.5x10$) – almost double of what you have planned to gain via your conventional trade and via investing 1/10 of what you have originally planned
- The coin that you are holding is not exchanged and your investment value is not lowered
One of the major downsides of trading a part of the investment bag that you hold is that with each trade, even if it is a temporary one, you are contributing towards the lowering of the value of the rest of your investment. When you take into account that 80-90% of the long-term holders are using on average between 10% and 50% of their bag for swing trades to balance out the long wait, these numbers add up really quick
That is not the case in our app. As in FutureICX the players use a reward pool to determine the winning traders and their respective gains, the coins used in the process are not only never exchanged and respectively do not affect the market price, but are even outside of circulation until the predictions placed are resolved.
- Emotional detachment
One of the largest problems for beginning traders is usually the emotional investment in every single trade that they make. Even if prior to the trade there was a good plan set in place, once the trade begins and the actual movement of the market is observed, the whole strategy usually goes out of the window – the traders panic, get fomo, get scared, act irrationally (like removing their pre-set stop-loss because of getting pulled into a sunk cost fallacy) etc. In other words, they act with their emotions and turn the time and effort that they have invested in setting up the trade into a fruitless gamble and hope for a miracle
This will not happen with FutureICX for one simple reason – after a prediction is set, it is final. You are always free to place a second (or a third or as many as you would like) prediction, separate from the first one, but you cannot change what you have already placed. That way when the emotion hits, you have no way to change your already set trade, so you simply watch it resolve and take notes depending on the result. That may seem quite a trivial thing for an experienced trader, but for beginners emotional detachment is unfortunately a skill that takes some traders years to overcome.
- Additional gain channels
Almost all trading platforms are offering some kind of one-time affiliate bonus or seasonal reward that is aimed to provide you some additional gains for helping out with the increase of the platform’s population and/or participating in a specific event
We have tried taking that to the next level. FutureICX provides several types of rewards that provide a boost to our frequent and top performing players and maximize their returns. They are provided in several forms: weekly and monthly awards, each of which rewards a different aspect of a player’s performance and provide the best players in that specific field with a solid extra profit; weekly dividends that assure that each coin spent by the player provides a cut (%) of all predictions placed on the platform by all players for a full month; and last but not least, each new player that you invite to FutureICX will also be generating such dividends for you with every prediction that he/she places for two full weeks
We sincerely hope that FutureICX is a step in the right direction and that it would provide the opportunity for many additional traders to make higher gains and even potentially to take another step towards making a living from trading. For the less experienced traders our app can easily serve as a training tool that would limit the potential losses and provide a so-needed confirmation of the player’s market trading skills. This way the players that do not perform so well can easily continue practicing without losing a large part of their bank and the ones that are able to hit their targets can gradually increase their investment by using the returns that they have accumulated – with FutureICX that process can easily take a few days or weeks, instead of months/years.