The context was not altered. Your position was that Iconomi is one of the only projects with any real use case. I responded to that position and stated that nobody is saying the project itself has no value. Where is your issue?


You said it to me, without making it clear who you were referring to. I accept that you were talking in a more general sense, and not about me specifically.



I will try...

SIA has a usage as payment on the network. That is its value. The same as GNT on Golem, or ETH on Ethereum.

Iconomi's original proposed value was that of a share in the platform. It is currently unclear if this is still the case, due to lack of response on the matter, and the vague description on the terminology page.

I have went over this in the past - but a dividend paying asset has clear utility, as you purchase the token in order to be granted the right to receive a dividend. Put aside the dividend/buyback debate - it is a fact that this use case would have dictated the value of the token. We would't need to worry about legalities in that sense, because the proof of value would be in the returns themselves (even if they were poor.)

Now we move forward to buybacks. Buying back the tokens does not give them value alone. They must have a base value to begin with. Now, if this were a share in the "real" world, it would be backed by the assets Iconomi holds - because there would be a legal, regulated binding to the platform. That would be the "proof" in that case, which would guarantee the base value: ownership. This is not the case right now. Your token grants you no rights to anything. It could possibly be used as an IOU in order to claim shares in future, but it is not - in and of itself - a share of anything. It is just a token on the network, that isn't doing anything, and isn't actually connected to the Iconomi assets. It is connected in people's minds - but not in any official capacity.

Because there is no clear concrete connection to the platform, no official response from the team, no whitepaper, and only a vague description of the token on the help pages, the token can be said to have no clear value at this moment in time.

That is not to say it has no value to you, or won't have a clear value in future. Your value comes in the form of expecting it to be objectively valuable one day. This is its only speculative value at this current moment in time.

Now this future value could come in the form of a more concrete explanation of how the token is backed by the assets Iconomi holds, or it could come in the form of a transition into a usage token on the platform itself. And, as I said, it could be used as an IOU to claim actual real world shares.

In the most loosely tied case, the value just comes from everybody collectively agreeing that this token represents Iconomi. That is the case that most people are running with at the moment. But that would be no better than creating my own token myself, and saying "If Iconomi does well, this token should increase in value" and expecting people to buy my token at a higher price later on. It's like making a bet, without a bookie, and just expecting some random person to pay you if you win.

Now, despite this in depth explanation, I'm confident that you still won't actually understand any of this - because you haven't understood it so far. However, I can see that plenty of other people DO understand it.

I'm trying to explain to you WHY people ask about the value. The above reasons are why. Disagree with them all you like, but that is the thought process that is driving people to question the value - and it is perfectly valid reasoning.