ICON utilises Hedera Hashgraph to achieve the gold standard for security in the field of distributed consensus: Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (ABFT). Other platforms that use coordinators, leaders, or communication timeouts tend to be vulnerable to  Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against those vulnerable areas. Hashgraph is resilient to these types of attacks against the consensus algorithm, and achieves the theoretical limits of security defined by ABFT. Achieving this level of security at a scale of hundreds of thousands of transactions per second is a fundamental advance in the field of distributed systems and it is the gold standard for security in this category.

Many applications require that the consensus order of transactions match the actual order in which the transactions are received by the network. It should not be possible for a single party to prevent the flow of transactions into the network, nor influence the order of transactions in the eventual community consensus. A fair consensus algorithm ensures that if a user can submit a transaction to the network at all, then the transaction will be received by the network and the order in which it was received will be a fair ordering. Hashgraph uniquely ensures that the actual order transactions are received by the community will be reflected in the consensus order. In other words, hashgraph ensures both Fair Access and Fair Ordering.

Formal proofs of the ABFT and fairness properties for the hashgraph consensus algorithm exist and have been available for public review since June, 2016. Furthermore, the hashgraph algorithm has been validated as ABFT by a math proof checked by computer using the Coq system in October, 2018.

Creators and Custodians of Intergenerational wealth readily acknowledge that new statutes and regulations targeting their wealth ensures that Privacy and Compliance are top of mind. There are four states of Privacy including:

1. Solitude ~ Establishing physical separation from other individuals;
2. Intimacy ~ Inviting select individuals into trusted relationships;
3. Anonymity ~ A desire to restrict information available in the public domain;
4. Reserve ~ Protecting and Controlling access to your data and assets.

In 2010, as part of FATCA, US Congress enacted new disclosure requirements for specified foreign financial assets (“SFFAs”). The types of reportable assets include: direct holdings of stock in foreign entities, interests in foreign funds, depository accounts, custodial accounts, or interests in financial institutions.

In 2018, the CRS was adopted across the G20 requiring the name and identifying number of the reporting foreign financial institution (FFI) as well as the name and the account number, year end balance, address, tax identification number, date and place of birth of each reportable person.

Interestingly, Gold held in a custodial account maintained by an FFI (bank) would be considered reportable, however, Gold held in an independent vault or safety deposit box is exempt from declaration provided (i) the vault is not in an FFI (bank) or (ii) the storage arrangement is not a financial account.

ICON CAPITAL RESERVE SA is not an FFI.

Fibonacci’s Golden Mean is a mathematical formula that permeates the fractal design of our world from subatomic DNA structures the patterns of the stars in the universe. The Golden Mean is embedded in the architecture of our most iconic buildings from the Great Pyramids to Sydney’s Opera House. Since the dawn of humanity, Trusted Sacred Symbols found in places of worship have been generating carrier waves that are literally broadcasting information.

Trust can be traced to the neurobiological activity of our human brain. Our increasingly complex world slows decision making, so we use heuristic defaults like intuition and common sense to help the process. Gold has become the heuristic default for 6000 years because across geography, language, culture and economics, it is the numeraire that the entire world agrees on. Gold is Value.

The stock of Gold refers to the available c200,000MT mined throughout history and the flow refers to the c2,700MT mined annually. Mathematically, Gold has a stock and flow ratio of 1.35%. The stock of our Planet refers to the c7.45b inhabitants and the flow is a net 80m people added per year. Mathematically, Humanity has a stock and flow ratio of 1.20%. As people move up through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they create surpluses that are stored in a trusted reserve asset like Gold. Hall’s Law suggests that the stock and flow ratios of Gold and Humanity have been correlated for centuries and the ratios are immune to manipulation.