By the Numbers

Aion is Around ICO Price

Numerous cryptocurrency price websites list Aion’s ICO price as $1.00 per token. This seems to be based on the price for Aion’s planned public sale, but as noted above that was canceled.

The total amount raised ($23 million) divided by the total tokens sold at presale (39.5 million) gives an average price per token of about $0.58 for initial purchasers. Including the additional unsold tokens distributed via the one-year TRS (120 million), the average price per token was about $0.14, with some early institutional and accredited investors paying as low as about $0.12 per token.

Aion is About 93.5% from All-Time High Market Cap

CoinMarketCap.com (CMC) calculates a cryptocurrency’s price from a volume-weighted average of prices reported by exchanges. Exchange price and volume are based on filled orders. Market capitalization (market cap) is the price multiplied by the circulating supply.

According to CMC, Aion’s all-time high price was $11.51 on January 7, 2018, with a market cap of $623,940,583. At the time of this writing, Aion’s price is about $0.14 with a market cap of $40,556,582.

Looking at price, Aion is currently down about 99% from its all-time high. However, this ignores the circulating supply change over that period. On January 7, 2018 (at the peak of the last bull market), the Aion circulating supply was only about 61 million (the remainder were still locked up in the TRS contracts). At the time of writing, the circulating supply is about 292 million (an increase of 475%). Looking at market cap, Aion is down 93.5% from its all-time high; compare ETH (-89.5%), ARK (-93.6%), NEO (-95.3%), ADA (-95.6%), WAN (-96%), and ICON (-96.8%).

Price and market cap are manipulable, one-dimensional metrics and, to the extent they reflect a project’s fundamental value at all, only do so through the lens of trader sentiment. As this space has matured, several alternative measures of project value have been proposed. For example, the Ozargun Valuation Framework examines 86 sub-topics related to a project’s product, team, and community in addition to token performance (and ranks Aion #1). Sam Pajot-Phipps of Aion proposed the Network Steward Productivity Ratio which compares funds raised by a project with its output as another alternative.

Supply Increase Rate Halved Since November 2018

For most of 2018, circulating supply was increasing at a rate of 18.3 million tokens per month as both the one-year and three-year TRS contracts were active. Now that the one-year TRS is over, however, this is reduced to 8.5 million tokens monthly — a 54% decrease.

Also, because the number of tokens distributed per month remains constant while the total circulating supply increases each month, the rate of circulating supply increase goes down each month. For example, when the March 2019 distribution is made, the circulating supply will increase from about 292 million to 301 million (a 2.9% increase). When the April 2019 distribution is made, the circulating supply will increase from about 301 million to 309 million (a 2.8% increase). By the last distribution in November 2020, the circulating supply will increase from about 469 million to 478 million (a 1.8% increase).

Alex McDougall of Bicameral Ventures explained that, while circulating supply increase rate is a factor to consider, it’s a “known known” short-term factor secondary to the potential for mass adoption of the technology in the long term. Supply is only one part of price discovery — demand is the other.

Purchasers Are the Largest Group of Supply Holders

From the Aion Foundation’s 1/31/2019 report

The breakdown of TRS distributions through February 2019 is about 55% to purchasers, 23% to the Aion Foundation, 9% to former Nuco Global shareholders, and 14% to early partners. Actual holdings skew even more in favor of purchasers as tokens held by the Aion Foundation, former Nuco Global shareholders, and early partners are transferred.

The Aion Foundation has already provided two reports detailing its AION holdings and distributions, and still holds about 72% of the total distributed at the time of this writing. None of its distributions went directly to an exchange — ever. The vast majority of transfers from the Aion Foundation have been reinvested in the ecosystem through grants, bounties, and technical development.

From the Aion Foundation’s 1/31/2019 report

The Aion Foundation does not control tokens distributed to the former Nuco Global shareholders or early partners, however — like any other holder, their choice to buy, sell, or hold is completely their own. Some of their tokens made their way to Binance, but there is no way of knowing who made transfers or why. Some could be cashing out; some could be trading; and some could be investing (>$20 million) in or building the next viral dApp on Aion. In any event, even if all of the tokens distributed to former Nuco Global shareholders and early partners are being sold on exchanges monthly (they are not), this would only account for about 0.8% of the total monthly exchange volume over the last 30 days and even less if over-the-counter trading is considered.

Aion Has Ample Runway

From the Aion Foundation’s 1/31/2019 report

As of December 31, 2018, Aion’s Fiat, BTC, and ETH treasury totaled $9,555,088. Aion’s total expenditures in Q4 2018 were $2,193,923 with expenditures in December 2018 down to $665,676. This alone gives Aion enough runway to continue operations for about 14 months, subject to the price of BTC and ETH and assuming expenditures are not reduced even further.

Importantly, this does not include the 147,731,207 locked and unlocked AION owned by the Foundation. At current prices, that’s another $20 million or so, which would be another two years of funding. The team has stated that they are working on strategies to secure additional funding as well, including possible venture capital funding and holding equity in partner projects.