I've been doing some digging, in search of the truth that is out there.
Jani (Iconomi), Brock (Blockchain Capital), Liam (Alphabit), and Saeed (Wealthy guy from UAE) were all speakers at this conference together:
http://www.coinagenda.com/#speakersAlphabit is a new crypto fund which seems to be backed by UAE money:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-fund-raise-300-million-171034841.htmlAlphabit, a global fund that invests in digital currencies, has been launched with a target of $300 million, co-founder Liam Robertson said in an interview
Alphabit is registered in Dubai and the Cayman Islands.
Alphabit was allegedly one of the largest investors in Matchpool:
https://medium.com/matchpool/matchpool-transparency-policy-updates-afc22fc91a98One of our largest contributors, Alphabit Digital Currency Fund, has among others stated its full trust and believe in Matchpool’s bright future. And thus came with the following statement to purchase any amount of GUP tokens from any contributor who wishes to sell.
Gatecoin, one of the first exchanges to list ICN, also put 10.5k ETH into Matchpool:
https://etherscan.io/token/Guppy?a=0xa65e9fec4f892ef6e9fe3888ed9b0eb6aab1f0fdIconomi went to a meetup in Germany with Matchpool founder and founder of Coinfund (another one of the largest investors in Matchpool)
https://twitter.com/matchpool/status/839151977544187904Amazing meetup with @coinfund_io and @iconominet talking about matchpool @ethereumproject
ICN recently added to Shapeshift:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ICONOMI/comments/642nda/its_official_shapeshift_has_added_iconomi_icn_to/Consensus 2017 coming up on 22-24 May in New York. This is around the time when new members to Ethereum Alliance are supposed to be announced. All kinds of heavyweight speakers and sponsors in attendance such as: Deloitte, Alphabit, Blockchain Capital, Shapeshift, and Iconomi's PR firm, Wachsman PR
http://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2017/sponsors/Deloitte is one of the partners for Cofoundit, the Iconomi ICNP spinoff
http://cofound.it/2 days later, Token Summit in New York. Cofoundit, Iconomi, Coinfund, Shapeshift, Blockchain Capital, and Golem will be there. Along with CEOs for several promising upcoming ICO's
http://tokensummit.com/I don't want to totally spell it out for you. Something big is brewing here, and clever people will be able to fill in the pieces I left out with a little more digging.