Latest news with #ICN
Irish Examiner
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Nature is worryingly absent from the National Development Plan review
Albert Einstein once said, look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. But even somebody with the cerebral capacity of Einstein would struggle to understand and get their head around the latest National Development Plan. This is a plan which purports to chart the progress of the country over the coming years, but which bizarrely fails to allocate any finance to nature in the middle of, what our current Taoiseach had referred to as, a biodiversity crisis. Low on detail, high on promises was how the Irish Examiner's Mick Clifford Podcast accurately described the NDP. Unfortunately when it comes to nature, it was worse – no detail and not even a promise. The gutting of nature from the Infrastructure, Climate & Nature Fund (ICNF) to finance transport, energy and water infrastructure projects in the National Development Plan is very alarming, deeply disappointing and flies in the face of the Government's previous guarantees on nature restoration. The decision is even more concerning given that the Programme for Government committed that the Infrastructure, Climate & Nature Fund will 'ensure ongoing protection for our environment for future generations', while also committing to the development of Ireland's Nature Restoration Plan which requires ambitious nature restoration at land and at sea under the EU's flagship Nature Restoration Law. However, the National Development Plan announced by the Government this week has allocated nothing to nature, instead taking €3.15 billion from the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund for transport, energy and water infrastructure. It appears that the Government is saying one thing but doing the opposite on nature restoration. It has decided to gut Nature from the Infrastructure, Climate & Nature Fund, instead using the budget to fund investment in transport, energy and water infrastructure. The Environmental Pillar has repeatedly criticised the absence of ringfencing for nature within the ICN fund, criticism that has been fully vindicated this week by the Government's shortsightedness. There is now a genuine concern that nature restoration funding is losing out to infrastructure projects that prioritise economic growth over measures to address the biodiversity emergency. It seems like a cynical sleight of hand to use ICN funding for a project that has been talked about for decades in various different forms and which pre-dates the fund. The Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund's purpose is to support State expenditure: where there is a significant deterioration in the economic or fiscal position of the State, and in the years 2026 to 2030, on designated environmental projects. But, while everyone acknowledges that we are living in uncertain times economically, the Government is not proposing to invoke the 'economic deterioration' provision, designed 'to provide for countercyclical capital expenditure in the event of an economic or fiscal downturn' (NTMA), so all the allocated spending for 2026 to 2030 must therefore be for 'designated environmental projects'. Under Section 20 of the Future Ireland Fund and Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund Act 2024, such projects must contribute to the achievement of various national and EU environmental regulations such as on water quality, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, the Birds and Habitats Directives, the National Biodiversity Action Plan and the Wildlife Act. However, the proposed allocation of the €3.15 billion that can be spent before 2030, laid out by Government in the NDP, contains no allocation for nature and looks much more like what the fund would be spent on if the 'economic deterioration' condition was being invoked to ensure 'countercyclical capital expenditure' in infrastructure. This is not an argument against funding for Metrolink. Ireland needs greater investment in public transport – whether it is Metrolink in Dublin, light rail in other major cities, expanded bus routes and active transport infrastructure. But in this case, there is over €100 billion of other money allocated to infrastructure by 2030 under the NDP so that provision clearly does not apply. This is not to mention the billions of euros in Apple back-taxes which Jack Chambers in a budget statement last October said provided the country with one-off revenue that has the capacity to be transformational and address the known challenges that we face in housing, energy, water and transport infrastructure. An artist's impression of the MetroLink rail project's Tara Street entrance. The Government has decided to gut Nature from the Infrastructure, Climate & Nature Fund, instead using the budget to fund investment in transport, energy and water infrastructure. File picture And then, there's the €305 million from the sale of the final AIB shares. It is all the more disappointing therefore that the dedicated Climate and Nature Fund is being diverted from its nature focus to further boost infrastructure spending which is not short of other funding. The lack of any funding for nature in the financial allocations for the NDP is even more shocking and worrying given that the State is currently engaging in an extensive consultation process involving farmers, fishers and environmentalists to inform the development of a national Nature Restoration Plan. The financing of that plan remains a key concern for all stakeholders. Ireland's Nature Restoration Plan has to be underpinned by significant investment. The Government has repeatedly told farmers that any nature restoration under the Nature Restoration Law would be funded and voluntary and that the main burden of restoration would take place on public lands. They have clearly been misleading farmers and Irish society as there is no indication that the Government intends to allocate new and additional funding towards nature restoration. And there is no sign that the Government is willing to take the kind of action that is needed to utilise Coillte and Bord Na Mona lands to the extent that is needed to achieve Ireland's legally binding targets. The Environmental Pillar is calling for the ringfencing of a substantial proportion of the Climate and Nature Fund for spending on nature. And we are in the fortunate position of knowing how much and where to invest that money. Unlike the vague and abstract NDP, a detailed financial needs assessment for biodiversity is available. Ireland needs greater investment in public transport – whether it is Metrolink in Dublin, light rail in other major cities, expanded bus routes and active transport infrastructure. File photo: Sasko Lazarov / The National Parks and Wildlife Service tasked UCD with carrying out a Biodiversity Financial Needs Assessment on how much would be required to reach the targets of the 4th National Biodiversity Action Plan 2023-2030 and international obligations including the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030. This was delivered in 2021 and updated in 2023 to take account of the draft Nature Restoration Law. The study estimated the expenditure required for nature restoration in Ireland at €463.5m per annum, according to the report Funding Ireland's Biodiversity: A Financial Needs Assessment for Biodiversity in Ireland. And last year, Natural Capital Ireland was commissioned by the Irish Environmental Network to deliver a report on high-level recommendations for funding nature restoration in Ireland. This project brought together a diverse group of subject matter experts from academia, business, environmental NGOs, farming, government departments, and semi-state bodies to workshop high-level recommendations for funding nature restoration. These would be good places for the Government to start if it's serious about nature restoration. Nature is conspicuous by its absence in the National Development Plan. Given that we are at a crucial time in relation to the biodiversity crisis in Ireland, it is inexcusable that no funding was earmarked for nature restoration. Biodiversity supports and underpins our society, whether it is food production or clean air or a stable climate. It is imperative that nature is adequately funded. Ciarán Brennan is communications officer at the Irish Environmental Network
The Advertiser
22-07-2025
- Health
- The Advertiser
Emergency departments are bursting. Why don't we use the workforce who can prevent this?
We cannot continue to delude ourselves: the health and health care of our population is less than it could and should be. There are alarming rates of obesity and diabetes; faltering immunisation rates; great difficulty in the regions accessing a doctor's appointment, even for urgent matters; nurses and doctors labouring under increasing emergency department presentations; and bed-block for want of community placement for the elderly and those with disabilities. The highly visible issues of long waiting times and staff shortages in the hospital system are linked to less visible failures at the prevention and primary care end of the healthcare system. The current model of healthcare is not working for Australians, and despite governments at federal and state level giving strong public commitments to prioritising primary healthcare, there is yet to be a harnessing of the skill and expertise of our nursing profession - a profession making up 54 per cent of the health workforce. While pharmacists have successfully lobbied for greater access to service provision, nurses are still perceived to be an adjunct to doctors, rather than a collegial health provider in their own right. Is it that the public have a long-outdated understanding of nursing and the capability of the modern nurse? Is it that medicine/doctors have so successfully captured the centre ground? Or both? I recently directed a project for renewing the global definitions of a nurse and nursing for the International Council of Nurses (ICN). While the old definitions tended to focus narrowly on hospital care and jobs, the renewed definitions have a greater emphasis on the nurse as having a much broader role in healthy communities and illness prevention. They emphasise the scientific knowledge, ethical standards, therapeutic relationships and compassion that underpins all nursing, but go further to explain the role nurses play in shaping policy, and in healthcare innovation, in disaster response, and in population health. The issue is that patients are unable to reap the benefits of the advanced skills and knowledge of nurse because of funding roadblocks and antiquated regulations that mean the structure of the primary health care system is stuck in the past. So, what needs to be done? We need to provide better access and payment systems for nurses to deliver the holistic care of patients for which they are educated - to manage chronic disease; to ensure immunisations are current; to provide health checks and to provide aged care that maximises capability. We need to reduce our reliance on fee-for-service medicine - Medicare Benefits Schedule rebates - and fund primary healthcare differently to enable patients to access nurses. Nurses must be better supported to help people to manage their conditions, such as diabetes, or chronic wounds, working with GPs and specialists both directly and via the increasingly digital patient management options available. We need to look at regulations that hinder nurses from delivering safe and quality care in their communities. This very year, we have seen the government insist that nurse practitioners providing telehealth care to remote and marginalised communities be subject to the same rules as general practitioners, many of whom would be working in more stable urban communities. Nurse practitioner-led practice is further marginalised by the rule that "MyMedicare" funding can only be accessed if the program is led by a GP. The $8.5-billion injection to Medicare that preceded this year's election campaign was a massive injection into primary health care, to be sure. But increasing bulk billing rates is not going to address the issues of poorly managed chronic disease in our community, which in turn leads to acute exacerbations of illnesses that themselves lead to unplanned visits to hospital emergency departments. We may well need targeted investment in hospitals, but if we prioritise that over the complex but necessary, innovation that is needed to improve our primary healthcare system, we are effectively giving up on the support our communities need to live their lives as healthily and as well as possible. This is not professional posturing, as even Professor Fiona Stanley recently said, "the last thing we need is more doctors and more hospitals. We need to invest in social supports, early intervention, community-led programs." These are areas for which nurses are educated and eager to enhance. Far from replacing general practice, this is about working across multidisciplinary teams to enhance and complement existing primary healthcare services. Nor is it about fragmentation of care. It is not possible to fragment care that doesn't exist. It is about strengthening nursing's presence within primary healthcare practices and having multidisciplinary caring arrangements, including with nurse-led clinics in primary health networks. It is about giving access to care where little to no care exists and delivering care where the people live. We nurses have known and written and argued for many years about who ought to be at the centre of healthcare. It should not be a health professional or any one profession: it must be about people-centred care, which is a cornerstone of the new nursing definitions. At the moment, it is not happening, and individuals, communities and our hospitals are paying the price. It's time for change, and nurses must be considered an important part of the effort. We cannot continue to delude ourselves: the health and health care of our population is less than it could and should be. There are alarming rates of obesity and diabetes; faltering immunisation rates; great difficulty in the regions accessing a doctor's appointment, even for urgent matters; nurses and doctors labouring under increasing emergency department presentations; and bed-block for want of community placement for the elderly and those with disabilities. The highly visible issues of long waiting times and staff shortages in the hospital system are linked to less visible failures at the prevention and primary care end of the healthcare system. The current model of healthcare is not working for Australians, and despite governments at federal and state level giving strong public commitments to prioritising primary healthcare, there is yet to be a harnessing of the skill and expertise of our nursing profession - a profession making up 54 per cent of the health workforce. While pharmacists have successfully lobbied for greater access to service provision, nurses are still perceived to be an adjunct to doctors, rather than a collegial health provider in their own right. Is it that the public have a long-outdated understanding of nursing and the capability of the modern nurse? Is it that medicine/doctors have so successfully captured the centre ground? Or both? I recently directed a project for renewing the global definitions of a nurse and nursing for the International Council of Nurses (ICN). While the old definitions tended to focus narrowly on hospital care and jobs, the renewed definitions have a greater emphasis on the nurse as having a much broader role in healthy communities and illness prevention. They emphasise the scientific knowledge, ethical standards, therapeutic relationships and compassion that underpins all nursing, but go further to explain the role nurses play in shaping policy, and in healthcare innovation, in disaster response, and in population health. The issue is that patients are unable to reap the benefits of the advanced skills and knowledge of nurse because of funding roadblocks and antiquated regulations that mean the structure of the primary health care system is stuck in the past. So, what needs to be done? We need to provide better access and payment systems for nurses to deliver the holistic care of patients for which they are educated - to manage chronic disease; to ensure immunisations are current; to provide health checks and to provide aged care that maximises capability. We need to reduce our reliance on fee-for-service medicine - Medicare Benefits Schedule rebates - and fund primary healthcare differently to enable patients to access nurses. Nurses must be better supported to help people to manage their conditions, such as diabetes, or chronic wounds, working with GPs and specialists both directly and via the increasingly digital patient management options available. We need to look at regulations that hinder nurses from delivering safe and quality care in their communities. This very year, we have seen the government insist that nurse practitioners providing telehealth care to remote and marginalised communities be subject to the same rules as general practitioners, many of whom would be working in more stable urban communities. Nurse practitioner-led practice is further marginalised by the rule that "MyMedicare" funding can only be accessed if the program is led by a GP. The $8.5-billion injection to Medicare that preceded this year's election campaign was a massive injection into primary health care, to be sure. But increasing bulk billing rates is not going to address the issues of poorly managed chronic disease in our community, which in turn leads to acute exacerbations of illnesses that themselves lead to unplanned visits to hospital emergency departments. We may well need targeted investment in hospitals, but if we prioritise that over the complex but necessary, innovation that is needed to improve our primary healthcare system, we are effectively giving up on the support our communities need to live their lives as healthily and as well as possible. This is not professional posturing, as even Professor Fiona Stanley recently said, "the last thing we need is more doctors and more hospitals. We need to invest in social supports, early intervention, community-led programs." These are areas for which nurses are educated and eager to enhance. Far from replacing general practice, this is about working across multidisciplinary teams to enhance and complement existing primary healthcare services. Nor is it about fragmentation of care. It is not possible to fragment care that doesn't exist. It is about strengthening nursing's presence within primary healthcare practices and having multidisciplinary caring arrangements, including with nurse-led clinics in primary health networks. It is about giving access to care where little to no care exists and delivering care where the people live. We nurses have known and written and argued for many years about who ought to be at the centre of healthcare. It should not be a health professional or any one profession: it must be about people-centred care, which is a cornerstone of the new nursing definitions. At the moment, it is not happening, and individuals, communities and our hospitals are paying the price. It's time for change, and nurses must be considered an important part of the effort. We cannot continue to delude ourselves: the health and health care of our population is less than it could and should be. There are alarming rates of obesity and diabetes; faltering immunisation rates; great difficulty in the regions accessing a doctor's appointment, even for urgent matters; nurses and doctors labouring under increasing emergency department presentations; and bed-block for want of community placement for the elderly and those with disabilities. The highly visible issues of long waiting times and staff shortages in the hospital system are linked to less visible failures at the prevention and primary care end of the healthcare system. The current model of healthcare is not working for Australians, and despite governments at federal and state level giving strong public commitments to prioritising primary healthcare, there is yet to be a harnessing of the skill and expertise of our nursing profession - a profession making up 54 per cent of the health workforce. While pharmacists have successfully lobbied for greater access to service provision, nurses are still perceived to be an adjunct to doctors, rather than a collegial health provider in their own right. Is it that the public have a long-outdated understanding of nursing and the capability of the modern nurse? Is it that medicine/doctors have so successfully captured the centre ground? Or both? I recently directed a project for renewing the global definitions of a nurse and nursing for the International Council of Nurses (ICN). While the old definitions tended to focus narrowly on hospital care and jobs, the renewed definitions have a greater emphasis on the nurse as having a much broader role in healthy communities and illness prevention. They emphasise the scientific knowledge, ethical standards, therapeutic relationships and compassion that underpins all nursing, but go further to explain the role nurses play in shaping policy, and in healthcare innovation, in disaster response, and in population health. The issue is that patients are unable to reap the benefits of the advanced skills and knowledge of nurse because of funding roadblocks and antiquated regulations that mean the structure of the primary health care system is stuck in the past. So, what needs to be done? We need to provide better access and payment systems for nurses to deliver the holistic care of patients for which they are educated - to manage chronic disease; to ensure immunisations are current; to provide health checks and to provide aged care that maximises capability. We need to reduce our reliance on fee-for-service medicine - Medicare Benefits Schedule rebates - and fund primary healthcare differently to enable patients to access nurses. Nurses must be better supported to help people to manage their conditions, such as diabetes, or chronic wounds, working with GPs and specialists both directly and via the increasingly digital patient management options available. We need to look at regulations that hinder nurses from delivering safe and quality care in their communities. This very year, we have seen the government insist that nurse practitioners providing telehealth care to remote and marginalised communities be subject to the same rules as general practitioners, many of whom would be working in more stable urban communities. Nurse practitioner-led practice is further marginalised by the rule that "MyMedicare" funding can only be accessed if the program is led by a GP. The $8.5-billion injection to Medicare that preceded this year's election campaign was a massive injection into primary health care, to be sure. But increasing bulk billing rates is not going to address the issues of poorly managed chronic disease in our community, which in turn leads to acute exacerbations of illnesses that themselves lead to unplanned visits to hospital emergency departments. We may well need targeted investment in hospitals, but if we prioritise that over the complex but necessary, innovation that is needed to improve our primary healthcare system, we are effectively giving up on the support our communities need to live their lives as healthily and as well as possible. This is not professional posturing, as even Professor Fiona Stanley recently said, "the last thing we need is more doctors and more hospitals. We need to invest in social supports, early intervention, community-led programs." These are areas for which nurses are educated and eager to enhance. Far from replacing general practice, this is about working across multidisciplinary teams to enhance and complement existing primary healthcare services. Nor is it about fragmentation of care. It is not possible to fragment care that doesn't exist. It is about strengthening nursing's presence within primary healthcare practices and having multidisciplinary caring arrangements, including with nurse-led clinics in primary health networks. It is about giving access to care where little to no care exists and delivering care where the people live. We nurses have known and written and argued for many years about who ought to be at the centre of healthcare. It should not be a health professional or any one profession: it must be about people-centred care, which is a cornerstone of the new nursing definitions. At the moment, it is not happening, and individuals, communities and our hospitals are paying the price. It's time for change, and nurses must be considered an important part of the effort. We cannot continue to delude ourselves: the health and health care of our population is less than it could and should be. There are alarming rates of obesity and diabetes; faltering immunisation rates; great difficulty in the regions accessing a doctor's appointment, even for urgent matters; nurses and doctors labouring under increasing emergency department presentations; and bed-block for want of community placement for the elderly and those with disabilities. The highly visible issues of long waiting times and staff shortages in the hospital system are linked to less visible failures at the prevention and primary care end of the healthcare system. The current model of healthcare is not working for Australians, and despite governments at federal and state level giving strong public commitments to prioritising primary healthcare, there is yet to be a harnessing of the skill and expertise of our nursing profession - a profession making up 54 per cent of the health workforce. While pharmacists have successfully lobbied for greater access to service provision, nurses are still perceived to be an adjunct to doctors, rather than a collegial health provider in their own right. Is it that the public have a long-outdated understanding of nursing and the capability of the modern nurse? Is it that medicine/doctors have so successfully captured the centre ground? Or both? I recently directed a project for renewing the global definitions of a nurse and nursing for the International Council of Nurses (ICN). While the old definitions tended to focus narrowly on hospital care and jobs, the renewed definitions have a greater emphasis on the nurse as having a much broader role in healthy communities and illness prevention. They emphasise the scientific knowledge, ethical standards, therapeutic relationships and compassion that underpins all nursing, but go further to explain the role nurses play in shaping policy, and in healthcare innovation, in disaster response, and in population health. The issue is that patients are unable to reap the benefits of the advanced skills and knowledge of nurse because of funding roadblocks and antiquated regulations that mean the structure of the primary health care system is stuck in the past. So, what needs to be done? We need to provide better access and payment systems for nurses to deliver the holistic care of patients for which they are educated - to manage chronic disease; to ensure immunisations are current; to provide health checks and to provide aged care that maximises capability. We need to reduce our reliance on fee-for-service medicine - Medicare Benefits Schedule rebates - and fund primary healthcare differently to enable patients to access nurses. Nurses must be better supported to help people to manage their conditions, such as diabetes, or chronic wounds, working with GPs and specialists both directly and via the increasingly digital patient management options available. We need to look at regulations that hinder nurses from delivering safe and quality care in their communities. This very year, we have seen the government insist that nurse practitioners providing telehealth care to remote and marginalised communities be subject to the same rules as general practitioners, many of whom would be working in more stable urban communities. Nurse practitioner-led practice is further marginalised by the rule that "MyMedicare" funding can only be accessed if the program is led by a GP. The $8.5-billion injection to Medicare that preceded this year's election campaign was a massive injection into primary health care, to be sure. But increasing bulk billing rates is not going to address the issues of poorly managed chronic disease in our community, which in turn leads to acute exacerbations of illnesses that themselves lead to unplanned visits to hospital emergency departments. We may well need targeted investment in hospitals, but if we prioritise that over the complex but necessary, innovation that is needed to improve our primary healthcare system, we are effectively giving up on the support our communities need to live their lives as healthily and as well as possible. This is not professional posturing, as even Professor Fiona Stanley recently said, "the last thing we need is more doctors and more hospitals. We need to invest in social supports, early intervention, community-led programs." These are areas for which nurses are educated and eager to enhance. Far from replacing general practice, this is about working across multidisciplinary teams to enhance and complement existing primary healthcare services. Nor is it about fragmentation of care. It is not possible to fragment care that doesn't exist. It is about strengthening nursing's presence within primary healthcare practices and having multidisciplinary caring arrangements, including with nurse-led clinics in primary health networks. It is about giving access to care where little to no care exists and delivering care where the people live. We nurses have known and written and argued for many years about who ought to be at the centre of healthcare. It should not be a health professional or any one profession: it must be about people-centred care, which is a cornerstone of the new nursing definitions. At the moment, it is not happening, and individuals, communities and our hospitals are paying the price. It's time for change, and nurses must be considered an important part of the effort.
Malaysian Reserve
03-07-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
ICN Launches $ICNT, latest investment signals $470 million valuation
ZUG, Switzerland, July 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Impossible Cloud Network launches token on Bybit, Binance, Kraken, and other major exchanges following $34 million ecosystem raise Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) – a decentralized cloud services provider– is today announcing the launch of its $ICNT token through Tier 1 centralized exchanges Bybit, Binance, Kraken, Bitget, and more. The token launch follows a recently announced investment (valuation: $470 million) from NGP Capital, a deep tech fund that backed Xiaomi and Helium. ICN is the first decentralized cloud provider to match and surpass centralized hyperscalers in latency, availability, and performance. Its service is live and operating a fully open, multi-service, permissionless, and composable cloud infrastructure that integrates storage, compute, and networking at scale. The token listing comes just weeks after ICN attracted a substantial valuation of $470 million from Nokia-backed investor NGP Capital, which joined 1kx, No Limit Holdings, Protocol VC, HV Capital, and more in investing a total of $34 million into ICN. The Switzerland-based cloud network has substantial traction inside its ecosystem, handling over 23,000 cloud requests per second from its 1,000+ enterprise customers. This makes ICN one of the biggest revenue-generating decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) in the industry and places it in pole position to win the AI infrastructure race. ICN's CEO and co-founder is Kai Wawrzinek, a seasoned, billion-dollar company founder who successfully led his project, Goodgame Studios, to NASDAQ unicorn status in 2017. Commenting on the launch of $ICNT, Wawrzinek says: 'As a decentralized cloud provider, ICN is successful because it meets a genuine, growing need. ICN will win the decentralized infrastructure race — because we control the data layer. Once compute goes live, we'll unbundle the internet.'$ICNT will play a pivotal role in ICN's ecosystem, allowing anyone to participate in the network's growth by earning rewards from HyperNodes. $ICNT is used both for provisioning hardware capacity and for staking to secure cloud workloads. This ties the token to real-world infrastructure and the strong and growing demand that ICN's ecosystem is experiencing. ICN is riding a confluence of multiple strong tailwinds in the cloud industry. These include incredible demand for AI, associated hardware shortages, and an increasingly urgent need for sovereign cloud solutions apart from those offered by US hyperscalers. Combined, these drivers are calling for a new foundational layer for the next generation of the internet that can challenge the dominance of centralized tech giants – a layer ICN is pioneering. About Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) is building a permissionless, open cloud network to rival Big Tech giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. With resilient, high-performance decentralized cloud services, ICN is laying the foundation for a scalable, secure, and community-driven global cloud that supports enterprise, AI, gaming, applications, and end-users. With real-world adoption already generating million-dollar revenue and a vision for 200+ decentralized cloud services, ICN offers a true alternative to monopolistic hyperscalers. About ICN: Full information on $ICNT : $ICNT on Bybit: Contact Rebecca Jones Block3 PR rebecca@ Photo –
Associated Press
03-07-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
ICN Launches $ICNT, latest investment signals $470 million valuation
ZUG, Switzerland, July 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Impossible Cloud Network launches token on Bybit, Binance, Kraken, and other major exchanges following $34 million ecosystem raise Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) – a decentralized cloud services provider– is today announcing the launch of its $ICNT token through Tier 1 centralized exchanges Bybit, Binance, Kraken, Bitget, and more. The token launch follows a recently announced investment (valuation: $470 million) from NGP Capital, a deep tech fund that backed Xiaomi and Helium. ICN is the first decentralized cloud provider to match and surpass centralized hyperscalers in latency, availability, and performance. Its service is live and operating a fully open, multi-service, permissionless, and composable cloud infrastructure that integrates storage, compute, and networking at scale. The token listing comes just weeks after ICN attracted a substantial valuation of $470 million from Nokia-backed investor NGP Capital, which joined 1kx, No Limit Holdings, Protocol VC, HV Capital, and more in investing a total of $34 million into ICN. The Switzerland-based cloud network has substantial traction inside its ecosystem, handling over 23,000 cloud requests per second from its 1,000+ enterprise customers. This makes ICN one of the biggest revenue-generating decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) in the industry and places it in pole position to win the AI infrastructure race. ICN's CEO and co-founder is Kai Wawrzinek, a seasoned, billion-dollar company founder who successfully led his project, Goodgame Studios, to NASDAQ unicorn status in 2017. Commenting on the launch of $ICNT, Wawrzinek says: 'As a decentralized cloud provider, ICN is successful because it meets a genuine, growing need. ICN will win the decentralized infrastructure race — because we control the data layer. Once compute goes live, we'll unbundle the internet."$ICNT will play a pivotal role in ICN's ecosystem, allowing anyone to participate in the network's growth by earning rewards from HyperNodes. $ICNT is used both for provisioning hardware capacity and for staking to secure cloud workloads. This ties the token to real-world infrastructure and the strong and growing demand that ICN's ecosystem is experiencing. ICN is riding a confluence of multiple strong tailwinds in the cloud industry. These include incredible demand for AI, associated hardware shortages, and an increasingly urgent need for sovereign cloud solutions apart from those offered by US hyperscalers. Combined, these drivers are calling for a new foundational layer for the next generation of the internet that can challenge the dominance of centralized tech giants – a layer ICN is pioneering. About Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) is building a permissionless, open cloud network to rival Big Tech giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. With resilient, high-performance decentralized cloud services, ICN is laying the foundation for a scalable, secure, and community-driven global cloud that supports enterprise, AI, gaming, applications, and end-users. With real-world adoption already generating million-dollar revenue and a vision for 200+ decentralized cloud services, ICN offers a true alternative to monopolistic hyperscalers. About ICN: Full information on $ICNT : $ICNT on Bybit: Contact Rebecca Jones Block3 PR [email protected] Photo - View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Impossible Cloud Network
Business Insider
03-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
ICN Launches $ICNT, latest investment signals $470 million valuation
Impossible Cloud Network launches token on Bybit, Binance, Kraken, and other major exchanges following $34 million ecosystem raise Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) – a decentralized cloud services provider– is today announcing the launch of its $ICNT token through Tier 1 centralized exchanges Bybit, Binance, Kraken, Bitget, and more. The token launch follows a recently announced investment (valuation: $470 million) from NGP Capital, a deep tech fund that backed Xiaomi and Helium. ICN is the first decentralized cloud provider to match and surpass centralized hyperscalers in latency, availability, and performance. Its service is live and operating a fully open, multi-service, permissionless, and composable cloud infrastructure that integrates storage, compute, and networking at scale. The token listing comes just weeks after ICN attracted a substantial valuation of $470 million from Nokia-backed investor NGP Capital, which joined 1kx, No Limit Holdings, Protocol VC, HV Capital, and more in investing a total of $34 million into ICN. The Switzerland-based cloud network has substantial traction inside its ecosystem, handling over 23,000 cloud requests per second from its 1,000+ enterprise customers. This makes ICN one of the biggest revenue-generating decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) in the industry and places it in pole position to win the AI infrastructure race. ICN's CEO and co-founder is Kai Wawrzinek, a seasoned, billion-dollar company founder who successfully led his project, Goodgame Studios, to NASDAQ unicorn status in 2017. Commenting on the launch of $ICNT, Wawrzinek says: 'As a decentralized cloud provider, ICN is successful because it meets a genuine, growing need. ICN will win the decentralized infrastructure race — because we control the data layer. Once compute goes live, we'll unbundle the internet. '$ICNT will play a pivotal role in ICN's ecosystem, allowing anyone to participate in the network's growth by earning rewards from HyperNodes. $ICNT is used both for provisioning hardware capacity and for staking to secure cloud workloads. This ties the token to real-world infrastructure and the strong and growing demand that ICN's ecosystem is experiencing. ICN is riding a confluence of multiple strong tailwinds in the cloud industry. These include incredible demand for AI, associated hardware shortages, and an increasingly urgent need for sovereign cloud solutions apart from those offered by US hyperscalers. Combined, these drivers are calling for a new foundational layer for the next generation of the internet that can challenge the dominance of centralized tech giants – a layer ICN is pioneering. About Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) is building a permissionless, open cloud network to rival Big Tech giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. With resilient, high-performance decentralized cloud services, ICN is laying the foundation for a scalable, secure, and community-driven global cloud that supports enterprise, AI, gaming, applications, and end-users. With real-world adoption already generating million-dollar revenue and a vision for 200+ decentralized cloud services, ICN offers a true alternative to monopolistic hyperscalers. Block3 PR
