Well, this question has been asked a LOT lately, and since we are without a moderator (feel free to correct me if im wrong?) I thought I should put it out there so we don't get this question asked 10 times a day. Feel free to upvote for visibility since we don't have a mod. Or, if a mod sees this (if you guys are still active) feel free to sticky it!
Alright, so guys, it's very simple: an AntShare, or ANS (aka NEO since we rebranded), gives you ownership of a "Share", a "part" of the blockchain.
Just like a real company, where you can purchase a share, you get paid DIVIDENDS. Antcoins (which will be called NeoCoins eventually I'm assuming), are the dividends. Just like a corporation, when you buy shares you need to buy one full share. Antshares cannot be divided.
Dividends however (antcoins/neocoins in our case) can be fractional. You can own 500 shares in a company, and receive 1042.61$ USD as dividends. You CANNOT own 500.21 shares in a company. The exact same principle applies to Antshares (shares) and Antcoins (dividends). You get roughly 0.5 ANC for every 1000 ANS you hold.
Important to note: If you transfer your Antshares from Bittrex to your Antshares wallet, you will LOSE the decimal. For example, if you own 499.92 antshares on bittrex, and transfer it to your antshare wallet, Bittrex will take 1 ANS as a "fee". This means only 498.92 antshares will be going to your wallet. And since decimals are not allowed there, you will only receive 498.
So basically, you can have decimals on an exchange (i.e: Bittrex), but not in your actual Antshares wallet. So make sure if you have a fraction, to buy a litte bit and make it a nice and round number so you do not lose the decimal. Here's another example: you have 499.21 antshares. If you buy 0.79 antshares, you will have 500, and then transfer it to your wallet (minus Bittrex's 1 ANS fee) and you'll receive 499. If you don't round the number, and transfer 499.21 antshares, bittrex takes their 1 ANS fee, leaving you with 498.21 ANS. But you'll only receive 498 in your wallet, and basically lose the 0.21
If the price of ANS ends up skyrocketing, whether it be short, medium or long term (I've got my bets on a great high in the medium term, but the long term is definitely where the value will be at), then Antshares will become less accessible.
Here's an example (with an extremely high price relative to it's current price, just to make it easier to understand): Antshares are worth 1000$ USD. This means that to Generate ANC, you'd have to buy one full antshare at that price, and transfer it to your Antshares wallet. 1000$ a piece makes it highly inaccessible, so people will most likely start trading the coin itself, which means its price will rise. As the price of the Antcoins rises, this obviously makes antshares even MORE valuable, since THEY are the ones generating the Antcoins. See where I'm getting at? The more the coin gains in value, the more the Share becomes inaccessible (1200$, 1500$, 2000$ per ANS? Rip...).
1000$ per Antshare? What about exchange's 1 ANS withdrawal fee? That's INSANE!!!
Absolutely, That's INSANE, and That's why it's GENIUS. Look, by the time an Antshare is a high ticket item, most likely poloniex and many more other exchanges will have it as well (Bitfinex, Krakren, as well as Chinese Giants BTCC, OKcoin, Huobi, etc.). These exchanges will have no other choice but to also list the Antcoin (the divisible, reasonable priced coin) and charge us ANS withdrawal fees in ANC's.
This means that 1) The value of the ANC is gonna rise as it starts being traded, 2) We might even be able to generate ANC's directly into our exchange account by holding ANS in there, instead of the wallet (although I wouldn't bet on that, and would rather have it off the exchange, always) and 3) MOON MOON MOON (/s).
It's a matter of time before advanced investors in China and the West realize, but here's a cool scenario. Let's put the price of an Antshare at 400 USD in two years, a little under Ethereum's All Time High of 420$ recently): You bought 1000 antshares while they were still accessible, at 1.8, 3$, 10$, hell you even bought at 15$ during the high! In two to three years, an Antshare is worth 400 USD.
Yes, you've made profit from the antshare's value going up. An insane amount of profit. But let's disregard that because we're all about the hodl lyfe. 1K antshares is generating you approximately 0.5 antcoins per day. An antcoin is worth 40$ (10% of the price of an antshare. I came up with this number because antcoins were 0.75 USD when antshares were 7.5 USD, so it might not be exact, could be more, could be less).
Considering that, at the above mentioned point, the price of Antshares and antcoins freeze (just for the sake of the calculation). You are generating 182.5 Antcoins a year, which means 7300 USD per year, or 608$ per month.
If you were lucky, and bought in very early and you're holding 10 000 antshares, you're generating 6080$ a month, or $73K per year.
What if Antshare is 1000$ a piece in 5 years? Then an antcoin (10% of that) is 100$. Holding 1000 antshares, you'd generate $18K per year or 1,5K/month. The lucky bastard with 10K antshares? He's generating 180K per year, or 15K/month.
Of course, this doesn't take into consideration the rising difficulty (ANS is not PoW based, but currently each new block generates 8 ANC. It will, in a while, drop to 7 per block, then 6, then 5....) which means less and less ANC's are generated over a long period of time. The reduced supply could however be offset by the rising price of ANC as the supply slows down over time, but well that's too advanced of a calculation for me haha.
Moral of the story: HODL this shit guys. After all, all we need is for Antshares/Neo to become to Ethereum what Alibaba is to Amazon. Easy Peasy. (/s)
ps: Alibaba is bigger than both amazon and ebay combined.