Ontology (ONT) is starting to spike, and is among the faster gainers in a generally stagnant market. ONT added more than 40% to a price of $1.69. The asset was sliding in the initial days of trading, but now at least in the short term, volumes and upward price movement seem to be returning.
And while trading for ONT is for now rather subdued, this asset is one of the most prominent NEO airdrops, and comes with rather bullish expectations, going as far as following the development trajectory of NEO.
The ONT price at the token sale, going on since October, was $0.20, and even at this point, the asset is seeing significant growth. Additionally, due to the airdrop relationship with NEO, Ontology was one of the rare ICOs that saw itself listed on Binance relatively quickly, while other projects have been left out despite the hopes of accessing the market.
However, ONT remains risky for newcomer investors. The project is relatively unknown, and may start to attract secondary market backers in the coming months. Discussion on social media point out that the outsized rise of 50% compared to last week’s prices may be short-lived, and mostly due to hype and sudden interest in a newly presented token. ONT will have to prove in the coming weeks that the current spike was not just an anomaly.
In essence, Ontology is another public blockchain with distributed ledger functions and smart contracts layer. In 2018, and in the previous year as well, platforms were one of the hottest crypto coins. However, not all fared the same, and the Ontology project is still in the earliest stages both in terms of technology, and in trading history.
The Binance Competition Effect
One possible explanation for last week’s relatively active ONT trading was the Binance competition, although the price spike happened after the competition deadline. More than 1.2 million ONT in prizes were set for holders of large ONT balances on Binance, which may have encouraged buying instead of further shedding ONT tokens after the ICO.
ONT will have to prove its ability to hold up the prices even beyond the incentive period on Binance.
For now, ONT is a simple NEP-5 NEO-based token. In the future, the platform will launch its own main net, similarly to QTUM. At that stage, ONT will also distribute ONG tokens to holders, in a model resembling the distribution of GAS over the NEO blockchain.
In the short term, the Binance competition may also cause selling pressure, especially if markets remain depressed for longer. But the upcoming main net may be counted toward bullish news for ONT, as locking and accumulating tokens increases demand.
However, according to Binance data, the wider community holds around 12% of the tokens, with a lot more waiting in the sidelines, held by the developer team, partners, as well as NEO Council.