Antshares began development under Alibaba's Ant Financial in 2014 and ran an ICO in 2016. For the most part, they've flown under the radar in the West until very recently when they were offered for the first time on Bittrex and the price shot up by over 1000% to $15 last month. The price has settled now to a reasonable $8 per share, meaning this is the perfect time to buy in to what promises to be the "Chinese Ethereum"
In order to fully understand the appeal of Antshares to a China-savvy investor, you first have to have some basic knowledge about the Chinese economy and how it relates to (or doesn't relate to) the West. China's government is highly economically protectionist and usually does not tolerate Western companies or products for long if it can choose not to. Instead, it will usually allow a technology to exist within its ecosphere for just long enough to develop a domestic alternative, then push the foreign competitor out of the market through regulations and preferential treatment for the domestic competitor. This same old song and dance can be seen in any number of industries. A particularly recent example is Uber. Uber was extremely popular in China for all of six months, if I remember properly, until it was eventually made illegal (more like a legal grey area, but operation became difficult) in several Chinese cities and was subsequently bought out by its Chinese counterpart, Didi Taxi. Facebook, Google, Youtube, even Whatsapp all have similar stories where they either were pushed out of the Chinese market or never had much opportunity to enter, either because of government censorship concerns or out of economic protectionism.
What does this have to do with Antshares? Antshares is developed by Ant Financial, a company under Alibaba which is an umbrella corporation that owns a number of market-dominating services like Taobao (Chinese Ebay) and Alipay (holds the largest market share in online payments in China), which already puts Antshares in the position of the favored domestic option described above. It promises to be a Chinese improvement on Ethereum, which also means that it could have a bright future abroad if it delivers on development promises. The development of a government supported, domestic blockchain by the developer of the nation's largest online payment platform also means that we could see a radical paradigm shift toward online/mobile payments with cryptocurrencies in the near future in China, which would be an enormous game changer and would surely cause Antshares (now Neo) to skyrocket in price as a fourth of the world's population uses the platform to buy everything from groceries to cosmetics to underwear as they do now with platforms like Alipay and Wechat pay.
The Neo platform could also offer a solution to a perpetual headache facing the Chinese government, namely the strict implementation of real-name authentication. Currently, all online services require users to register with their real name and Chinese ID card number. This system, while a step toward the government's goal, is imperfect as it still allows for a fair bit of fraud if one were to just get a hold of another person's ID card. If Neo implements comprehensive blockchain identity, however, this system could be moved to the blockchain, offering much more transparency and verifiability for the government. As anyone who has done business in China knows, if you have the government's support, you can't lose, so I'm keeping my eye firmly fixed on Neo for the next few months and will be buying as much as I can in preparation for the release of the first mainstream neo-based product. If you're smart, you will too!