There appears to be a lot of enthusiasm in NEO lately. The coin of Chinese origin is ranked tenth based on market capitalization and jumped from $10 to more than $18 over the past days. I did a little digging into this new coin and want to share this with you.
Introduction
For those of you that don't know NEO, it is a project of Antshares blockchain. NEO appears to be quite new, but it already exists one year instead of only two months. On June 22nd, Antshares the name ANS has been rebranded into NEO. The idea of NEO looks very much similar to Ethereum in the sense that it is an open source public chain. A step forward, however, is that NEO supports many programming languages, while Ethereum restricts developers to use Solidity. Tomorrow (August 8th) the coin celebrates its first-year anniversary and NEO will release its new website and improve its wallet.
Opportunities in China
China is a big market, but regarding cryptocurrency development it is still in an early stage. The Chinese roots is a big plus for NEO and potentially it could take the place of Ethereum, which is a popular coin in China, but it definitely needs some time to step in. The rebranding turned out to be a smart move. They let the world know, there were still things happening, and they got a bigger platform to point out their strengths. Besides the languages, they are collaborating with some Chinese companies. Again, the fact that Antshares originates from China will help them in the future.
8th August
On Tuesday the new website and updated wallet will be introduced. The markets are anticipating a huge breakout of the coin as NEO rose approximately 80% since Saturday. Another interesting fact is the volume data. Only 9 exchanges trade NEO and this is the main reason why NEO is 'only' fourth with regard to dollar volumes. However, if we look at the exchanges individually, we see that NEO has a large part of today's volume on all exchanges. On Bittrex - the biggest exchange supporting NEO - they even top the daily volumes with a share of 25%.
Prediction
Many investors are guessing (and speculating) that NEO turns out to be "China's Ethereum" and will shoot the moon. Its maximum supply is 100 million with a restricted circulating supply of 50 million, which is rather limited given that Ethereum already has a circulating supply of over 90 million coins. The first step for NEO is becoming successful in China and then the rest of the world will follow. If they manage to do so, I can see NEO reaching Ethereum levels, maybe even higher. There is still too much uncertainty to go full-force, but a small investment might be interesting. I will definitely root for them!