The rat race to decentralize the current centralized economy and governance continues and, thus, the emergence of new cryptocurrencies and blockchain apps has gained a lot of momentum. Ethereum spearheaded the trend and many cryptocurrency and blockchain projects have followed in their footsteps by hosting several smart-contracts and Decentralized Applications (dApps).

Recently, a new contender has gained quite a lot of popularity and has been said to be a direct contender to Ethereum. This isthe Neo coin (NEO), which was formerly known as AntShares. They are a Chinese cryptocurrency, popularly proclaimed to be the “Etherium Killer” or also referred to as “Chinese Ethereum” at times.

Neo proclaims itself to be a“distributed network for the smart economy”. It is a cryptocurrency and blockchain platform capable of building a scalable network of decentralized applications.

The beauty of NEO lies in its scalability and it offers decentralized internet with its own operating system – nOS. It means finally we can have a cashless society working in an entire ecosystem using NEO coins.

So, without any further delay, let’s explore its beauty, NEO’s value, how to buy NEO, and its foreseeable future.

A Brief Introduction about NEO Coin

NEO, a “non-profitable community-based blockchain project”, digitize assets by using digital identity and blockchain technology in order to automate the management of digital assets. It does so with the help of smart contracts and contributes toward the “smart economy” with a distributed network.

Neo, primarily known as AntShares, was developed by Shanghai-origin blockchain R&D company “OnChain” in 2014. It was founded by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang. The former is the CEO and the later is carrying out his role as CTO.

NEO came into emergence when Antshares rebranded itself on 22 June 2017. It was meant to renew its professional image as “NEO”; in Greek, this term means “newness and youth”.

The base asset of the NEO blockchain is its non-divisible NEO coin, which also generates another GAS token that is used as a means to pay transactional fees generated by applications on the network. It is the first decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency platform launched in China as a direct competitor to Ethereum.

NEO coin is probably a next generation smart economy platform, which has gained a monumental rise to fame and is well known for its explosive growth. But the more you study it, more there is to discuss.

In order to get a quick and better overview of NEO, you can also watch a quick video here:

Key Features of NEO

The ultimate goal of NEO is to be the vanguard in the effort to build a smart economy. As their website state: Digital Assets + Digital Identity + Smart Contract = Smart Economy.

NEO is a high-level strategy by the Chinese government, which positions the coin as a “public cloud” to be the ultimate blockchain platform the industry will use eventually. Let’s discuss some of the many features and use cases NEO coin offers.

High Compatibility

It supports a large number of the widely used programming languages like Python, C#, Java, Javascript, and even GO. It does so by using a customized version of Docker called NeoVM (NEO Virtual Machine) that provides a secure executable environment for a code to compile.

Creating Digital Identity  

It aims to enable the creation of the electronic identity of organizations, individuals, and entities. It will be usable via facial recognition, fingerprints, voice recognition, and other multi-factor authentication mechanisms. It aids in complying KYC/AML and other regulatory requirements.

Digital Assets

It converts traditional assets to digital ones with the help of smart contracts. This digitalization is being done to decentralize and protect assets with the help of digital certificates in order to guarantee trust.

Support dApps

NEO aids the development of several decentralized applications by continuously supporting and developing development techniques and tools. Smart funds, AI-assisted legal smart contracts, and decentralized exchanges are part of such dApps.

NEO’s Value and Performance So Far

The NEO coin sold and raised funds in two major rounds of crowd sales. The first crowdsale, which took place in October 2015, lasted for 10 days. It raised $550k by selling 17.5 million NEO tokens in 10 days. The second fund was raised by selling the remaining 22.5 million tokens at $4.5 million.

NEO has a market cap of $1.077 billion, thus ranking it 14th in terms of market cap as stated by Coingecko. The total supply of NEO is 100 million, out of which 65 million is still available.

NEO’s price started at $0.40 in August 2017, and it reached its all-time high of $198.38 on 15 January 2018. After eight months, NEO’s value hit an all-time low on 16 August 2018, falling down to $15.72. At the time of writing, it sits tightly at $16.47 as given by Cryptocompare.

It has been the among the top 10 coins in 2018 in terms of trading and market capture, and traders as well as developers are showing keen interest. High compatibility and one of the finest proof of stake consensus are the reasons behind this interest.

China’s ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency trading is strangling the growth of NEO’s value. NEO is currently waiting for the green signal from Chinese legislations to roll out their blockchain and crypto services.

But we all know that China’s current ban on cryptocurrency is untenable as blockchain has too many benefits to ignore and the Chinese participates heavily in trading. NEO just needs to play the waiting and lobbying game.

How to Buy NEO?

As we have talked a lot about the history and current performance of NEO, the next obvious question that comes across crypto-enthusiasts is how to buy NEO coin and where to buy them.

Keeping in mind NEO’s fast-growing popularity, it’s not difficult to buy it in today’s world. There are mainly three ways by which you can buy NEO coin currently:

• Via Bank Transfer for flat currency: Buying NEO coins in exchange for flat currency is very easy. There are several exchanges like Bitfinex, Livecoin, Coss, and many others that provide a fiat-linked crypto wallet where you can deposit fiat currencies, like USD, GBP, EUR, and buy NEO in exchange for it.
• In exchange for other cryptocurrencies: Another and much easier way to get hold of NEO coins is through centralized exchanges like Binance, KuCoin, Bittrex, and many others. Here you can exchange one cryptocurrency for another for a marginal trading fee.
• Neo Coin for Cash: It’s tough to buy NEO coin via a peer-to-peer system as NEO doesn’t have a escrowed platform like LocalBitcoins. But if you manage to find buyers and sellers, you can go ahead and trade to get NEO coins. Just you need to be a bit careful (think scams) as there is no specific platform for this kind of trade for NEO just yet.

To get a better step-by-step guide on how to buy NEO cryptocurrency, here is an amazing guide for you on how to purchase NEO with all the steps and relevant checks.

NEO Wallets

Purchasing NEO is not that difficult as it’s available via all the avenues currently existing in the market. Now the question arises as to how and where to hold your NEO coins.

NEO doesn’t have many wallet options, but still, there are several wallets offering the service of keeping your NEOs like Ledger Nano S, NEO CLI, Ansy, and exchanges like Binance and a few others.

Moreover, you can earn some extra passive income in form of NeoGAS by holding it in few wallets like Ledger Nano S and exchanges like Binance.

Just like ether for Ethereum, GAS acts as fuel for the whole ecosystem. It is being used to pay trading fees. However, it is important to note that there is a maximum cap on its supply, which is around 100 million.

The Future

There is no doubt that NEO has been gaining popularity and has been the center of attraction for traders and may also have potential greater than that of Ethereum. It’s still too early to conclude on this but it has obviously got an upper hand by having a low barrier entry point.

The investors are seeing a great potential in NEO coin and, thus, it is backed by the big shots, like Alibaba and WINGS. But, ironically, the biggest hurdle for NEO coin is China’s regulation and ICO ban.

To pull it out of the funk, either they need to reinvent themselves on the global market or China needs to stop killing its so-called Ethereum Killer. The Asian market is already adopting cryptocurrency rapidly and has emerged as the powerhouse for the blockchain and FinTech industry.

So, is NEO going to be the next generation’s smart economy and will its value will get back to its heydays of $150+? There is no doubt that with little support from the government or alternatively a change of focus on the global market will certainly turn them into a whaling ship.