NEO – a successfully rebranded cryptocurrency from China
Unsuccessful attempts to launch a cryptocurrency mostly end up fast. There are many such stories and we cannot remember any of them to get any further development except for NEO.
NEO used to have a different name Antshares (ANT). ANT coin was launched in October 2016, but the project failed because of numerous technical issues and rather low demand from traders. Da Hongfei – the founder – did not give up. His team considered the bad things, improved them and shows the whole world how successful rebranding can be.
Since May, 2017 the exchange rate of the new cryptocurrency called "NEO" has been growing. It started from 0,2 USD per coin and recently exceeded 160 USD per coin.
There were two periods of exchange rate turbulence, but the general trend is just amazing. If you have never heard of NEO we highly recommend you to check its growth rate. Do you know many coins displaying similar results?
Current situation
According to Da Hongfei, they were planning to issue 100 million NEO coins. Today 50 000 coins have already been issued and it means that the project has just crossed the middle. The annual plan is to issue approximately 15 million NEO coins, so we can expect that it will be possible to mine new ones for at least three more years.
No one could ever thought in the very beginning that NEO has any chances, but now this cryptocurrency is in the global top 10 and its position is getting better! Experts from different countries now consider NEO as a smart strategic investment and give positive estimates for the cryptocurrency outlook.
Advantages of NEO
Limited amount of coins to be issued is considered as an advantage. Well, it is a benefit from traders' point of view indeed. If you invest money in a project you want to know its timeframe, don't you? Since only 100 million coins will be issued and the half has just been crossed one may estimate the time of investments.
Annual limitation set from the year 2018 and equal to 15 million coins per year is a very effective solution preventing inflation. Here the developers team of NEO acts more like a central bank regulating how much money is on market.
There is quite little information about fees for various transactions, but experienced traders say that NEO has rather moderate commissions which are lower comparing to other currencies from the global top-10.
The use of smart contracts allows blockchain to work faster – for example, the time of transaction in NEO is very similar to the one of Ethereum.
They say that cryptocurrency should stay away from politics. Initially people believed that the point of Bitcoin and other digital coins is an opportunity for global financial operations without any governmental control, but time is changing.
It is not a secret that NEO is a project coordinated and supported by Chinese government. But please, don't panic and sell your NEO coins! Actually, the government of China does not have that much influence and control over the service – they just monitor it and prevent criminal use of the cryptocurrency.
From the trading point of view such a situation is very favorable – state support means better reliability of the system and less risk of abrupt fall of NEO coins price.
The are also other global structures besides Chinese government which believe in great future of NEO – Microsoft and Alibaba. Both companies declared their support for the new project. What's more, the rebranding of ANT was announced in Beijing office of Microsoft, so we can literally claim that NEO started in Microsoft.
There are plenty of side projects which surround NEO today. One of them is a totally new operating system Elastos based on the NEO system – the new OS should be used for storage and processing of information. Another significant project is NEST FOUND which is an investment foundation created to attract new investments from all over the world.
NEO wallets
A good-looking and easy-to-use wallet is another key characteristic of any cryptocurrency. NEO developers did great work and released three wallets (a Windows wallet for PC, a web-based wallet and a wallet for mobile devices on iOS and Android). There is absolutely no difference from the safety point here, despite some people claim that web-based wallets are very vulnerable for hacking attempts.
You may find more information about each wallet in the official website of NEO cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, there is no FAQ page in their website which would be very useful for the newcomers.
NEO today is available at all major exchange services. New exchange platforms appear every day and nearly all of these offer an opportunity to buy and sell NEO coins for USD, BTC and LTC. Anyway, we suggest traders exchanging NEO coins only at reputable services like Bittrex or Binance.
Conclusion
NEO is probably the most interesting cryptocurrency from the global top-10. Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum have been popular for a very long time already, while NEO is a totally new player. It made a real breakthrough and now its exchange rate keeps on growing. Now it is a good time to invest in NEO, but it should be good time to invest a year later too.
Due to limitation of annual coin issue NEO developers protect their product and its users from too high volatility and reduce the risk of inflation. From the other hand, in three years all 100 million coins will be issued and we have absolutely no idea what happens next.
Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum are valuable not only as an investment, but also as a payment tools. These coins can be used in plenty of online stores and even some offline places – for instance, there are shops, restaurants and cafes which accept BTC or LTC.
NEO coins will hardly turn as popular as BTC and LTC simply because the demand for cryptocurrency as a payment solution is fully covered at the moment. Luckily, the creators of NEO understand this and try to build multiple additional applications and software solutions around the coin.
Right now the future of NEO for at least next three years looks rather optimistic – feel free to invest!
