NEO Cryptocurrency: Everything You Need to Know about China Ethereum

The arms race to make the next killer cryptocurrency and blockchain app continues!

Ethereum pioneered this trend and still aims to be the world’s only super-computer by hosting numerous smart contracts and DApps.

Following in the footsteps of Ethereum, many new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects have mushroomed up, some of which we have also discussed in the past (such as Stratis, Waves, Ethereum Classic, etc.).

All these projects offer something different, and that’s why this booming world is so exciting!

Recently, a new contender has joined the race – NEO (formerly known as Antshares).

In the last few weeks, if you were monitoring the altcoin market, then I am sure you heard about NEO.

NEO is the cryptocurrency which has most recently given a powerful return to its investors, eventually reaching its all-time high of $52 per token.

I didn’t cover it at that time because I was expecting a correction in price. A few days ago, the Chinese government announced a ban on ICOs which directly affected NEO – a Chinese company. Now, I believe the price has finally corrected itself (around $35.73 at the time of this writing).

So without further delay, let’s begin looking at this buzzing cryptocurrency.

What is NEO?

NEO is often referred to as “Chinese Ethereum” or “Ethereum’s killer by many, but in this article, I will not call it anything like that. I think many crypto projects have a great future because of their reasons for being built (i.e. the problems they solve). NEO is no exception.

NEO is the first decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency and blockchain platform launched in China.

Apart from the NEO cryptocurrency, NEO has one more crypto-token called GAS (formerly know as ANC-Antcoins). I will discuss both further in the article.

NEO tags itself as a “distributed network for the smart economy”, and NEO’s goal speaks volumes about their smart economy concept.

Goal: To be the vanguard in the effort of building a smart economy.

SMART ECONOMY= Digital Assets + Digital Identity + Smart Contracts

Note: On 22nd June 2017, Antshares rebranded itself to NEO in front of 200 attendees at the Microsoft HQ in Beijing. It was rebranded to renew its professional image. NEO was chosen as the name because “NEO” in Greek means, “newness, novelty, and youth”.

Team NEO

The main community members include the founder – Da Hongfei, co-founder and core developer – Zhang Zhengwen, Secretary General – Tao Rongqi, and other community developers, operators, and contributors.

NEO Use Cases 

Digital Assets- NEO aims to convert traditional assets into digital ones using smart contracts. These digital assets will be decentralized and will be protected by law using digital certificates on the blockchain, which in turn, will guarantee trust.

Digital Identity– NEO will enable the creation of identity information of organizations, individuals, and entities in electronic form. These identities will be usable via multi-factor authentication mechanisms such as facial recognition, fingerprints, voice recognition, and SMS.

Smart Contracts The name “smart contracts” was coined by a cryptologist and computer scientist, Nick Szaboin the 90s. (See our extensive guide on smart contracts here.) The smart contract platform developed by NEO is truly revolutionary. In NEO, unlike other smart contract platforms, you need not learn a new smart contract language.

If you are a developer using C#, Java, or any other mainstream programming language, you can get started right now to code your smart contracts. NEO’s Universal Lightweight Virtual Machine (NeoVM) has the advantage of high certainty, high concurrency, and high scalability for smart contracts based on the blockchain.

DApps NEO will support the development of decentralized applications by continuously supporting and developing more mature development tools and techniques. (See our extensive guide on DApps here.) Some of the examples of DApps are smart funds, AI-assisted legal smart contracts, and decentralized exchanges.

NEO and GAS Total Supply (Working Mechanism)

As I told you in the introduction, NEO has two crypto tokens:

  • NEO – formerly known as Antshares (ANS).
  • GAS – formerly known as Antcoins (ANC).

The NEO token acts as the investment token of the NEO blockchain. It has a hard cap total of 100 million tokens which will be used in block creation, network management, network changes, and other consensus requirements. These 100 million tokens were all pre-mined during the genesis block creation.

One unique thing to note is that NEO is unlike other cryptocurrencies in the fact that it is not divisible; the smallest unit will always be 1.

The GAS token also has a 100 million hard cap, but it acts as the fuel for the NEO blockchain. Unlike the NEO token, GAS is divisible by a factor of 1/10^8, and it was not pre-mined. 100 million GAS tokens will ultimately be generated through a decay algorithm in about 22 years.

GAS will be used for resource allocation and network charges for operations such as running DApps, smart contracts, and providing incentives for maintaining the blockchain.

Market Cap of NEO

The total circulating supply of NEO is 65 million tokens, and the current price of each unit is $18.73. At the time of this writing, the current market cap is $1.1 billion (CoinMarketCap).

 

How To Buy NEO Cryptocurrency?

Also see:

Buy NEO from Changelly

<span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span><span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span><br />
Can’t load widget<br />

Buying NEO directly from fiat currency is a little difficult. But you can always exchange your other coins, such as BTC, LTC, or ETH in exchange for NEO tokens. The procedure is very simple.

You will need the following things to buy NEO:

  1. Your NEO address where you would like to get your NEO tokens.
  2. Some bitcoins/altcoins to exchange for NEO.

Note: Though this guide shows you how to buy Ripple in exchange for BTC, the process is exactly the same to buy NEO. I have used Changelly several times without any issues. You can check out our Changelly review here.

Buy NEO from CoinSwitch

Buy NEO from CoinSwitch

CoinSwitch is also an exchange platform similar to Changelly. It is pretty new to the industry, and at present, it only supports BTC to NEO exchanges

Buy NEO from Exchanges

Below is a list of established cryptocurrency exchanges listing NEO, but only Binance gives you access to the GAS token for holding NEO.

  • Binance: Supported pairs are NEO/BTC, NEO/ETH, NEO/USDT, NEO/BNB
  • HTX: Supported pairs are NEO/BTC, NEO/USDT
  • Bitfinex: Supported pairs are NEO/BTC, NEO/USDT, NEO/USD
  • KuCoin: Supported pairs are NEO/BTC, NEO/ETH, NEO/USDT

Best NEO Wallets

Neo doesn’t have many wallet options, but for early adopters, there are definitely options out there. These wallets also support NEP-2, NEP-5, NEP-9 tokens.

The Future of NEO

NEO is a great project with potential equal to (possibly even greater than) Ethereum.

NEO runs on a specifically developed proof of stake consensus mechanism which is arguably the best proof of stake mechanism available. NEO’s blockchain is also quantum computer proof which gives it an upper hand in comparison to other blockchain projects.

Additionally, the ability to code smart contracts and DApps in mainstream programming languages such as C#, Go, and JAVA is a major advantage point. This is a positive thing for developers because it lowers the entry barrier for them and reduces the time-cost factor for learning a whole new smart contract language.

This one single point alone makes it a strong competitor of Ethereum because, with more common languages available to devs, more smart contracts and DApps will be deployed on the platform, thus causing a price rally.

From a technological point of view, NEO looks better than many other projects out there as it is also Turing complete, like Ethereum.

And let’s also not forget the recent price rally of NEO in which it surged from $6 to $52 almost overnight, reaching the top 5 market cap and bypassing NEM, DASH, STRAT, and LTC. I think this price rally was mainly because investors could see the potential in NEO’s white paper. The biggest hurdle right now with NEO is the China regulation scene.

Update: NEO is moving sideways as of now and is at $15 and right now it is in the top 100 currencies but as you know, price is just a number.

 

After Chinese trying to regulate Cryptocurrency industry and banning ICO’s, the future of NEO is doubtful for now. From a winning ship, it’s now a sinking ship. Only if Chinese life the ban on ICO’s then Neo could become Ethereum killer as what we hoped for. For now, the price will fall more until it found proper support.

So let me know: Are you invested in NEO? What do you like/don’t like about the platform? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

And if you found this post useful, don’t forget to share it on social media! 

Official NEO Resources

Below are some links that will keep you updated about NEO:

Like Neo, I have covered in depth guide about many popular cryptocurrencies. You can read about them by clicking the link below:

Was this helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!

17 thoughts on “NEO Cryptocurrency: Everything You Need to Know about China Ethereum”

  1. Darryl Raju Bouchard

    great article I am invested in Neo since early on before it was Neo…

  2. Raju

    Perhaps Neo can relocate or at least get around the China factor…I believe China will regulate in a sensible way…they would be ignorant if they didn’t allow for ICO’s and the blockchain…as did Russia…I don’t see issues with regulation in as much as there are so many scams out there in crypto’s…it’s a big world and China will be left behind…what I see is that the giants, those countries that use force because of size to rule the world…the little countries like Singapore, Estonia and others moving towards adoption of crypto’s are the potential giant killers…this FUD is all part of the money mongers attempting to control something that has it’s own life force…they can’t and in a month we will all be laughing once again…for now it’s the best opportunity to buy low and sell high or to hodl…I am doing both…Neo will survive and if not Neo then another company will take the tech they have developed and take it to the moon…I think the people who created Neo are tops so they will find a way to either take it outside China or China will wake and embrace…I think the later…but when you are riding a bucking bronco you just have to hang on or get off the horse hopefully all parts intact…

  3. Aleniuk

    Thank you so much! Your article is very clear. Now I can understand so many things! Best regards!

  4. Sudhir where do you stand now on NEO since LTC and Bitcoin have surged. Is NEO dead? Is China working on regulating NEO? What do you think about ZCASH as they are solving contract problems too? Thank you J

    1. Sudhir Khatwani

      NEO is certainly not Dead. China would be naive to do away with this breakthrough technology. You will certainly see short-term quietness but overall it should be good when regulations are put in place.

      Zcash I don’t know if they are doing something with contracts? But anon coins are here to stay when governments start cracking down open, public blockchains.

  5. ahmed

    so to invest in this stuff do u buy neo or do u buy gas?

  6. ahmed

    cool thanks .. also i was looking at other things like Qtum – is that someething u think makes sense or is it still too new and untested?

  7. Solomon

    Questions:
    1. Your article say “One unique thing to note is that NEO is unlike other cryptocurrencies in the fact that it is not divisible; the smallest unit will always be 1”. But I see NEO in Exchanges is trading in decimal unit, e.g. 0.1006…. why?
    2. NEO is trading by investors but no one trading GAS…..I understand NEO can earn GAS on a daily basis but what’s the value of GAS to investors if they cannot be converted to fiat money?

    1. Sudhir Khatwani

      1. It is in decimals only on the exchange books not actually on the NEO blockchain.
      2. GAS is being traded on Binance and KuCoin exchanges.

  8. UK Man

    The killer on this is the price for Neo is for whole units and at $150 per coin it becomes hard to buy/sell now and this will become even worse if the values goes up. Gas being available on just one exchange is also a market killer in my book and if this one exchange goes down then it’s game over. China can but all the developers in jail so they need foreign developers involved too so that the system can remain up and running and maintained if this was to happen. Apart from that I like it from a development perspective and might jump on board

  9. Bacchan

    Bhai bhai. Nice article. Crypto Taxes is the one everyone is interested in US and I am sure in India too.

    1. Sudhir Khatwani

      Yeah, will be doing a write-up on that too after my research is complete. Very less accurate info available as of now.

  10. Gabriela Arellano

    The Neo token is not and has never be meant to act as a method of paymen, right? If I own a Neo the closest match within the traditional financial market is owning a stock, a security. I believe the idea of bridging physical assets into the digital world is phenomenal, but how can I trust that the “Neo Company” won’t just change its name, walk away with all the tokens investments, change its name, register in the Forex stock market and I’ll lose my humble contribucion of a few single digits?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Subscribe to stay updated

Learn Profitable Crypto Trading and receive our free resources to master automated bot 🤖 trading strategies.

(We respect your privacy.)

Coinsutra logo

CoinSutra provides general cryptocurrency and blockchain information for educational purposes only. Content on CoinSutra’s website and social media is not financial, investment, trading, or professional advice. Readers should conduct independent research and consult a licensed advisor before making investment decisions.

CoinSutra does not recommend or endorse specific cryptocurrencies, projects, platforms, products, exchanges, wallets, or other offerings. Opinions shared by CoinSutra writers are their personal views only and should not be relied upon for financial choices.

CoinSutra writers are not certified financial advisors or brokers. Cryptocurrency activities like purchasing, trading, holding, and selling have inherent risks. Readers should exercise due diligence before participating. CoinSutra and its writers are not responsible for any investment losses from acting on website or social media content. Visitors participate at their own risk.



Scroll to Top
42 Shares