In the view of a recent announcement about the relaunch of the blockchain network as NEO 3.0 in 2020, a lot of talks are about the new prospects of NEO, a Chinese blockchain-based project raised again. It’s reasonable because the coin has shown an impressive performance in the crypto market since it’s launch. Paving the way to the top cryptocurrencies, coin NEO achieved the mark point of $10 billion market capitalization at the beginning of 2018 and became an attractive investment. It isn’t as popular as Bitcoin and it’s more difficult to purchase. So let’s consider how and where you can buy NEO.
What does NEO represent?
The first time NEO appeared on GitHub in 2014 as AntShares. Later it was rebranded as NEO. This is a platform based on blockchain, which aims to produce a smart economy. NEO’s smart economy concept is a combination of NEO smart contract, digital asset, and digital identity.
The platform uses own cryptocurrencies: NEO and GAS. The two tokens have a different application on the platform.
- NEO coins show the ownership of the platform. In other words, they resemble the shares of the company and owners of NEO coins are shareholders.
- GAS coins are fuel for the NEO blockchain and are used to process transactions. Just the same way as Ether for the Ethereum network works.
The essence of NEO is to create a decentralized network-based ecosystem, which allows transacting non-digital assets via smart contracts. Different kinds of assets are digitized directly on the NEO platform in a transparent manner with the help of blockchain and digital identity. Further, users can manage their assets at their discretion. For instance, paying bills via smart contracts will enable us to make automatical monthly payments. Wrapping it up, the blockchain-based platform digitizes assets that are currently physical and automate its management.
How to purchase NEO
The purchase of any cryptocurrency consists of several steps and suggests to have such elements as an account on the crypto exchange and a crypto wallet. But one step in a time.
Digital wallet
A wallet is designed to store cryptocurrency safely. If you don’t have one, don’t worry it isn’t a big deal to acquire it. There are different types of crypto wallets and we will consider the most recommended ones for NEO.
- Ledger Nano S is the advisable hardware wallet for many cryptocurrencies including NEO due to the security issues. It isn’t free, though.
- NEON Wallet is a free desktop wallet enabling to store GAS tokens in addition to NEO in one place.
- NEO GUI is an official NEO desktop wallet supporting both tokens
- NEO Tracker is a free web wallet.
- Ansy is a paper wallet with your public and private keys presented in the form of QR codes. It is a secure option but doesn’t allow storing GAS tokens.
Cryptocurrency Exchange
There are different types of cryptocurrency exchanges with some of them enabling to buy NEO with other cryptocurrencies only, and some accept traditional payment methods and fiat currencies.
Credit card or wire transfer
For a first-time buyer of crypto, the direct purchase of NEO would be a nice and hassle-free variant. The choice of the platforms providing such services and accepting credit cards or bank transfer is limited to a couple of options:
- Changelly is an instant cryptocurrency exchange. It enables users to purchase NEO using VISA and Master cards. It accepts USD, EUR, and since March 2019 they added GBP currency.
- CoinSwitch is a crypto exchange aggregator with access to over 300 coins for buy/sell operations due to the integration of a number of exchanges in one platform. Besides cryptocurrencies, it accepts USD and credit cards as a payment method.
- Bittrex is a reliable US-based exchange supporting around 200 cryptocurrencies. Wire transfer is among the platform’s available payment options. You can buy NEO coins with USD.
Bitcoin/ Ethereum/ other cryptocurrencies
Purchasing NEO with Bitcoin or other popular cryptocurrencies would be easier and better way due to the larger choice of platforms supporting this trading pair. You can buy Bitcoin on any crypto exchange that supports fiat money and then transfer your bitcoins to one of the following exchanges and find BTC/NEO pair:
- Binance, which is the largest crypto exchange regarding trading volumes.
- Huobi
- KuCoin
- HitBTC and others
Note that crypto platforms charge fees for their services.
NEO analysis
During the ICO campaign, in total NEO raised $4.5 million including over 6k bitcoins. It was one of the biggest outperformers in the ICO crypto space.
Just like Ethereum, NEO allows building DApps on its blockchain, but there is a range of particularities that make NEO the main competitor and even a killer of Ethereum. More precisely: easier for developing smart contracts, more secure from scams due to the digital identity, faster proof of service consensus, protection technology from quantum computer attacks, government-friendly.
The current NEO price is $ 9.04. Ranking as the 20th largest coin with a $637 million market cap, NEO’s market dominance is 0.25%. Since the beginning of 2019, NEO has lost 5 ranks from 16th. However, NEO is the 13th most traded cryptocurrency having a trading volume of $ 263 million for a period of 24 hours.
Future of NEO
Many experts believe in the promising future for NEO because of its new concept of using blockchain technology. The technical advancements of NEO and its attempts on scalability improvements say about the serious intentions of the NEO team to revolutionize the way of asset transfers. There is no reason to doubt the prospects of NEO.
Starting from 2019 at the coin price of $ 7.5, NEO saw the slow but steady price increase with small digressions for course correction. The growth of the coin will depend on two factors: the general rise of the crypto market and the favor of the Chinese authorities. There are all chances for NEO to advance and go up.