ICOs are often risky

Even in the volatile and scam filled world of crypto, ICOs can still be seen as "above average risk". I used to invest in several each month, but since the dawn of the bear market in January, I've hardly participated in any at all.

But there is one ICO that is really worth it, one that people have been very anxiously waiting for: NEX.

From https://neonexchange.org

What's NEX?

Short answer: a decentralised super-exchange

Slightly longer answer

NEX is the Neon Exchange.

What is Neon?
Neon is a wallet developed by City of Zion (CoZ)

What is City of Zion?
CoZ is a group of NEO fans who help to promote NEO and develop apps and software that compliment it.

What is NEO?
The finest crypto platform coin in existence and the nexus of the Neo Smart Economy.

NEX will be the best ICO to come along in a long time. I consider it to be a very solid investment. It has one of the best teams you could possibly hope to have when investing in an ICO: all of the big CoZ names are there and they have Da Hongfei (CEO of OnChain - the company behind NEO) and Erik Zhang (CTO of Onchain and the main NEO technical guru) as advisors!

I know I haven't written a post on how to select ICOs yet (let's face it - such a post isn't in high demand in the current market! [but may be soon...]), but if I had, you would see that NEX ticks all of the right boxes, and then invents a few of its own and ticks them too. It's a 10/10 ICO, 12/10 if you count the things you never even thought an ICO would have.

From https://neonexchange.org/token_sale_info/index.html

...and that's why I'm writing this today

Because today is a big day for NEX. Today is lottery results day. 25 000 lucky individuals have just been selected to participate in Round 1 of the NEX ICO. That's right, NEX held a lottery.

Why a lottery?
Normally ICOs start with a pre-sale. Sometimes a pre-pre-sale. Sometimes a pre-pre-pre-sale. Then once the main sale starts, you get bonuses depending on how early you invest, the earlier you invest, the bigger the bonus. Pre-sale rounds typically require relatively large investments, too large for many people.

So the rich come along and buy the new crypto first, at half price, or maybe even less. They may get tokens for e.g. $0.25 in pre-sale round 1, tokens that would cost poorer folk $0.50 at the start of the main sale and $1.00 by the end of the main sale. I need not point out how flawed this system is.

NEX has no pre-sale. It has a lottery. Successful lottery participants will be able to buy up to $1 000 worth of NEX tokens on the first day that the NEX sale goes live. Nobody else can buy. A day later people will be able to buy up to an additional $9 000 worth of NEX tokens. Each NEX token will sell for $1.00.

Only 25 000 000 NEX will be sold to the public (of a 50 000 000 total). This means that if each lottery winner buys their full $1 000 worth on the first day of the ICO, the ICO will be finished in one day! That's insane, the most popular ICO in a long time (perhaps ever) and it could theoretically end so fast!

From https://neonexchange.org/token_sale_info/index.html

But just imagine that there was no $1 000 limit. With no pre-sale available to them, the whales would have to step in with the rest of the public investors. There would be a buying frenzy that would be entirely dominated by whales (like most ICOs are).

The NEX system is much more fair and gives a chance to the smaller investors. They finally have a system where those that need to make money get the chance to do so. So that is why we have a NEX lottery. It's a great idea and I hope to see many more ICOs do it in the future.

Does this information help you?

Probably not

The lottery is over. The winners have been announced. But there is still a chance that those who registered for the lottery and did not win, may still win in round two. Round two will fill any unregistered spots from round one. The round one winners have one week to register for KYC, if they fail to do so, then those spots will go to round two winners. (I think that's how it works.)

But at $1 per token and with $25 Mil tokens available, NEX has a (very rough) projected market cap of $25 Mil when it finally lists. Even if you count all $50 Mil tokens at $1.00 (and they won't all be available initially, some will be locked for up to two years) the market cap will only be $50 Mil. That's peanuts, I believe that NEX should easily compete with Binance Coin (BNB) - currently sitting at a market cap of about $1 BILLION or even just KuCoin (KCS) - currently sitting at about $200 Mil. So that would mean a price increase of anywhere between about 4x and 40x at current prices, depending on which figures you use.

What am I saying to you? Do your calculations early, work out a good buy price, and if NEX lists below that price then go crazy and buy it like there is no tomorrow! Well at least for those of us who didn't get into the lottery. To the lucky few who did: well done, you get to buy in a much more relaxed atmosphere!

Why will NEX be so popular?

Apart from the great team and well run ICO, NEX will be the sister product of several already functional products like the Neon wallet and Neoscan. It runs on NEO, which is a next generation platform (i.e. better than Ethereum), and unlike all the other next gen platforms around (cough cough ADA, EOS, etc cough) it has a proven record and is running several good DApps already. And it's part of the smart economy (so it's linked to projects like Ontology).

Here's the really good bit: you can stake your NEX and earn dividends. The fees charged on the NEX platform will be paid back to the NEX holders (similar to the KuCoin system - but possibly with a higher percentage paid because KuCoin is centralised and NEX won't be [and that's not a dig at KuCoin, KuCoin is an excellent exchange, one of my favourites]). Staking for longer periods will mean earning a greater share of the fees. Staking will be done by means of smart contracts. It must be noted that due to changing regulations, the nature and structure of this proposed dividend system may change, I suggest that you read the whitepaper (as always).

Looking ahead

The NEX timeline states that the lottery winners (Round one) have until 7 April (18:00 UTC) to complete their KYC. Round two lottery KYC starts on 8 April, when the winners of that round will be announced. Round two closes on 14 April, and sometime after that (still to be announced), the NEX token sale will start: first the $1 000 limit round for a day, and then the $9 000 limit round.

Summing up

Well done to the NEX lottery winners. You are very fortunate people.

NEX token sale will start soon, I expect it to be short, I'm guessing it will all be over about half a day after round two begins. I expect NEX to shoot upwards in price after listing. I also expect NEX exchange itself to be a very good exchange - so those tokens may well be worth a long-term hold!

There is a LOT more to NEX, far more than what I have written here. This wasn't even a coin review, just a note on NEX because of its lottery. Read up on NEX, it's a game changer. It's cross platform (Ethereum and Neo). They are even looking at banking.

I leave you with an interview with Fabio of CoZ and NEX fame. It's a long interview, but a very informative one. If you're interested in NEX, then you need to watch this YouTube clip. You'll be refreshed by the honesty, knowledge and straight talking of Fabio, he's an amazing guy.

I'll drop a few useful links at the end, some good reading for those who are interested.

Yours in crypto,
Bit Brain

Links

*NEX website: https://neonexchange.org
*NEX token sale info: https://neonexchange.org/token_sale_info/index.html
*City of Zion website: https://cityofzion.io
*NEX whitepaper: https://neonexchange.org/pdfs/whitepaper_v1.1.pdf
*NEO website: https://neo.org

DISCLAIMER:

I am not a financial advisor nor am I a professional trader/investor. This is not financial advice, investment advice or trading advice. Unless otherwise stated, all my posts are my opinion and nothing more. Crypto is highly volatile and you can easily lose everything in crypto. You invest at your own risk! Information I post may be erroneous or construed as being misleading. I will not be held responsible for anything which is incorrect, missing, out-of-date or fabricated. Any information you use is done so at your own risk. Always Do Your Own Research (DYOR) and realise that you and you alone are responsible for your crypto portfolio and whatever happens to it.