Over the past week, the cryptocurrency market has made some historical achievements. For the first time, the total value of all cryptocurrencies soared above $132 billion. The Bitcoin hard fork on August 1st initially shed a level of uncertainty amongst investors. However, optimism was clearly restored in the market as Bitcoin, the matriarch of digital currencies, rose over 20% in value to over $4,000 this past Friday. Another cryptocurrency, and one of my personal favorites, NEO, made huge gains during the week as well. Its market capitalization passed $1 billion for the first time, rising to $2.46 billion over the past week from $550 million, pushing NEO into the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies. Currently, shares are over $50 in value, rising from a mere $8.20 from August 1st. The rise came from some significant events that happened this week and NEO is shown to have a very promising future ahead.

Antshares to NEO

Source: https://tinyurl.com/ybj9efay

NEO, formerly known as Antshares, is China’s first authentic open source public blockchain project. Antshares, labeled as the “Ethereum of China” by many investors, was initially a digital platform developed to support smart contracts. Antshares rebranded to NEO during a conference at Microsoft Headquarters in Beijing on June 22nd, and listed a number of developments for the future. On August 8th, the proposed developments and upgrades came to life, as the project switched gears to not only run as a smart platform, but a SMART ECONOMY. This smart economy is a combination of digital assets, smart contracts, and digital identity, which will serve to eliminate money laundering and illegitimate dealings. What does this mean for cryptocurrency investors who are possibly interested in NEO? Below, I’ve highlighted some of the main reasons as to why NEO’s value has increased substantially and will continue to increase to incredible levels.

Chinese Home Base

The initial factor which attracted me to NEO was its Chinese home base. NEO was developed by Onchain, which is based in Shanghai. Although Western markets initially held off on adopting this “sleeper cryptocurrency”, the Chinese were buying in heavily. NEO’s CEO, Da Hongfei, is not only pushing NEO to investors. The Chinese government has become increasingly interested in adopting a cryptocurrency, and what better cryptocurrency to adopt than one that has already been established in China? The Chinese have historically favored homegrown digital companies over Western-based digital companies, as shown in the infographic below, and we can expect the same outcome in regards to cryptocurrencies. Specifically, many believe that the Chinese government will favor NEO over Ethereum, another widely adopted cryptocurrency with relatively similar features.

Source: https://tinyurl.com/yarvmdqe

Full Smart Contract System

One of NEO’s most attractive technological features is its full smart contract system, which is one of its primary upgrades from August 8th. A smart contract system consists of software which can trace and automate the completion of agreements over the blockchain. Smart contracts can help people and companies exchange currency, shares, property, or any other asset without conflict and with the elimination of a middle man. Usually, a person or a company would pay a lawyer or a licensed clerk to prepare a document or agreement. With the utilization of the smart contract system, the contract is written as code into the blockchain, the rules and penalties of the agreement are defined in the code, and the contract automatically enforces these obligations. Ethereum, a widely adopted cryptocurrency, utilizes a smart contract system as well. However, NEO’s smart contract system is allegedly superior to Ethereum’s in regards to determinism, scalability, and compatability. NEO’s smart contract system also accepts a wider range of programming languages, making it a more attractive system for the international developer community. NEO has already attracted some blockchain startups, such as Agrello, Coindash, and Binance to name a few.

Investors are not merely customers, but community members

In the world of cryptocurrency, investors remain hesitant and skeptical towards certain coins due to the lack of communication and transparency from leadership and development teams. When you invest in a particular cryptocurrency, you become a customer of that coin. The leadership and development teams of that cryptocurrency do not need to further communicate with their customers as their coins are generally already in high demand. I don’t know about you, but I prefer transparency and clear communication from the leadership teams of the cryptocurrencies that I invest in. It provides the investor with a sense of security in their investment. NEO does just that, by not only making a token holder a customer, but a community member of the NEO Smart Economy. NEO frequently keeps community members engaged and up to date on any and all updates to the technology, and you can continue to follow any other developments on their Slack channel: https://neosmarteconomy.slack.com/

NEO's Future

With the recent upgrades to NEO’s full smart contract system, we can expect the attraction of more business-to-business opportunities. The various programming languages in NEO’s smart contract system, which are a big improvement from Ethereum’s similar smart contract system, lower the barriers of adoption among international developers. NEO’s willingness to operate within existing government control while simultaneously providing freedom and self-rule also make it a very attractive investment, as the Chinese government has shown interest in cryptocurrency while China has been dominating much of the market. NEO token holders achieve community membership, which further increases member participation in NEO’s smart economy. NEO was previously labeled a “sleeper cryptocurrency” amidst investors, however, NEO is finally beginning to wake up, and its value will become exceedingly apparent over the course of time.