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Cryptocurrencies tend to move positively with friendly news and negatively with increased regulatory constraints. NEO, a cryptocurrency designed to digitise different asset classes by way of smart contracts has benefited from increasing liberalisation in the regulatory environment. In much the same fashion, as China’s premier digital coin, it is of particular interest to traders in the region. Given its utility value as a digital coin as well as a platform for smart contracts, it has practical applications. One of the unique characteristics of NEO is its indivisible nature. Traders and investors have to purchase full units of NEO which then permits the holding of another digital currency known as GAS, which is divisible. Traders are advised to steer clear of predictions about the future directions of cryptocurrencies such as NEO. The volatility of digital currencies routinely takes traders by surprise. What is known with certainty is that the developers behind NEO are working hard to create a new world economy with NEO at the helm. Rather than adopting the standard proof of stake or proof of work validation algorithms, they have dispatched with them in favour of the byzantine fault tolerance algorithm. This helps with scalability, and decreases vulnerability. As institutional investors start to take notice of crypto in general, NEO may position itself for greater exposure. South African traders are not required to purchase the underlying financial instrument a.k.a. NEO cryptocurrency since the CFD option for trading NEO allows for contracts for difference – derivatives instruments which mirror the price movements of the underlying asset. Simply put, NEO price movements can be traded to the upside or downside, depending on how the trader perceives the assets price movement. This eliminates the linear price appreciation/ROI model, and allows traders to generate returns if prices move to the downside. The most important resources available to NEO CFD traders include research and analysis. AvaTrade SA encourages traders to read up as much as possible on the latest developments taking place with NEO such as regulatory constraints or the removal thereof. Institutional adoption of cryptocurrency around the world plays a big part in bringing it into the mainstream. Consider that in March 2021, the price of NEO was $39.54, up markedly from the price precisely one year prior to that at $11.66. This type of appreciation has characterised the cryptocurrency market in general. Led by Bitcoin which surged in price from the end of 2020 through 2021, many altcoins such as NEO have clung to BTCs coattails and enjoyed a tremendous run of form. For those interested in trading NEO, it’s certainly a good idea to consider demo trading NEO CFDs at AvaTrade SA as a point of departure, to get a better understanding of how the derivatives trading markets work.
In tandem with its name, NEO promises to usher in the new age of the ‘smart economy.’ In fact, the word ‘neo’ originates from the ancient Greek prefix ‘νεο’ which means young and new. NEO was founded in 2014 by Erik Zhang and Da HongFei as an open source, community-driven blockchain platform for decentralised applications. The platform was initially launched as ‘Antshares’, which utilised the cryptocoin ‘Antcoins’ on its network. The project then rebranded to NEO in 2017, along with the new vision to create a smart economy. NEO aims to achieve its vision by automating the management of digital assets using smart contracts. NEO is China’s first open source blockchain project, and since its inception, it started out focused on being regulatory friendly in what can be said to be, a tough crypto environment. Thus, digital identity is a key tenet in the NEO platform, which utilises a consensus protocol known as Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (dBFT). This mechanism can also support up to 10,000 transactions per second.
Uniquely, NEO has two crypto tokens: NEO and GAS. The NEO token, which is the base asset of the NEO blockchain, represents ownership of the NEO platform, acting as an investment on the blockchain project. GAS, on the other hand, gives the right to use the NEO platform, essentially acting as a fuel within the system. That is, the NEO token generates GAS tokens which can then be used to pay the transaction fees required in order to utilise the NEO network. NEO also supports programming in all mainstream languages, including Kotlin, Python, C#, Java, and Go. This variety ensures that a large community of developers can easily contribute to its platform. During the initial block creation, 100 million NEO coins were pre-mined, and they are indivisible (the smallest unit will be 1). There will also eventually be 100 million GAS coins that will be generated using a decay algorithm designed to take 22 years.
NEO has interesting use cases in its quest to launch the smart economy. The project aims to transform traditional, physical assets into digital assets using smart contracts. These digital assets will be decentralised and protected by law. NEO also seeks to create digital identities of individuals and corporations. Smart contracts are also a major use case of the NEO platform, which applies the Universal Lightweight Virtual Machine (NeoVM) that guarantees high concurrency, high certainty, as well as high blockchain scalability. NEO also supports the creation of decentralised applications and other blockchain projects on its platform. The amazing NEO project has gained several backers and investors, with the major one undoubtedly being Microsoft, who have partnered with the blockchain project since its rebranding in 2017.
Cryptocoins are an exciting financial asset class known for big, volatile price movements. It is even more exciting when they are traded as a CFD product rather than through crypto exchanges because of the following benefits:
As mentioned above, 100 million NEO tokens were pre-mined during the foremost block creation (Genesis Block), and that will represent the maximum supply for the token. As of June 2019, there are about 70 million NEO tokens in circulation. NEO held its first ICO in October 2015 at an introductory price of $0.032 and managed to sell 17.5 million tokens. In September 2016, it held its second crowd-sale and managed to sell 22.5 million tokens at a price of $0.2. As China’s first public blockchain project, NEO understandably gained so much attention from the investing community. It has, therefore, had an interesting price history. From its ICO low of $0.032, NEO managed to achieve a price high of $196.85 in January 2018. In June 2019, it was trading at circa $18 with a market capitalisation of $1.267 billion. With renewed enthusiasm in the crypto world as major tech giants launch their own coins, there is a general consensus that the future is bright for NEO and many other cryptocurrencies.
NEO has remained one of the top cryptocurrencies over the past several years, and it has enough volatility to recommend it as a good coin for traders. With frequent daily moves of several percentage points it should be clear that this is an asset that traders can take advantage of, especially if they choose to trade it using CFDs. The use of a CFD when trading NEO and other cryptocurrencies allows a trader to focus completely on the price action of the cryptocurrency and ignore the distractions of how to store and move the coins.
Both NEO and Ethereum are smart contract blockchains that support the creation of decentralized applications. But is one better than the other? Well, NEO supports far more transactions per second than Ethereum, although Ethereum is working on catching up. But Ethereum does have far more users at this point, and has become entrenched in decentralized finance applications. For a trader none of this matters, only the price action matters. In that regard NEO is actually better than Ethereum recently, as it has greater volatility, although that could certainly change at any time as markets do constantly change.
While we certainly think learning more about cryptocurrencies is a good thing, when it comes to trading, we believe simple is the best course. So, rather than worrying about unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and private keys, hackers, and the strange cryptocurrency crosses involved in trading actual NEO tokens, why not simplify and trade CFDs on the cryptocurrency. With a CFD you are only speculating on the price action of the token, and you don’t have any of the other concerns that come along with cryptocurrencies. It will simplify your trading and allow you to focus completely on the price action of NEO.