Neo (NEO) is a Chinese Ethereum alternative with an interesting business plan. The business plan is to market to developers rather than speculators.
The idea is to appeal to the people who build blockchain apps and platforms rather than those who bet money. Hence, Neo’s website brags that its blockchain is “developer-friendly,” “enterprise-ready,” and “community-driven.”
Moreover, one of the first things the Neo team does is ask visitors to its site to become a Neo developer. It goes onto describe all the resources Neo offers developers.
For instance, Neo claims its blockchain ecosystem works with mainstream computer languages; including C#, Python, Java, JavaScript, and Go. Plus, Neo claims its network contains over two million wallet addresses, over 500,000 community members, and over 300 technical contributors.
Plus, Neo claims to have over 10 Global Neo Communities operating in 20 cities and seven countries. I guess, the Global Communities are nodes in the Neo Blockchain.
Neo Bets Big on DApps
Interestingly, Neo’s biggest bet is on decentralized applications (DApps). To clarify a DApp is a digital robot or bot that operates through the blockchain.
The hope at Neo is to make money by offering DApps that provide a wide variety of services through the blockchain. The DApps could drive the value of the Neo (NEO) token because people will pay for the DApps’ services in NEO.
Currently, Neo claims its blockchain offers access to over 100 DApps. Today’s Neo DApps include Red Pulse, which claims to offer to offer “actionable intelligence and insights,” on China’s economy and Chinese capital markets.
Red Pulse’s services include an expert network. Red Plus claims to offer investors unlimited access to Research notes on Chinese companies, Chinese industries, and the Chinese economy.
Can Neo Make Money with DApps?
Another Neo DApp is Jarvis+. They describe Jarvis+ as a “collaboration and community economy solutions specialist.” I guess Jarvis+ is a personal assistant that acts as a secretary and receptionist.
Interestingly, Jarvis+’s builders claim their creation can manage group chats and armies of chat bots. They also describe Jarvis+ as “The world’s first group chat intelligent robot conversation engine based on multi-person dialogue.” Hence, I think Jarvis+ could chat with hundreds or thousands of people at once. Thus, Jarvis+ could be a powerful marketing tool.
In a similar vein AdEx claims to offer Open-source, transparent & fraud-proof display advertising. Oddly, they built AdEx on the Ethereum blockchain but it works with Neo’s blockchain.
Other interesting Neo DApps include, THEKEY, the Thor Token, Alphacat, and Sunny DApp. The Thor Token offers Gig Economy Solutions while they bill the THEKEY ias a “decentralized ecosystem of identity verification tools using national big-data and blockchain.”
Oddly, Sunny calls itself the “dapp allows you to insure against bad weather conditions on a given day. If the relative sunshine duration on that day is lower than 50%, you get paid.”
Can Neo Make Money with Artificial Intelligence?
Meanwhile, Aplhacat claims to be “the most advanced AI robot advisor & marketplace for simple-to-use yet powerful trading tools focused on cryptocurrencies.” In other words, I think Alphacat is a blockchain cryptocurrency trading bot.
Plus, Effect.Ai claims “to solve many of the problems with the current AI market, Effect.AI proposes a private, decentralized ecosystem for AI development and AI related services called The Effect Network.” Hence, I guess Effect.AI is a development tool for artificial intelligence (AI).
Thus, Neo could make money by combining AI and DApps. In addition, Neo could function as a GitHub for DApps and AI. To explain; GitHub is the giant code sharing and collaboration service Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) paid $7.5 billion for in June 2018.
How Neo could Cash in on GitHub
Importantly, most of the Neo DApps are available through GitHub. On 30 September 2019, GitHub claimed its network: or Octoverse, contained over 44 million code repositories.
In addition, GitHub claims 10 million new developers joined the Octoverse between October 2018 and September 2019. GitHub estimates over 40 million developers were using the Octoverse in September 2019. Plus, the Octoverse received over 87 million pull requests for code and resolved over 20 million coding issues between September 2018 and October 2019.
Hence, Neo DApp developers have access to the world’s largest code repository. In addition, Neo is working closely with a Microsoft resource. Thus, I think a company like Microsoft could buy Neo at some point.
Therefore, the real value in Neo’s so-called Smart Economy is its commitment to DApps and willingness to work with GitHub. I think the Smart Economy could be lucrative because I believe the biggest future use of blockchain is as a DApp and AI delivery system.
How Neo could make Money
To explain, DApps and AI could perform a wide variety of tasks soon. Users will buy the DApps and AI through platforms like Neo and GitHub. In addition, developers will make money by selling DApps and AI through those platforms.
Thus, much of NEO’s value will come from DApps and their popularity. If a NEO DApp becomes a huge success, NEO could be profitable.
One way NEO can make money is offer developers in far-corners of the world a market for their services and products. For instance, a DApp developer in Bolivia could sell his bot to a company in Scotland. The developer and the customer could avoid exchange rate and conversion headaches by making the transaction in Neo (NEO).
To make such a transaction profitable; however, NEO will need to be profitable and offer fast conversion between Neo (NEO) and fiat currencies. Scalable means the NEO blockchain could handle hundreds or thousands of transactions at once. I see no proof of that capability at Neo’s website.
For fast conversion, users will need the ability to convert Neo into a stablecoin. To explain, a stablecoin is a crytpcourrency that contains a DApp that pays recipients in a fiat currency. For example, the popular Tether (USDT) stablecoin pays in US dollars. However, could find no stablecoins offered in NEO’s DApp list.
What Value Does NEO Have?
Neo (NEO) is becoming a popular cryptocurrency. For instance, they accept Neo (NEO) in the popular CoinBase cryptocurrency wallet.
Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap listed Neo (NEO) as the 17th most valuable cryptocurrency on 14 November 2019. In detail, CoinMarketCap gave NEO a coin price of $12.78, a Market Capitalization of $901.191 million, and a 24-Hour Market Volume of $593.014 million on that day. They based those numbers on a Circulating Supply of 70.539 million NEO and a Total Supply of 100 million NEO.
In contrast, CoinBase gave NEO a Market Cap of $905.5 million, a 24-Market Volume of $592.7 million, and a Coin Price of $12.78 on 14 November 2019. CoinBase estimates there was a Circulating Supply of 70.5 million NEO on that day.
In conclusion, I think Mr. Market fairly prices NEO because it is a blockchain with a lot of unrealized potential. However, most of NEO’s potential is theoretical.
Thus, Neo (NEO) is a long-term speculative investment. I think Neo could be worth a lot of money someday because of its DApps. However, I do not believe anybody will make big money from NEO soon.
Originally published at https://marketmadhouse.com on November 12, 2019.
