NEO price predictions: Where is it heading next?
09:06, 17 April 2021
Neo is touted as the ‘Chinese Ethereum’ but don’t think China’s first digital coin is just an Ethereum also-ran.
It’s more interesting than that. The evidence? First, Neo’s 12-month price performance has been as extreme – and as stellar – as Bitcoin, if not quite as out-of-this-world as Ethereum’s.
In mid-April 2020, Neo was trading at around $7.20. Roll forward to mid-April 2021 and Neo’s current $67.70 valuation represents an +840% value increase.
Secondly, Neo also pays out dividends to its owners, unlike Ethereum. And Neo can also register physical assets via a digital identity.
This coin, then, has a few tricks up its sleeve.
What is your sentiment on EA?
How does Neo’s 12-month performance compare with Bitcoin and Ethereum?
Neo’s price rise trajectory is similar to Bitcoin, which went from $7,150 to $64,000 in this same period. So a +795% gain for Bitcoin versus Neo’s +840%
In contrast, rival Ethereum was selling at $174 in mid April 2020 but crested $2,300 by mid-April 2021 – a +1,220% price increase, in fact Ethereum saw a sizable price increase advantage in the last 12 months, putting it ahead of Neo – for the moment.
What makes Neo unique in April 2021?
While Neo and Ethereum are major blockchains deploying self-executing code contracts – so-called ‘smart contracts’ – Neo is more flexible.
That’s because Neo developers create their smart contracts with programming languages such as Javascript, Python and Go. In that sense, Neo’s impressively multi-lingual.
In contrast, Ethereum speaks only one coding language – Solidity – and programmers have to learn it from scratch. It might sound geeky but being developer-friendly is quite a big deal.
Neo, ranked number 25 by market cap at $4.54bn according to Coinmarket (mid April 2021) is also nippier, able to handle more transactions per second than Ethereum, loaded with a massive market cap of $268.11bn.
There are other distinctions too – many Neo transactions are free, unlike Ethereum.
But while Neo is markedly different from Ethereum – from scaleability and tech to its philosophy – both support smart contracts and decentralised apps (or dApps), which sit on top of blockchain.
What are analysts saying about Neo?
It depends what you read or who you listen to. Remember, the crypto asset market’s extreme first quarter 2021 surge makes it especially tough to predict Neo’s future price direction.
Eloisa Marchesoni, co-founder of Blockchain Consulting, told Capital in a statement that the strong combination of Chinese nationals involved in supporting Neo “certainly plays in [its] favour”.
In terms of moving price averages – the calculation made between a series of data or price points – Marchesoni says they’re “very positive” for Neo.
She adds “that the oscillators [market tool for helping predict future movements] are among the most positive that I have been able to analyse in recent times, even when I put cryptocurrencies on the test bench with a more solid history and with more impressive growth”.
NEO price predictions: what other analysts think about Neo
Walletinvestor believes Neo could hit $87 by early May 2021 and $102 by May 2022, one year on. That future price rise estimate doubles again to more than $200 if the timeline is stretched to May 2025
Earlier this year longforecast.com claimed Neo could move as high as $122 by May 2021, potentially rallying to $165 by August 2021
longforecast.com also thinks Neo could be worth $203 by May 2022, a doubling of what Walletinvestor thinks for the same time period. However this $203 price guesstimate falls back to $121 by May 2025
tradingbeasts.com estimates Neo could hit $68 (close to its current $67 price, April 2021) in May 2021 and $73 by December 2021. It forecasts a maximum $80 by April 2022 (a year from when this article is published).
From the above we see there’s some very chunky Neo price prediction differences and volatility to handle. Note that the numbers from tradingbeasts.com are also rather more conservative than other NEO predictions.
And while much of the crypto currency community is bullish about the NEO price forecast long-term, in April 2021 a Bank of America survey of global fund managers claimed 75% believed Bitcoin to be in ‘bubble land’.
Remember, crypto asset prices can soar or fall 30% (or more) within a few weeks. So always make a decision based on your risk comfort level and how your existing portfolio is invested.
What supports the price of Neo?
A number of future price positive factors. These include:
The long arm of the Chinese government. It’s not known if Neo has the backing of the Chinese administration but Neo is generally regulation-compliant and has the commercial support of large Chinese companies, including the Alibaba Group.
That nod to home-turf rules earns Neo trust – a useful commodity to have if your own government is hostile to your asset class – and is additionally welcome if China generates considerable growth in 2021, as it’s tipped to do by some economists.
Neo has strong community backing and the coin is in constant development. Its Asia-centric position gives it the opportunity to take advantage of the massive Chinese and South-East Asian markets.
What’s Neo’s place in the market now?
While Neo looks to have a number of advantages over Ethereum, there’s no getting away from Ethereum’s thumping market dominance.
Ethereum is completely independent of any government, buoying its international perception of neutrality
Ethereum has a far bigger tribe of developers and is decentralised in a purer way than Neo. Technically speaking, Ethereum is hosted across more ‘nodes’, compared to Neo
But it’s also thought some of these Ethereum-supporting nodes run on cloud-based Amazon Web Services. If true, this undermines Ethereum’s claims of decentralisation or full sovereignty
Blockchain infrastructure has multiple layers subject to constant development. There are now noises being made about quantum computing in the future – which Neo claims to be anticipating with its technology
An updated version of Neo, N3, now widens its development platform potential; the older version will be called “Neo Legacy
“You may compare it to Big Sur being a version of MacOS,” said Neo in a statement, 17 March 2021. “This means when we talk about our soon-to-be-launched upgraded blockchain, we still refer to it as Neo.”
“To put it another way,” Neo adds, “there is no such thing as the ‘N3 blockchain’ or the ‘N3 network’. It is the Neo blockchain, running software version N3.”
What else do I need to know about Neo?
As part of your research, know that Neo contains two cryptocurrencies. Both support the Neo network in different ways.
One crypto is Neo (obviously), the other is GAS. Neo’s token is indivisible – it can’t be divided. Neo is the ‘passport’ for token owners to manage the Neo network, including book-keeping.
However Neo also generates GAS tokens, working separately on the network (think Ether’s relationship to the Ethereum network), which Neo owners hold automatically when buying.
Bluntly speaking, GAS is what powers Neo smart contracts, getting on with the job behind the scenes. You can also buy GAS on a number of exchanges.
The dual arrangement is thought cost-effective – possibly more effective than rival networks based on proof-of-work consensus algorithms and it is highly scaleable.
Lastly, Neo’s a public open-source platform with many community-led groups supporting it. It has close connections with On Chain, a private VC-supported operation led by Neo founders, Erik Zhang and Da Hongfei, closely linked to many big Chinese business players.
3 FAQs
Will Neo coin go up in 2021?
As we saw earlier, longforecast.com thinks Neo could hit $203 by May 2022 though this $203 Neo price prediction falls back to $121 by May 2025.
Other price predictions tend to fall beneath these figures, particularly those from tradingbeasts.com.
But there are many factors that make a good investment. For good or ill, cryptocurrency investments remain speculative and vulnerable to unexpected and forceful shocks. Therefore, you should always follow the latest NEO cryptocurrency news and conduct your own analysis before making a trade.
Is Neo a good investment?
Neo’s technology is respected because its digital ID, for example, is constantly verified, right down the Neo blockchain – it has high levels of accountability designed in.
Yet good tech doesn’t always make for a good investment, so do research and ingest as much as you can before buying (or not).
Meantime if Bitcoin continues to rise, it’s likely Neo may well follow – this is supported from the majority of forecasts Capital.com has seen to date, mid April 2021.
Is Neo better than Ethereum?
You are now aware there are many overlapping similarities as well as differences between these two smart contract players and their own eco-systems.
Both look ahead to how the Internet (or Internet 2.0) develops. Neo’s emphasis on government compliance and ‘smart economy’ philosophy may give it a growth edge.
But it also has to differentiate itself further – and there are a growing number of ‘Ethereum Killers’ out there now also.
Read more: Cosmos (ATOM) price prediction 2021-2025: is the outlook bullish?
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