There is so much attention drawn into Antshares / NEO these past few weeks I decided to share my insight on why I bought ANTshares (NEO) for 60 cents and still hold.

My first encounter with ANT/shares was back in May after Ethereum doubled in price from 90$ to 180$ in just a few days. I was already fascinated by smart contracts and the technology behind it. I wanted to buy more into Ethereum but didn't feel comfortable following a hype and buying that high. Ethereum skyrocketed from 1$ to 180$ in just five months, some people probably made allot of money doing some simple research on the technology last year.

I always trade crypto baring a simple set of rules. These are very common and sound simple yet are underestimated. One of them is I don't follow hype I try to anticipate it. Holding that thought I decided to do my own research. Hoping I will find some soort of compatible coin that was much cheaper. This is when I came across ANTshares back when they were 60 cents. I bought in on 60 cents, 70, 1$, 3$, 7$ and now even on 10$+ and I will keep buying when I have spare money. Frankly, I sold almost every altcoin i posses trying to get ahold of more NEO.

Holding coins with massive gains can be tough. I always try to grasp the bigger picture and look longterm. I find it easier having my arguments clear for buying in and holding. Back when I did my research in May there was no big hype or tons of articles about ANTshares. I read the whitepaper and frankly didn't understand more than half of it. But the core principles of my investment were there. I would like to share some these with you and new ones that I discovered along the way.

1) Smart contracts is a revolutionary technology:

One of the biggest innovations blockchain technology has to offer are smart contracts. I believe this will revolutionize companies and freelancers. This technology is yet in it's infancy and it's potential is massive.
Interesting article: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/can-smart-contracts-revolutionize-companies-freelancing/

2) Smart contracts seem to gain allot of traction:

Smart contracts also seem to be popular among investors, for example Stratis and Ethereum have made massive gains the past year. I believe this will trigger bubbles and FOMO amongst investors that will be looking for the next hype after this one settles. Finding a decent compatible coin is a gamble but can be very lucrative.
More information about smart contracts: https://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/

So why NEO?

3) Their mission is very ambitious

NEO is already being called "China's Ethereum" I highly recommend you read their white paper as it illustrates great ambitions regarding blockchain technology and innovations. Being China's first public blockchain project, will digitise real-world assets which could be easily transferable as well as programmed via blockchain protocol. At the same time, using smart contracts and digital assets together, one will be able to transfer and distribute in a 'smart' way once they are using Antshares' technology which includes IPOs, portfolio management, transfer of claims, asset management amongst others.
White paper: https://github.com/neo-project/neo/wiki/Whitepaper-1.1

4) The team behind NEO

Consider the June 22nd NEO conference held in Microsoft Beijing’s headquarters where Erik Zhang, Onchain’s CTO, gave an in-depth presentation on smart contracts. Zhang demonstrated a strong grasp of blockchain technology and smart contracts and provided a comprehensive comparison between Ethereum’s and NEO’s smart contract systems. In a recent interview with Boxmining Co-founder Da HongFei illustrated their core development team which sounds promising.
Check out the interview:

5) Government approval

We all know how the Chinese government tends to support its homegrown companies and technologies and it’ll be no different for NEO. Expect the Chinese government to prioritize NEO adoption over Ethereum. In the interview above De HongFei explained having other companies that have relationships with the chinees government. This link might be essential for a disclosed support from the chinees government. Only time will tell if this will actually happen. But if it will happen, it will most likely be NEO.

6) Corporate support NEO

Erik Zhang discussed the evolution of Smart Contracts 2.0, and explained the main differences between NEO and Ethereum. One big contrast of these competing platforms is their programming languages. Ethereum requires developers to learn to program with Solidity. Neo, on the other hand, will support almost all programming languages via a compiler, including those on Microsoft.net, Java, Kotlin, Go and Python, greatly lowering the difficulty for developers to write smart contracts. By making its programming languages more inclusive, NEO hopes to attract a larger community of developers. Zhang also explained the mechanics of the NEO Virtual Machine, its execution engine and interoperability.
Read more: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/antshares-rebrands-introduces-neo-and-new-smart-economy1/

7) NEO has proof-of-stake (AKA passive income)

The two tradable assets on the NEO network are NEO shares and NEO coins. Owning NEO shares gives you partial ownership of the blockchain which allows you to vote on blockchain governance matters. NEO coins, on the other hard, are what powers the blockchain. They’re needed for things like issuing transactions and running smart contracts. There is an infinite supply of NEO coins but the coins are also constantly being destroyed as the blockchain chugs along.

Owning NEO shares will not only allow you to influence the future of NEO, the blockchain also pays NEO coins as dividends. As a good heuristic, 1000 NEO shares generates approximately 0.4 NEO coins daily. Dividends are paid out for owning any positive number of NEO shares.

Proof-of-stake incentivizes NEO share owners to hold on to their stakes instead of participating in speculation. This reduces price volatility and is a crucial prerequisite for mainstream adoption of NEO.

8) Capped supply

A contentious issue with Ethereum is that the supply of Ether currently grows infinitely. This means that inflation, a crucial problem with fiat, will always plague Ethereum. A key reason people have adopted cryptocurrencies is the immunity to inflation that coins with a hard supply cap provides.

NEO, unlike Ethereum, also has a hard cap on supply. There will be at most 100 million NEO shares in circulation and its estimated it will take approximately 22 years to mine all 100 million NEO shares.

With a hard cap, you can be sure that your NEO coin will either maintain or appreciate in value as long as adoption does not decline.

9) Community

NEO has an ever growing community on Reddit, Facebook and Youtube. I highly recommend you join the Facebook group and Reddit page:
FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NEO.Antshares/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NEO/\

10) Overal dominance in their technology in comparison with Ethereum and Bitcoin.

I will hold my ANTshares on the official wallet and earn ANTcoins passively. I won't be panic / greed selling it anytime soon. I believe NEO only scratched the surface of it's price potential.

Please note: I am not a financial advisor or a technical analytic. I am just very passionate about cryptocurrency and the technology and was lucky enough to discover ANTshares when they were low in price. I believe Cryptocurrency will change the world as we know it. Some people refer to the blockchain technology to being big as the invention of the internet. I choose to believe this statement. Hopefully some of you will find the information and links helpful for deciding for yourselves. Hope you enjoyed the article, if you didn't I will probably hear that too, that's fine, feedback is appreciated. Please share your insights and opinions.

Good Vibes everyone and good luck to us all! :D