NEO, China’s Ethereum, Soars as the Lunar New Year Kicks Off

The cryptocurrency market has remained strong towards the end of this week and is still climbing. Currently, the total market cap is just under $500 billion. The last time the market was this high was on the last day in January. The top 10 coin that is seeing the most gains on today is NEO.

NEO, China’s Ethereum, is soaring on the market today and it might have a lot to do with it being the first day of the Chinese New Year. This celebration lasts over two weeks long and follows the Lunar calendar every which means it doesn’t start on a particular day every single year, as our Christmas does. Traditionally, Chinese families get together on New Year’s Eve and enjoy a dinner together and then they clean their houses the next day to sweep away any bad fortune from the year before.

Why NEO may be soaring in price right now is typically children, and teens receive red envelopes stuffed with ‘lucky money’ on New Years Day. Due to everything become digital now, China has red envelope apps, and the money is sent digitally. Some of these young adults may have taken their gifts this year and invested in one of China’s most popular cryptocurrencies.
Big Things On The Horizon

NEO is a blockchain based platform that enables smart contracts and allows decentralized applications to be built on top of it, very similar to Ethereum. However, NEO’s CEO and founder, Da Hongfei, spoke at NEO’s DevCon conference this week and unveiled an application group they will target. This must have given some confidence to NEO holders as Hongfei claimed that NEO’s blockchain was perfect for hosting decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Decentralized exchanges would need lightning fast transaction times, interoperability, digital identity, a stable coin for universal pairs and finality, all of which NEO has.

Could NEO pass Ethereum sometime this year? I wouldn’t hold your breath, however, if Ethereum’s devs don’t get this scalability issue figured out NEO could very well have a shot.

At press time, NEO is trading at $173.32 a coin, up 11.69%, in 24 hours.