NEO is making stunning progress this morning, at the time of writing the currency is trading at almost $54.00, up at 14% with no sign of halting. It’s progress past the $50.00 mark has been described as a success in the wake of it’s bland performance of late. NEO, is often referred to as China’s biggest cryptocurrency and is in many respects different to its rivals in terms of market share. NEO aims to contribute to a smart economy and not only use the blockchain for the facilitation of transactions, but to develop a network of ownership confirmations and authorisations. In NEO’s ‘Smart Economy’ ownership of physical commodities will be recorded on the blockchain and linked to a digital identity, generating a secure method for recording ownership of items that can then be used as a legal standing, or moreover can be used in the generation of testaments and wills etc. This, can then of course be translated into a smart contract environment whereby contracts can be agreed and linked once again to digital identities, improving the integrity of many contracts and removing the need to store paper copies that might otherwise get damaged, be altered or go missing. The rise in value for NEO, follows a recent event in collaboration with Microsoft, where NEO asked developers to compete in a ‘hackathon’. This sort of event, allows creatives to generate new ideas that reflect the demographic of the business, so in this instance, developers who partook looked at creating contracting solutions. The mediatisation and subsequent report which followed this event has had a positive impact on the value of the currency, especially when you consider it’s close timing with a universal market gain within cryptocurrency. This in turn has offered a huge leap up for NEO, making it stand out as one to watch for the rest of the day and certainly throughout the rest of the week. The key thing to watch now is how much time NEO spends above that $50.00 benchmark. People will be holding on to see where the currency grows, whilst this does not look like a coincidental leap, the value of NEO could of course drop in good time so therefore, the message at the moment is one of patience and observation. If NEO continues to remain over $50.00 then I am sure we will see numerous new investments take place over the week and beyond. If this indeed the case, then this will open up a new ballpark for NEO investment , hopefully suggesting that the future is looking very bright indeed for this exciting and forward looking currency.