NEO has seized the initiative and is leading the market as it seeks to come out of the throttling bearish hold of the last three months. While the rest of the market pulses with steps towards an expected mini-rally (US tax day in mid-April), NEO had spiked by double digits, hitting 18% price jumps in the 24-hour charts.

Its price is currently floating around the $50 mark against the US dollar, prompting calls for the possibility of it testing the $60 mark in a couple of days.

According to data available at Coinmarketcap.com, today’s 24h trading volume of $230,318,000 is almost 6 times that of the previous day that stood at $44,671,100. The NEO coin price surge also sees the market cap expanded to currently sit at $3.25 billion, an increase from that of $3.02 billion reached on April 8, 2018.

While this is certainly good news for NEO holders, it’s an even bigger bag of good news for the NEO team, led by DA Hongfei. The increased daily volumes are an indicator of the coin’s increasing uptake by the investment community. While the reasons for the surge aren’t pinpoint facts, it’s possible that the recovery efforts and being helped by the return of calm after it was oversold in the bearish bloodbath that hit the entire market.

Amsterdam and Tokyo meet-ups highlight NEO in April

We reported last week that NEO’s upcoming European Tour could have a greater bearing on the price movement of its token coin. Well, more details are emerging about the meet-ups. The Smart Economy team will also be holding workshops in the host cities. Cities like Amsterdam, Madrid, and Paris are set to host NEO for its second tour of Europe.

The 14th will see NEO go back to Amsterdam that hosted its first NEO event in January. This is its biggest event in Europe. There is excitement at the new six projects that will be unveiled and the highly anticipated updates from two of the project’s top faces in founder DA Hongfei and Erick Zhang.

The week promises to be more than just a blockchain meetup in Amsterdam. Apart from the expected success, there is agreement that NEO could score big on the tour due to the passion the community holds for NEO. In fact, according to details on Neonewstoday, the success of the fast event has organizers anticipating an even greater experience.

Attendees will get an opportunity to learn how to build applications on top of the NEO blockchain. The extensive European tour is another opportunity for the “Chinese-Ethereum” company behind the NEO token to promote its Ethos.

Tokyo too holds promise for NEO

Great emphasis is on the tour of Europe, but before the European tour begins, the formerly Antshares platform will be hosting its first 2018 global Hackathon in Tokyo. The prize of 2 million yen is a huge enough incentive for participants in the event that will run from 13th-15th April.

At the Hackathon, upcoming developers will have an opportunity to gain invaluable experience in how to plan, develop and issue tokens. They’ll also get guidance on how to build their own blockchain projects.

NEO’s growing platform

The Hackathon also provides NEO with an opportunity to have their technical team help developers learn more about the platform. What many people don’t know yet is that there are several projects already launched on NEO.

Such projects include Red Pulse, which aims at using blockchain technology to provide a framework for content distribution. There’s also Qlink, a platform that wants to integrate blockchain capabilities and communication.

The third project is ZEEPIN, a blockchain-based project that seeks to enable the use of blockchain technology to affect the distribution of a creative and new economy. Another great project built on NEO is the THEKEY. This product aims at providing a solution that uses personal data and information from the government for authentication purposes.

Experts believe that NEO has the technology and potential to become a formidable blockchain project. With April beginning on a positive note as this, it wouldn’t be a farfetched notion to think that Q2 could give the cryptocurrency impetus for a bull run in the rest of 2018.