Do you know?
#NEO was the ORIGINAL "Ethereum Killer", "China's Ethereum," a TOP-5 coin that hit $200. Nearly a decade later it's ~$1.65, down ~99%… and STILL losing ground against the very Ethereum it was supposed to kill. Welcome to the "ETH Killer Graveyard." 😳
The Raise:
▶️ Launched 2014 as "Antshares" by Da Hongfei & Erik Zhang, China's first open-source public blockchain
▶️ Rebranded to NEO in 2017; dual-token model: NEO (governance, generates GAS) + GAS (transaction fuel)
▶️ Crowned "the Ethereum of China", the first great "Ethereum Killer"
Sale Price:
➡️ Oct 2015 ICO: ~$0.032/NEO, raised ~$560K (ATH ROI: ~6,250x)
➡️ Aug–Sep 2016 crowdsale: ~$0.33/NEO, raised ~$4.5M (ATH ROI: ~606x)
➡️ Total ICOs: ~40M NEO sold, ~8,219 $BTC raised, ~$5.06M total funding
➡️ May 2019 Funding Round: $100M (Price Undisclosed) As Per CryptoRank
Here's the wild part 👇
NEO ATH: $200 (Jan 15, 2018), A TOP-5 coin, one of the strongest rallies of the entire 2017 mania, on the "China's Ethereum will flip ETH" narrative.
Then reality, the ETH-Killer curse:
→ 2018 Crypto Winter + China's regulatory crackdown gutted it → below $8 by Dec 2018 (-90% in a year)
→ It never reclaimed the top. Every cycle, the market crowned a NEW "Ethereum Killer" and moved on
→ Meanwhile Ethereum's DEVELOPERS, LIQUIDITY & NETWORK EFFECTS only got stronger
→ NEO is STILL bleeding vs $ETH years later, the "killer" got left behind by its target
→ $200 → ~$1.65
The bigger lesson, the "ETH Killer Graveyard":
→ NEO (2017), EOS (2018, the biggest ICO EVER, now ~$0.06), Tron, and a dozen others were all sold as "the Ethereum Killer"
→ Almost every one massively UNDERPERFORMED the thing it promised to kill
→ "This is the ETH killer" has been one of the most reliable EXIT-LIQUIDITY signals in crypto history
Today:
➡️ Trading near ~$1.65 (down ~99%+ from ATH)
➡️ Rank ~#199, ~$119M market cap, from a former TOP-5 giant
➡️ Still operating (real chain, dBFT, Neo X EVM sidechain) but a fraction of its peak and its relevance
Lesson for my CryptoPatel Family:
👉 BE DEEPLY SKEPTICAL OF "[X] KILLER" NARRATIVES. "Ethereum killer," "Bitcoin killer," "Solana killer", this framing has minted more exit liquidity than almost any other. The challenger usually becomes the corpse.
👉 NETWORK EFFECTS > TECH. Ethereum kept its developers, liquidity & users. Better specs don't beat a bigger network. Bet on adoption, not "our tech is faster."
👉 A NEW "killer" every cycle means the OLD ones DIED. NEO, EOS, and others were each "the one." Where are they now? The narrative recycles; the bags don't recover.
👉 A ~606x from ICO became -99% because holders believed the "flippening" hype instead of BOOKING PROFIT.
Every bull market anoints a new "Ethereum killer," and every bear market buries it. The coin that's going to "flip" a dominant network is almost always just this cycle's exit liquidity. Respect network effects, distrust the "killer" story, and take profit when the hype peaks.
Not Financial Advice. ALWAYS DYOR.
