In December of last year, I posted my review of crypto lender Nexo's native token NEXO and ended with a strong belief that it could hit $1 by the end of '21. Well, it seems my time frame was off just a tiny bit...
Going by CoinMarketCap's historical data, NEXO closed the day of Jan 21st at $.06593. Since then the token has been on a pretty smooth rise upward, the gains accelerating over the past few days with a gain of over a third just this week. While some of the recent gains are likely due to the overall bull market most cryptocurrencies are experiencing there are also two catalysts that are pushing up NEXO's value faster than many other altcoins.
Buybacks Accelerating
By the time of my first post regarding NEXO, the lender had already begun their announced token buyback program in a bid to increase the value of the token and had at that point purchased almost 900k off the market. As of this writing that total has ballooned to over 3.8 million NEXO, the last purchase being made about a week ago. The entire program was given a budget of $12 million so the rapidly rising price of NEXO will cut down on the absolute number of tokens purchased, but at current prices they're still not half way done when it comes to buybacks. This should give the the token a nice base support if not drive the value of NEXO even higher. You can track the program and its purchases on Etherscan.
Built In Exchange Added
The second catalyst I'm watching is the addition of exchange services to their Nexo Wallet app, featuring zero fee exchanges and 75 different pairs of crypto and fiat currency available. Nexo is looking to become a one-stop shop for users interested in trading/holding crypto or using it as loan collateral but might not want to deal with decentralized finance sites or want to avoid some of the horrendous gas fees currently on the Ethereum network. Nexo doesn't least which "5+" exchanges they are using to handle their orders, but Houbi is likely the leader of this group considering the amount of traffic the NEXO token has on that exchange. Non-US users will also be able to exchange BTC, ETH, and USDT for NEXO within the app without having to use a third party.
This move also puts them into more direct competition with sites like Coinbase, which could mean an interesting contest between the US and European crypto service providers.
Can the Run Continue?
While volatility rules the day for financial markets right now, Nexo's moves to increase the value of their token seem to have payed off very well so far. The gains have allowed me to maintain my loyalty level within their savings side even with BTC and ETH's moonshots, and I expect there to be more volume as we approach the next dividend payment in August.
While I know there are plenty of folks here who do not like centralized exchanges, I still believe NEXO shouldn't be overlooked as a useful asset in your portfolio either for trading or providing liquidity even if you don't plan on making use of their services. The company's loan business has grown significantly over the course of the last few months and Nexo is positioned to be a major player in digital finance for a long time.
