Unus Sed Leo (LEO) Cryptocurrency Overview

iFinex is the parent company of crypto exchanges Bitfinex, Ethfinex, and Eosfinex. Furthermore, they are closely associated with the stablecoin company Tether Limited, whom they share common management and shareholders.

Last 2018, Crypto Capital, Bitfinex’s payment processor, was forced by the US government to cease operations due to allegedly committing bank fraud and providing “shadow banking” services to cryptocurrency exchanges. Consequently, their funds were seized, including Bitfinex’s $850 million.

The exchange is working on getting their money back; however, it’s uncertain whether they ever could. This is the main reason they launched Unus Sed Leo, to make up for the lost funds. Therefore, they raised $1 billion via private offering of the new exchange token.

Bitfinex promised to repurchase outstanding LEO tokens and burn them if they ever recover the lost $850 million fund from Crypto Capital. This will bring up the price of the token dramatically due to scarcity. Furthermore, the exchange will also use 80% of their recovered funds from the 2016 hack to repurchase and burn LEO, which would raise the price even more.

Besides the speculation, LEO tokens also have a real use-case as they can be usable across all of iFinex’s platforms, projects, products and services; including the ones in the future.

iFinex currently has three crypto exchanges, and holding LEO accords you a discount in trading fees, lending fees, as well as deposit and withdrawal fees.

Some of the iFinex’s future projects and services include Bitfinex Derivatives, iFinex IEO platform, a regulated Security Token exchange, Dazaar, Betfinex, μFinex.

The LEO token has a dual-protocol launch, which means it will be issued on two blockchains: Ethereum and EOS. According to the company, this strategy would provide enhanced flexibility and ease of use for token holders, contribute to blockchain interoperability development, and allow for LEO to become an integral part of the decentralized exchange space. This means that token holders can easily swap between two blockchains while Bitfinex acts as a bridge between chains.

In addition, the exchange also plans to issue LEO tokens on the Blockstream Liquid Network, which is a settlement network linking together different cryptocurrency exchanges and institutions around the world.

All in all, Unus Sed Leo is a promising token with a vast ecosystem where it could be utilized. But like any other exchange token, its success is highly tied to the exchange that created it, which in this case, are Bitfinex and its parent company iFinex.

This article is first published on BitPinas: Unus Sed Leo (LEO) Cryptocurrency Overview