Some tokens and coins claim to be "unique", offering burn mechanics, repaying the community or a running a specialized smart contract. Unus Sed Leo or just LEO token is unique. It started with a loss of 850 million dollars and the idea that the token was built to be destroyed.
Background
In 2018 Ifinex made the world aware that it had a great deal of money seized by the government, indirectly that is. A company it used to handle its payments, crypto capital, had short of 1 billion dollars seized by the American, Polish and Portugee governments. This caused a significant setback for the company as this was manly the funds of its investors. In order to remedy this, they launched an incentive to get the funds back in the form of a exchange utility token, Unus Sed Leo.
The name translates to "one except lion", don't ask me what it means, I'm not really sure. The offering for the coin took place in 2019 after the loss of funds was brought to light, which IFinex states was "at no fault of their own". It launched on two chains with a split of supply being 66% and 33% on Ethereum and EOS respectively. You could invest in the coin for a 1:1 basis with USDT at the time of launch.
The coin is a fairly simple set up. It is secure by the underlying blockchain, that being Ethereum or EOS, The tokens can be swapped freely between any of the two underlying chains. What makes this token different is that it has a set token burn every month. This burn is meant to keep going until all tokens are bought back, as a symbol of iFinex making good on their loss. The burn is set to be 27% of iFinex's revenue for the month and buys the tokens back from the community at large and burns them at a steady rate, this makes the token as deflationary as they come as they aim to be burned completely. However, the rate at which this happens varies greatly.
Despite its very odd origin the LEO token does have its use case, iFinex didn't want to recover their losses without giving back to the community. Main use case is on the Bitfinex trading platform. Users can enjoy both taker and maker trading fees if they are holding LEO, amongst others. These range from lending fee reduction, deposit fee reduction, derivate trading fees. People that don't utilize the trading platform can also hold this token with hopes that the token burn increases their value higher than other cryptos.
Unus Sed Leo today
The company behind the token and its history certainly is holding the token back. Common words regarding the founder iFinex is distrust with the controversy that "directly" started this token and the whole uncertainty surrounding Tether. The top 100 is home to many exchange tokens as that's where the biggest number of crypto users gather, especially the newer adopters. The track record for this token has been solid this far. Is this interesting burn mechanic and exchange supported token worth it? That's uncertain, but I would advice you to take a deeper look into the iFinex ecosystem before you invest.
- Unique deflationary token
- Great benefits
- Reason behind launch
- Founder company distrust by community
