LEO Token (LEO), officially named UNUS SED LEO, is the exchange token of iFinex, the company behind the Bitfinex exchange. It was sold to investors in May 2019 to raise money after Bitfinex lost access to a large sum held by a payment processor, and iFinex promised to spend part of its revenue buying LEO back and destroying it. Holders also receive lower fees on Bitfinex. The name comes from a line in one of Aesop's fables: "one, but a lion".
LEO is a token rather than the coin of its own blockchain: it exists on the Ethereum Blockchain and on EOS. It is linked through shared management to Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin, but LEO is not pegged to the dollar and its price moves freely.
LEO Token in plain terms
Imagine a shop whose takings get stuck in a bank account it can no longer reach. To keep trading, the shop sells vouchers to its regular customers. The vouchers give money off future purchases, and the shop promises that every month it will spend a fixed slice of its income buying vouchers back from the market and shredding them. If the stuck money is ever returned, most of it will also go towards shredding vouchers.
That is LEO's story. The vouchers were sold at a dollar each, and over time the shop has kept buying them back, so fewer remain. People who hold them are betting partly on the shop's future income and partly on how much of the lost money is recovered. They are not buying a share of the business and have no vote in how it is run.
History
In 2018 and early 2019 Bitfinex lost access to roughly $850 million held by Crypto Capital, a Panama-based payment processor whose funds were seized by authorities in several countries. In April 2019 the New York Attorney General alleged that iFinex had covered the gap by borrowing from Tether's reserves. Weeks later, from 7 to 13 May 2019, a new iFinex subsidiary sold one billion LEO in a private sale at 1 USDT each, with no discounts, raising the equivalent of $1 billion. Unlike a public initial coin offering, the sale was open only to selected buyers, and iFinex did not publish their names. Trading in the token began later that month on Bitfinex and a handful of other centralized exchanges.
LEO's design was also shaped by an earlier disaster. In August 2016 hackers stole about 119,756 Bitcoin (BTC) from Bitfinex. The exchange spread the loss across its customers and issued them BFX tokens as IOUs; holders who later swapped BFX for iFinex shares also received Recovery Right Tokens. In 2022 US agents seized much of the stolen bitcoin, and the two people charged pleaded guilty to laundering conspiracy in 2023.
Buyback and burn rules
iFinex committed to buy LEO back at market prices with an amount equal to at least 27 percent of its consolidated gross revenue from the previous month, and to burn the tokens it buys. The minimum monthly buyback is:
- is iFinex's consolidated gross revenue for the previous month.
- is the minimum share, 27 percent, committed to buying LEO.
If revenue in a month were $40 million, the buyback would be at least , so $10.8 million of LEO would be bought and destroyed. The 2019 terms add two more sources: net funds recovered from Crypto Capital, and at least 80 percent of net funds recovered from the 2016 hack once Recovery Right Tokens are paid off. In January 2025 a US court approved returning about 94,643 seized bitcoin to Bitfinex in kind; the government began transfers, but Bitfinex had not published how much would go to LEO buybacks. Tokens destroyed this way count towards LEO's burned supply and can be checked on-chain.
Uses
- Fee discounts. LEO holders pay lower trading, lending and withdrawal fees on Bitfinex.
- Recovery exposure. The token is tied by its rules to money recovered from Crypto Capital and the 2016 hack.
- Holding. LEO has ranked among the larger tokens by market capitalization, although it trades on few exchanges.
Regulation and criticism
In February 2021 iFinex and Tether settled with the New York Attorney General, agreeing to pay $18.5 million, stop dealing with New York customers and publish regular reports on Tether's reserves, without admitting wrongdoing. In October 2021 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Tether $41 million over statements about its reserves and fined Bitfinex $1.5 million in a related order. Bitfinex does not serve US residents.
Critics note that LEO was sold privately to a small group of buyers, that holders depend on iFinex reporting its own revenue honestly, and that much of the supply has been concentrated in few wallets. Unlike exchange tokens such as OKB (OKB), it has no network of its own to give it a use beyond Bitfinex. Its history is closely bound up with the hacking and money laundering cases around the exchange.