Coin columns · Ethereum City (Capital)
LEO: Bitfinex’s Crisis-Born Exchange Token and Its Burn Pledge
An iFinex token bought back and burned with company revenue
LEO (UNUS SED LEO) is a token issued in May 2019 by iFinex, the company behind the Bitfinex exchange. It offers fee discounts, and iFinex has pledged to buy it back and burn it with its revenue.
1. A token born in a crisis
In 2019 Bitfinex lost access to about $850 million held by the payment processor Crypto Capital, whose funds were seized by authorities in several countries. To fill the gap, iFinex privately sold one billion LEO at $1 each. The name is Latin for “one, but a lion,” from an Aesop fable.
LEO was first issued both on Ethereum (ERC-20) and on EOS, one billion in total. Bitfinex shares much of its management and ownership with Tether, the USDT issuer. On the Crypto Nation map, LEO stands in Ethereum City (the capital), the first chain listed for it in CoinGecko’s data.
2. Buy back and burn
Every month, iFinex pledged to spend at least 27% of the previous month’s gross revenue buying LEO and burning it, until none is left. Burning sends tokens to an address nobody can spend from, cutting supply for good. The pledge rests on the company’s revenue and goodwill, not on rules enforced by on-chain code.
iFinex also pledged 95% of any net recovery from the Crypto Capital affair, and 80% of any net recovery from its 2016 hack, to buy and burn LEO. Holders get discounts on Bitfinex trading and withdrawal fees.
3. The hack recovery and other events
In August 2016 hackers stole about 120,000 bitcoin from Bitfinex. In February 2022 US authorities seized about 94,000 of them and arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, sentenced in November 2024 to five years and 18 months. In January 2025 a US court ruled that the coins should go back to Bitfinex, which matters because recoveries are tied to the burn pledge.
In February 2021 the New York Attorney General announced an $18.5 million settlement with Bitfinex and Tether over claims that they hid losses; Tether agreed to publish regular reserve reports, and both stopped serving New York customers. LEO was never sold to US residents, and its trading is concentrated on a few exchanges.
4. Things to know
LEO’s uses and burns depend heavily on one company’s revenue and on it keeping its promises. iFinex is privately held, so its financial disclosures are limited, and buybacks have to be checked against its own reports and block explorers. Changes to its business or regulation could change what the token is for.
The token was controversial from the start, since it was created to fill a hole in an exchange’s finances, and the regulatory history of Bitfinex and Tether is part of its story. Its market may also be thinner than those of other large coins.
Written from information public up to October 2026. It does not recommend or rate any coin and is not investment advice. If something is wrong, please tell us through the contact page.