Bitfinex has had a document released by a known crypto trader and shareholder of the company, Zhao Dong, that gives information about its upcoming attempt to raise $1 billion through a token sale. While currently being sued by the state of New York over claims that it has lost $850 million and attempted to hide it, this new token sale seems designed to help get them back up on their feet.
Bitfinex’s Honorable History
Bitfinex has been in the spotlight in the past, being that it was hacked and lost a lot of funds in the process. This took place in 2016, after which the company decided to take the high road and do something that hadn’t even been thought of: they took the entire financial hit by offering their own tokens to users and then buying them back over time through the exchange’s revenue. By April of 2017, they had already fully paid off all users for their losses, gaining back their name and showing that despite a massive loss of $72 million at the time, it was possible for them to remain in business and continue giving users a solid experience.
As of this token sale, it looks like they are attempting to do something very similar.
Introducing LEO Token
LEO is the ticker for the token Bitfinex wants to release. This will grant users discounts on trading fees, and they want to have the doors open to burn tokens used for this purpose. Along with this, they are planning to buy back tokens at the market value “equal to a minimum of 27 percent of the… gross revenues of iFinex from the previous month, until no more than 100 million LEO tokens remain.” Worth noting is that this is designed more for long-term usage and short-term balance sheets as opposed to the token released after their hack a few years ago. In essence, it’s a lot like Binance Coin or others like it.
As for how the value of each coin will be calculated during their sale, they are looking to sell a total of 1 billion coins, totaling the $1 billion requested. It’s unclear at this point what blockchain they are going to have these on (or just internally on their site), how they will prove reserves for the coins that are traded, etc., and the document itself, while it explains a bit about what the overall plan is, makes sure to state that it is not a white paper, meaning that it is not a binding contract. As such, a lot of details are still up in the air and can be changed at any time as they deem fit.