The wallet developer also raised $4.5 million from HackVC and other firms to further advance ZK-based enterprise solutions.
LEO Token Records Positive Moves While Crypto Market Struggles
LEO, the native token of the Bitfinex exchange, has recorded positive gains as the crypto market struggles to gain footing. The utility token saw a price increase of 4.24% on the day. It also enjoyed an impressive 11% surge in the last 7 days.
LEO’s price surge comes as rival exchange FTX suffers from liquidity issues. After the FTX filed for bankruptcy, many crypto community members called for exchanges to post their proof of reserves. Bitfinex was one of the few exchanges that revealed their cold wallet storage to boost transparency.
However, this move wasn’t a major catalyst in its growth as the tokens of other exchanges that took the proof-of-reserve route are still down. The likes of BNB and Houbi Token are down 5.12% and 16.32%, respectively.
LEO Joins TWT, Toncoin, Chiliz, And Others To Lead Gains
As the crypto market looks to recover, several tokens have enjoyed impressive price rallies. Besides LEO, the likes of Trust Wallet Token, Chiliz, and Toncoin are soaring with daily and weekly gains. Topping the list of top-gainers in the past day and week is Trust Wallet Token. The native token of the self-custody wallet saw an impressive run that brought its total weekly value to over 90%. TWT’s impressive run comes after CZ of Binance endorsed the wallet on Twitter.
Taking second place is the utility token of the decentralized spot and perpetual trading platform GMX. The token saw a week-on-week surge of 20% at press time while holding 2.09% on the day. Toncoin ad Chiliz followed suit in third and fourth place, respectively. Both tokens have enjoyed renewed interest on social media, one key factor contributing to their surge.
LEO came in fifth place, posting an intraday price surge of 4.21%. The Bitfinex utility token experienced some volatility within the week. This pushed the token down to $3.66, a 4.9% drop below its 7-day opening price of $3.82. However, it has recovered the losses, reaching a new local high of $4.22.
Bitfinex CTO Publishes Proof Of Reserve Amid FTX Bankruptcy Saga
Many significant cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Kucoin, and Crypto.com, committed to publishing their proof of reserve to restore investor trust. The development came after FTX’s liquidity issue became well-known in the crypto space. To demonstrate his commitment, Bitfinex chief technical officer Paolo Ardoino published a list of the most used Bitfinex wallets.
A total of 135 cold and hot wallet addresses were disclosed in Ardoino’s Bitfinex proof of reserves post on GitHub. He provided a list of some of the company’s big holdings, 204338.17967717 Bitcoin and 1225600 Ether, saving users the hassle of going through the addresses.
Back in June 2018, Bitfinex created an open-source framework called Antani. The goal was to promote transparency with regard to evidence of solvency, custody, and off-chain delegated proof of vote. Ardoino revealed Bitfinex’s plans to restore the system to let users see their balances without jeopardizing anonymity.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView.com
TOP 5 Cryptos To Watch This Week – BNB, BTC, ETH, QNT, LEO
In previous weeks, the crypto market looked like it was set to lose its key support with major altcoins such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and other altcoins at the brick of losing their support area holding price sell-offs. Despite the uncertainty, some altcoins have continued to look green at the face of any litmus test. Let us discuss on top 5 cryptos you should pay attention to this week.
Disclaimer: The picks listed in this article should not be taken as investment advice. Always do your research and never invest more than what you can afford to lose.
Top 5 Cryptos- Bitcoin (BTC) Price Analysis On The Daily Chart
Daily BTC Price Chart | Source: BTCUSDT On Tradingview.com
Last week BTC saw its price decline from a region of $19,200 to $18,100 with what looked like a manipulation ahead of the Consumer Price Index news; BTC bounced from its key demand zone as price rallied to $19,600 before facing a rejection to break and hold above this region.
The price of BTC failed to close the weekly candle above $19,500, creating mixed feelings as regards its next movement and direction.
BTC is currently trading at $19,400; the price of BTC needs to break and close above $19,500 to ignite a possible price rally to a region of $20,200.
Top 5 Cryptos- Price Analysis Of Ethereum (ETH) On The Daily (1D) Chart
Daily ETH Price Chart | Source: ETHUSDT On Tradingview.com
The price of Ethereum in recent weeks had become a shadow of itself after the successful launch of the “Ethereum Merge” as the price had failed to show the bullish trend it had when price outperformed BTC in recent months, rallying from $1,000 to $2,024.
ETH price was rejected from $2,030 and has continued to trend lower. The price of ETH got rejected when the price attempted to flip $1,400; the price of ETH saw its price decline to a region of $1,270, acting as key support for the ETH price.
The price of ETH is trading below the 50 and 200 Exponential Moving Averages (EMA) on the daily timeframe.
If the ETH price maintains its bearish structure, we could see the price retesting $1,000 as the demand zone. The price of ETH needs to flip $1,400 into support for the price to look safe.
Price Analysis Of Binance Coin (BNB) On The Daily (1D) Chart
Daily BNB Price Chart | Source: BNBUSDT On Tradingview.com
The price of BNB was rejected from its resistance of $300 and is currently trading at $270.
BNB lost its bullish structure despite showing strength; the price of BNB got rejected to a low of $268 as the price bounced off to reclaim its support zone at $270. The price of BNB needs to rally high to a region of $280-$290 for the price to remain safe.
The price of BNB trades at $272 below the 50 and 200 Exponential Moving Averages (EMA), the values of $280 and $300 act as resistance for BNB price.
Price Analysis Of Quant (QNT) On The Daily (1D) Chart
Daily QNT Price Chart | Source: QNTUSDT On Tradingview.com
The price of QNT has continued to show bullish trends holding well above the 50 and 200 EMA. The price saw a rally from $100, forming good support around that region.
Despite the pullback across crypto assets in the market, QNT has continued to look strong, respecting the bullish trendline.
The price of QNT broke the resistance at $200, enabling the price of QNT to rally. QNT’s price faces a resistance at $260; if the price breaks this resistance, we could see the price rallying to $330, but if it fails to break the resistance, $200 would be good support for QNT price.
Price Analysis Of LEO On The Daily (1D) Chart
Daily LEO Price Chart | Source: LEOUSDT On Tradingview.com
The price of LEO recently looks bullish as price attempts to breakout above the 50 and 200 EMA, holding off the price from rallying. If the price of LEO holds above this region, we could see a price rally to $4.8
Featured image from Medium, Charts from TradingView.com
LEO Token Pumps Post Bitfinex Bitcoin Seizure, But Why?
Bitfinex LEO Token has been rallying in the past week, as U.S. authorities allegedly captured the bad actors that took over 100,000 BTC from the platform back in 2016. LEO was created as a utility token as part of a mechanism to compensate the victims of the attack and repaid them for their losses.
Related Reading | Meet The Two Alleged Bitfinex Hackers: Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan
As of press time, the LEO Token trades at $6 with a 2.4% profit in the last day. On a 30-day basis, the token rallied from a low at $3.50 and reached a high of almost $8 as the news about the capture of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, the alleged hackers, became known.
LEO with significant gains on the 4-hour chart. Source: LEOUSDT Tradingview
There has been a lot of speculation around whether U.S. authorities will return the stolen funds to Bitfinex. The funds are current value at over $3 billion and could fuel LEO’s burning mechanism, according to a recent report from Arcane Research.
As explained on the LEO Token Whitepaper, iFinex, the parent company behind the crypto exchange, buys back the token on a monthly basis and proceeds to “burn them” by removing them from the market. The company acquires a portion of the token equal to a minimum of 27% of the consolidated gross revenues of iFinex, the document claims.
In addition, the LEO Token can be burned if the funds seized in 2015 to their partner Crypto Capital, a payment processor, are returned. These were subject to a “partial government seizure” and Bitfinex has been working to release them since 2018.
The other scenario to fuel an LEO Token burn is the crypto exchange recovers the Bitcoin stolen from them in the 2016 hack. At least 80% of the recovered funds will be used to repurchase and burn LEO within the subsequent 18 months from the date of the recovery, as the Whitepaper claims.
Will LEO Token Continue To Record Profits?
The market seems to be pricing-in this scenario and expecting more appreciation as a massive LEO Token burn could lead to a supply shock. However, traders must consider that iFinex and Bitfinex will attempt to prevent any sudden spike in the price of LEO.
This period offers protection from sudden market spikes and will result in a VWAP. For example, a partial recovery of 60,000 BTC at the current market price (1 BTC = approximately $5,000), would bring in $300m. After deducting $30m (for the current outstanding RRTs), $270m would remain. Assuming that $270m was recovered net funds, iFinex would use at least 80% (i.e., at least $216m) to burn LEO tokens.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Stolen From Bitfinex Hack Moved For The First Time In Five Years
As Arcane Research noted, this buyback scenario was highly unexpected by market participants. As seen in the chart below, the LEO token saw a 57% discount to the BTC stolen funds back in October 2021, but now premiums have returned noting the sentiment shift amongst traders.
Source: Arcane Research
Bitfinex-backed LEO soars to record high on supply crunch expectations
The token surged almost 70% in a day after the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had recovered most of the stolen funds from the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
Questions About Tether Just Won’t Go Away. Does the Crypto Market Care?
Is the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies inflated because the backing of tether may not be as strong as people think it is?
US Investors Used Loophole to Buy Bitfinex Exchange’s LEO Tokens
Bitfinex says it won’t sell its LEO tokens to U.S. investors. But two such entities bought the asset via third parties.
Bitfinex Is Starting to Buy Back and ‘Burn’ Its LEO Exchange Token
The crypto exchange has announced a transparency initiative that will see it put on full view the repurchase and destruction of its LEO token.