LEO Holds Near $5.0, Remains Resilient As Cryptocurrency Markets Fall

Key Points

• Cryptocurrencies markets have stabilized on Sunday after tumbling on Saturday, with the Bitcoin price in the mid-$18,000s.  
• LEO has outperformed the rest of the crypto market this weekend, recovering 15% from Saturday’s lows.  
• The token fell as low as $4.30 on Saturday but has since recovered back to near-$5.0.  

Cryptocurrency markets appeared to broadly stabilize on Sunday after experiencing sharp downside on Saturday in a continuation of recent bearish moves as a result of the increasingly hawkish US Federal Reserve and growing US recession fears. Having slipped as low as the $760 billion on Saturday, total cryptocurrency market capitalization was last just above $800 billion, down more than $400 billion or over 30% in the last two weeks alone.  

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization Bitcoin was last changing hands near $18,500 and down about 2.0% on the day, having slumped more than 7% alone on Saturday to break below the important psychological $20,000, $19,000 and $18,000 levels before printing fresh annual lows in the mid-$17,000s. Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was last trading in the mid-$900s per token, having dipped to fresh 2022 lows in the $800s on Saturday.  

UNUS SED LEO – Coin of the Day 

According to CoinMarketCap data, crypto exchange Bitfinex’s utility token UNUS SED LEO is the best performing cryptocurrency in the top 20 by market cap over the last 24 hours. LEO, which offers holders discounted trading fees on the Bitfinex exchange, dipped from around $5.0 per token to as low as $4.30 on Saturday in tandem with the meltdown in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.  

But LEO has since seen a sharp recovery back to close to the $5.0 per token level, a 15% bounce from Saturday lows. The bounce comes at a time when most other cryptocurrencies have failed to mount a recovery from this weekend’s losses and is in fitting with the cryptocurrency’s recent outperformance versus most of its major rivals.  

Indeed, in 2022, while most of the rest of the cryptocurrency market has suffered from high global inflation, a weakening global economy, hawkish central banks and a bear market in global equities, UNUS SED LEO has been a very strong performer. Though it has pulled back aggressively from February’s all-time highs in the $8.50 area, it still trades over 30% higher on the year.  

While the cryptocurrency market has shed over $1.2 trillion in value (or over 60%) since the start of April, LEO has only dropped about 13%. Some have argued that LEO’s unique tokenomics mean the cryptocurrency can be viewed as a comparative safe haven compared to other tokens.  

iFinex, Bitfinex’s parent company, has committed to purchasing and then burning LEO tokens equal to 27% of the company’s revenues. The burn mechanism to “continue to 100% of tokens have been redeemed”, iFinex said when it released the token back in 2019. This means the token is deflationary, a property that some in crypto think helps preserve a token’s value.