Bitfinex's LEO Token: An Unconventional Investment OpportunityAs I made a case for FTT and have made a case for COIN and GBTC before, I want to keep sharing some unique charts and cases. Again, my FTT idea was banned (from a little mistake), so I just reposted it and want to continue with more special cases. By special cases, I mean stuff that looks weird, infeasible, or tricky, where sentiment is leaning against my case, while there could be a significant catalyst that helps the trade.
In my previous ideas, I went deep on some of those, and in the idea below, I shared some extra ones, like LEO. For example, FTT had people very negative about FTX being bankrupt, yet FTX might be revived, boosting the token's price. COIN had everyone bearish due to the SEC lawsuit, yet it's pumping hard, as most of the news was priced in, and Coinbase might win against the SEC. GBTC had a massive discount as everyone was bearish and worried, yet an ETF is coming. So what about LEO?
LEO is a token created by Bitfinex, an exchange token with some 'special' rights. Those rights are that if Bitfinex gets the 2016 hacked coins back, it will distribute 80% to LEO holders. The FBI caught the hackers 1-1.5 years ago and is sitting on those coins. I assume that it will eventually give Bitfinex the coins back. If they don't, LEO will crash, but if they do, LEO could easily do a 2-3x from here.
As you can see in the chart above, if the price of LEOBTC goes up to the highs it reached when the FBI caught the hackers, that's a 150% increase. Is it reasonable? The current market cap of LEO, in BTC terms, is 120k BTC. The hacked coins were 120k BTC. 80% of that is 96k BTC will go into buying back LEO tokens, and the rest to the Bitfinex team and shareholders.
I expect that Bitfinex will get a big boost from this. As Binance is in a bad state, Bitfinex could capitalize on this opportunity. They have been making tremendous progress on many fronts, and I believe that this could be a significant catalyst. Giving 3B back to LEO holders and Shareholders is massive. The publicity will be huge too.
The main issue against my idea is that LEO is the second biggest exchange token, yet Bitfinex isn't in the top exchanges by real volume. That means that, to a large extent, LEO has the return of the coins priced in because its price would otherwise not be so high.
In my opinion, there is a chance that they will give the coins back to Bitfinex holders, potentially before the launch of the ETF, to cause selling pressure on the Bitcoin price. As BTC faces selling pressure from several 'sides' (Mt.Gox, US gov, Bitfinex, Bankrupt companies), prominent players/whales may use that opportunity to scoop cheap coins before the ETF launch.
