How and Where to Buy UNUS SED LEO (LEO) – Detailed Guide
- What is LEO?
- Step 1: Register on Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange
- Step 2: Buy BTC with fiat money
- Step 3: Transfer BTC to an Altcoin Exchange
- Step 4: Deposit BTC to exchange
- Step 5: Trade LEO
- Last Step: Store LEO securely in hardware wallets
- Other useful tools for trading LEO
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Latest News for LEO
- LEO Price Prediction and Price Movement
What is LEO?
What Is UNUS SED LEO (LEO)?
UNUS SED LEO is a utility token that’s used across the iFinex ecosystem. The unusual name is based on a Latin citation from one of Aesop’s fables.
The cryptocurrency allows Bitfinex users to save money on trading fees. The extent of the discount depends on how much LEO that the customer has in their account — and the savings on offer are spread across three tiers. There are fluctuations depending on whether a trading pair is crypto-to-crypto, or crypto-to stablecoin.
UNUS SED LEO launched in May 2019 — and unlike many other cryptocurrencies out there, it is not designed to exist forever.
Who Are the Founders of UNUS SED LEO?
UNUS SED LEO was founded by iFinex after Crypto Capital, the company that processed its payments, saw part of its funds seized by the government. IFinex is the parent company of Bitfinex, which warned that it may not be possible to recover these funds. To cover the financial shortfall, it decided to launch the LEO token.
To make good the money lost, iFinex unveiled plans to gradually buy back the token from investors until none are left circulating in the marketplace. A transparency initiative was also launched so the crypto community could monitor the initiative’s progress, and ensure it was meeting stated targets.
What Makes UNUS SED LEO Unique?
A token burn mechanism means iFinex is committed to buying back UNUS SED LEO from the market on a monthly basis. The amount that’s purchased and burned is equal to at least 27% of the revenues generated by iFinex — and tokens are also purchased at the market rate. In a news release at the time, the company said: “The burn mechanism will continue until 100% of tokens have been redeemed.”
Whereas some cryptocurrencies just launch on a single blockchain, LEO tokens were issued on two blockchains. While 64% of the original supply was on Ethereum, the remaining 36% could be found on EOS.
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How Many UNUS SED LEO (LEO) Coins Are There in Circulation?
As we mentioned, the circulating supply of LEO tokens is designed to diminish over time. Originally, the total supply was set at 1 billion.
LEO was sold for $1 apiece on a 1:1 basis with the Tether stablecoin, meaning that a total of $1 billion was raised over a 10-day period.
There were 660 million ERC-20 tokens at launch, as well as 340 million EOS-based tokens — and Bitfinex allows conversions between the two chains to be made with ease.
At the time, the company described the dual protocol launch as “unique” — and vowed that it would empower the Bitfinex community.
How Is the UNUS SED LEO Network Secured?
These tokens are based on Ethereum and EOS respectively. A dashboard has been released by Bitfinex that offers up-to-minute information on the current supply, and how many LEO tokens have been burned. Bar charts compare LEO burns on a daily basis.
Where Can You Buy UNUS SED LEO?
UNUS SED LEO is available on Bitfinex, Gate.io, OKEx and others. Common trading pairs connect LEO with the U.S. dollar, the USDT stablecoin, Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can find out more about how to convert fiat currencies into Bitcoin here.
LEO was first tradable on 21st May, 2019. It has a total supply of 985,239,504. As of right now LEO has a market capitalization of USD $7,230,063,738.66. The current price of LEO is $7.34 and is ranked 25 out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies on Coinmarketcap and has recently surged 50.15 percent at the time of writing.
LEO has been listed on a number of crypto exchanges, unlike other main cryptocurrencies, it cannot be directly purchased with fiats money. However, You can still easily buy this coin by first buying Bitcoin from any fiat-to-crypto exchanges and then transfer to the exchange that offers to trade this coin, in this guide article we will walk you through in detail the steps to buy LEO.
Step 1: Register on Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange
You will have to first buy one of the major cryptocurrencies, in this case, Bitcoin (BTC). In this article we will walk you through in details two of the most commonly-used fiat-to-crypto exchanges, Uphold.com and Coinbase. Both exchanges have their own fee policies and other features that we will go through in detail. It is recommended that you try both of them and figure out the one that suits you best.
Select Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange for details:
- UpHold
Being one of the most popular and convenient fiat-to-crypto exchanges, UpHold has the following advantages:
- Easy to buy and trade among multiple assets, more than 50 and still adding
- Currently more than 7M users worldwide
- You can apply for UpHold Debit card where you can spend the crypto assets on your account like a normal debit card! (US only but will be in the UK later)
- Easy to use mobile app where you can withdraw fund to a bank or any other altcoin exchanges easily
- No hidden fees and any other account fees
- There are limited buy/sell orders for more advanced users
- You can easily set up recurring deposits for Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) if you intend to hold cryptos long term
- USDT, which is one of the most popular USD-backed stablecoins (basically a crypto that is backed by real fiat money so they are less volatile and can be treated almost as the fiat money it's pegged with) is available, this is more convenient if the altcoin you intend to buy has only USDT trading pairs on the altcoin exchange so you don't have to go through another currency conversion while you buy the altcoin.
Type your email and click 'Next'. Make sure you provide your real name as UpHold will need it for account and identity verification. Choose a strong password so that your account isn't vulnerable to hackers.
You will receive a confirmation email. Open it and click on the link within. You will then be required to provide a valid mobile number to set up two-factor authentication (2FA), it is an extra layer to the security of your account and it is highly recommended that you keep this feature turned on.
Follow the next step to finish your identity verification. These steps are a bit daunting especially when you are waiting to buy an asset but just like any other financial institutions, UpHold is regulated in most countries such as the US, the UK and the EU. You can take this as a trade-off to using a trusted platform to make your first crypto purchase. Good news is that the whole so-called Know-Your-Customers (KYC) process is now fully automated and it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to finish.
Step 2: Buy BTC with fiat money
Once you finished the KYC process. You will be asked to add a payment method. Here you can either choose to provide a credit/debit card or use a bank transfer. You may be charged higher fees depending on your credit card company and the volatile prices when using cards but you will also make an instant purchase. While a bank transfer will be cheaper but slower, depending on the country of your residence, some countries will offer instant cash deposit with low fees.
Now you are all set, on the 'Transact' screen under the 'From' field, select your fiat currency, and then on the 'To' field choose Bitcoin, click preview to review your transaction and the click confirm if everything looks good... and congrats! You've just made your first crypto purchase.
Step 3: Transfer BTC to an Altcoin Exchange
- Gate.io
But we are not done yet, since LEO is an altcoin we need to transfer our BTC to an exchange that LEO can be traded, here we will use Gate.io as our exchange. Gate.io is a popular exchange to trade altcoins and it has a large number of tradable altcoins pairs. Use the link below to register your new account.
Gate.io is an American cryptocurrency exchange that launched 2017. As the exchange is American, US-investors can of course trade here and we recommend US traders to sign up on this exchange. The exchange is available both in English and Chinese (the latter being very helpful for Chinese investors). Gate.io’s main selling factor is their wide selection of trading pairs. You can find most of the new altcoins here. Gate.io also demonstrates an impressive trading volume. It is almost every day one of the top 20 exchanges with the highest trading volume. The trading volume amounts to approx. USD 100 million on a daily basis. The top 10 trading pairs on Gate.io in terms of trading volume usually have USDT (Tether) as one part of the pair. So, to summarize the foregoing, Gate.io’s vast number of trading pairs and its extraordinary liquidity are both very impressive aspects of this exchange.
After going through a similar process as we've done before with UpHold, you will be advised to set up 2FA authentication as well, finish it as it adds extra security to your account.
Step 4: Deposit BTC to exchange
Depends on the policies of the exchange you might be required to go through another KYC process, this should usually take you from 30 minutes to possibly a few days maximum. Though the process should be straight-forward and easy to follow. Once you're done with it you should have full access to your exchange wallet.
If this is your first time making a crypto deposit, the screen here may look a bit scary. But don't worry, it's basically simpler than making a bank transfer. At the box on the right, you will see a string of random numbers saying 'BTC address', this is a unique public address of your BTC wallet at Gate.io and you can receive BTC by giving this address to the person to send you the funds. Since we are now transferring our previously bought BTC on UpHold to this wallet, click on 'Copy Address' or right-click on the full address and click copy to grab this address to your clipboard.
Now head back to UpHold, go to the Transact screen and click on BTC on the "From" field, choose the amount you wan to send and on the "To" field choose BTC under "Crypto Network", then click "Preview withdraw".
On the next screen, paste the wallet address from your clipboard, for security consideration you should always check if both addresses are matching. It is known that there are certain computer malware that would alter the content in your clipboard into another wallet address and you will be essentially sending funds to another person.
After reviewing, click 'Confirm' to proceed, you should receive a confirmation email instantly, click on the confirmation link in the email and your coins are on the way to Gate.io!
Now go back to Gate.io and head to your exchange wallets, don't worry if you haven't seen your deposit here. It is probably still being verified in the blockchain network and it should take a few minutes for your coins to arrive. Depending on the network traffic condition of the Bitcoin network, during busy times it may take even longer.
You should receive a confirmation notification from Gate.io once your BTC has arrived. And you are now finally ready to purchase LEO!
Step 5: Trade LEO
Go back to Gate.io, then go to 'Exchange'. Boom! What a view! The constantly flicking figures might be a bit scary, but relax, let's get our heads around this.
In the right column there is a search bar, now make sure "BTC" is selected as we are trading BTC to altcoin pair. Click on it and type in "LEO", you should see LEO/BTC, select that pair and you should see a price chart of LEO/BTC in the middle of the page.
Below there is a box with a green button that says "Buy LEO", inside of the box, choose the "Market" tab here as that is the most straight-forward type of buying orders. You can either type in your amount or choose what portion of your BTC deposit you would like to spend on buying, by clicking on the percentage buttons. When you have confirmed everything, click "Buy LEO". Voila! You have finally bought LEO!
Last Step: Store LEO securely in hardware wallets
Ledger Nano S
- Easy to set up and friendly interface
- Can be used on desktops and laptops
- Lightweight and Portable
- Support most blockchains and wide range of (ERC-20/BEP-20) tokens
- Multiple languages available
- Built by a well-established company found in 2014 with great chip security
- Affordable price
Ledger Nano X
- More powerful secure element chip (ST33) than Ledger Nano S
- Can be used on desktop or laptop, or even smartphone and tablet through Bluetooth integration
- Lightweight and Portable with built-in rechargeable battery
- Larger screen
- More storage space than Ledger Nano S
- Support most blockchains and wide range of (ERC-20/BEP-20) tokens
- Multiple languages available
- Built by a well-established company found in 2014 with great chip security
- Affordable price
If you are planning to keep("hodl" as some may say, basically misspelt "hold" which get popularised over time) your LEO for a considerable long time, you may want to explore ways of keeping it safe, although Binance is one of the safest cryptocurrency exchange there had been hacking incidents and funds were lost. Because of the very nature of the wallets in exchanges, they will be always online("Hot Wallets" as we call them), therefore exposing certain aspects of vulnerabilities. The safest way of storing your coins to date is always putting them into a type of "Cold Wallets", where the wallet will only have access to the blockchain(or simply "go online") when you send out funds, reducing the chances of hacking incidents. A paper wallet is a type of free cold wallet, it's basically an offline-generated pair of public and private address and you will have it written somewhere, and keep it safe. However, it is not durable and is susceptible to various hazards.
Hardware wallet here is definitely a better option of cold wallets. They are usually USB-enabled devices that store the key information of your wallet in a more durable way. They are built with military-level security and their firmware are constantly maintained by their manufacturers and thus extremely safe. Ledger Nano S and Ledger Nano X and are the most popular options in this category, these wallets cost around $50 to $100 depending on the features they are offering. If you are holding your assets these wallets are a good investment in our opinion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy LEO with cash?
There is no direct way to buy LEO with cash. However, you can use marketplaces such as LocalBitcoins to first purchase BTC, and finish the rest of the steps by transferring your BTC to respective AltCoin exchanges.
LocalBitcoins is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange. It is a marketplace where users can buy and sell Bitcoins to and from each other. Users, called traders, create advertisements with the price and the payment method they want to offer. You can choose to buy from sellers from a certain nearby region on the platform. is after all a good place to go to buy Bitcoins when you can't find your desired payment methods anywhere else. But prices are usually higher on this platform and you have to do your due diligence to avoid getting scammed.
Are there any quick ways to buy LEO in Europe?
Yes, in fact, Europe is one of the easiest places to buy cryptos in general. There are even online banks which you can simply open an account and transfer money to exchanges such as Coinbase and Uphold.
Are there any alternative platforms to buy LEO or Bitcoin with credit cards?
Yes. is also a very easy to use platform for buying Bitcoin with credit cards. It is an instant cryptocurrency exchange that allows you to exchange crypto fast and buy it with a bank card. Its user interface is very easy to use and the buying steps are pretty self-explanatory.
Read more on UNUS SED LEO's fundamentals and current price here.
Latest News for LEO
