Random Coin Talks #1 – LEOcoin [ cryptocurrency n°12 ]

 This is the first post of the so-called Random Coin Talks. Each time I will discuss a single cryptocurrency and give my personal opinion about this coin. I don’t want my choice depend on popularity, good-looking charts or any other prejudices. Therefore, I generate a random number between 1 and 200 and based on the market capitalization rankings of coinmarketcap.com this will lead to the ‘random coin’. 

 I use the tag #randomcointalks, so you can find them at any time. If you like my posts, don’t hesitate to upvote or comment!

I got LEOcoin assigned by the random number generator. Let’s start! 

 

General information

 LEOcoin has been around for quite some time. LEOcoin launched on March 25, 2015 and picked up the gauntlet by competing with Bitcoin, claiming they had enough registered entrepreneurs to become the second largest digital currency. Nevertheless, the first block was already created a year before. By the way, LEO is an abbreviation of Learning Enterprises Organisation and they identify themselves with the lion, since ‘leo’ is the Latin word for this animal. 

 Regarding mining, in July 2016 they changed the proof-of-stake and proof-of-work algorithm with modified nFactor in scrypt-Jane to a sole proof-of-stake procedure, which makes the network more secure and mining will cost less energy in the future. The cost, though, is that proof-of-stake users are asked to prove ownership of a certain amount of LEO. 

 They are a non-profit organization, but I doubt whether I should consider that a plus. Companies who aim to make profit are, for example, more innovative and efficient than their non-profit counterpart. 

Stats

(August 19, 18:30 CET)

• Rank: 83
• Market capitalization: USD 44.3 million
• Price: USD 0.5016
• Maximum price: USD 2.15 (November 11, 2016)
• Maximum number of coins: 1 Billion LEO
• Circulating supply: 88.2 million LEO (8.8% of maximum number of coins)
• Premined coins: 50 million LEO (5% of maximum number of coins)
• First block: June 15, 2014

Features
Why do we need LEOcoin in the broad range of cryptocurrencies? The foundation mentions six reasons: 

 

• Open for everyone
• LEO can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or major fiat currencies
• Pseudo-anonymity
• Security
• User friendly
• There is a growing community of entrepreneurs in which LEO can play a role

 It’s positive that there is still a lot to mine. On the other hand, mining is only relevant for a small fraction of investors in cryptocurrencies and besides, given the price of one LEO, you need to mine significant numbers. LEOcoin claims to be more secure and more anonymous than Bitcoin, but nowadays this is not a special feature at all. Monero, for example, is completely anonymous. They claim to have a large number of merchants accepting LEOcoin, but this number is way smaller if we should believe leocoinmerchants.com. I did not see any large retailers and can’t imagine that merchants only accept LEO and not Bitcoin, for instance. Up to this point, it simply looks like a copy of Bitcoin.

What about the usability? There are no commissions, which is definitely interesting for small- or medium-sized firms as they often face relatively large fees. On the other hand, Bitcoin only charges small transaction fees, which is already a big step forward compared to fiat currencies. An advantage over Bitcoin, though, is that they offer a chargeback once payments are made. They mention usage of LEOcoin does not require specialized knowledge, but this is the case for most cryptocurrencies. I bet that a sufficient amount of Bitcoin investors does not know anything about the code behind the coin.