Liquidity is a well-known problem within the crypto space. Luckily, QUOINE, a Japanese-based company, aims to solve this issue. How? By building a Liquidity platform with their own cryptocurrency: QASH!
The cryptocurrency environment is not a liquid economy. If you are trying to invest in some interesting altcoins, it might be difficult to get hold of something that does not belong in the top ten of the coin market. You have to trade fiat to BTC or ETH and trade through various exchanges before trading to your chosen currency. The same happens when you want to sell and take profits. Not the most user-friendly experience, that’s for sure!
From the QUOINE whitepaper:
“In a sense, the various cryptocurrency exchanges are Liquidity Silos. They are liquid in some pairs, but their liquidity is only accessible to clients of that exchange. And while most of the exchanges offer liquidity in certain highly liquid currencies (USD, EUR, CNY, JPY, etc.), there is no convenient and highly-liquid on-ramp into the Crypto world for holders of minor currencies such as CAD, NZD, SGD, PHP, IDR, etc. Separately, each market’s liquidity remains small, but collectively they represent a large untapped source of liquidity that now desperately wants an on-ramp into the Crypto world.”
The solution? QUOINE wants to offer a platform that lets you buy and sell altcoins easily through the fiat currency you choose; all with a simple transaction. Sounds great!
1. QUOINE, the company
QUOINE has been founded by Mike Kayamori and Mario Gomez Lazada in 2014. Kayamori and Lazada combined have many years of experience in banking and venture capital. Salient detail: although the company was founded in early 2014, the QASH token sale wasn’t completed until Q4 2017. With their ICO, QUOINE successfully raised 350,000,000 QASH, the equivalent of $ 250 million dollars if you look at today’s ETH price.
Kayamori and Lazada are focusing on following the rules when it comes to cryptocurrencies. They are the first cryptocurrency firm in the world to be officially licensed by the Japanese FSA and they receive regular financial audits from Deloitte and 100% of their users must satisfy KYC/AML regulations.
QUOINE wants to revolutionize the way trading is carried out. Something that can definitely change the crypto ecosystem for good.
QUOINE has offices in Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, United Kingdom, Canada and the US. Currently, they employ over 100+ people across the globe.
2. QUOINE’s Liquid Platform
The QASH token will be the fuel to a game-changing platform. Currently, each crypto exchange has its own level of liquidity that differs between the trading pairs it offers. This creates individual silos that may have great liquidity on one exchange but not on another.
QUOINE wants to combine silos with its own Liquid Platform and thus create one large pool. The goal: to offer the greatest possible liquidity. To do this QUOINE’s LIQUID platform will feature two powerful products: World Book and Prime Brokerage.
World Book
The World Book has the function of listing all prices and orders from stock exchanges around the world to give everyone the opportunity to buy or sell digital currencies with fiat currencies. QUOINE uses the foreign exchange (FX) market to create trading pairs that were previously unavailable. The World Book is based on three primary functions:
- – Matching Engine (ME) – necessary to handle millions of transactions every second of the day
- – Cross Currency Conversion Engine (CCCE) – allows currency conversion almost immediately
- – Smart Order Routing (SOR) – monitors all exchanges and executes all orders that can not be executed within the World Bank on such platforms.
Prime Brokerage
Next to the World Book, the platform also offers a product called Prime Brokerage. Prime Brokerage is a way for people to access features that are available through the World Book. With the interface, you have direct market access to all exchanges in the World Book without having to create an account on each individual exchange. Prime Brokerage offers direct market access, fiat management, crypto/fiat credit facilities and real-time reporting.
3. QASH
QASH is an ERC20 token built on the Ethereum network. By Q2 2019, QUOINE will launch its own blockchain and migrate all QASH tokens to the new blockchain. QASH is used to pay for services on QUOINE’s Liquid Platform.
The team forged a total of 1,000,000,000 QASH with 350,000,000 (35%) distributed to ICO participants. Of the remaining tokens:
- – 300,000,000 QASH (30%) are allocated to the community/ecosystem
- – 200,000,000 QASH (20%) belong to the team and shareholders
- – 150,000,000 QASH (15%) are held by strategic partners and institutional buyers
You can buy QASH directly on QUOINEX (JPY or USD), but it is also traded on multiple exchanges like Gate.io and Huobi. For the full list of exchanges, you can find a nice overview on CoinMarketCap.
QASH can be stored on the available exchanges, but since it is an ERC20 token you will also be able to store it in any wallet with ERC20 token support.
4. Concerns
Great ideas always bring concerns. Is the project really feasible? Can the team deliver on their promises? The Liquid platform seems like a great idea, but there are some concerns that you might need to think about before you start investing in the project.
– Only 35% of the total supply is in circulation at the moment. This means that if the remaining supply, 650 million tokens, are being put into the market, this could lead to a massive drop in price. That said, the remaining supply is locked for 5 years, implicating that the team behind QASH is not planning to dump the tokens and the project itself anytime soon.
– As mentioned QASH is ERC20 token. A valid concern, therefore, might be the usage of the token. Will big players really want to use the token to move funds around?
– A liquidity project like this might be very dependent on big investors and institutions to step in. If those investors and institutions don’t share the vision of QUOINE, the project might be over before it can even fully start.
5. Conclusion
With liquidity being a well-known problem within the crypto space, the goal of QUOINE is very impressive. It is an interesting project with the aim of making cryptocurrencies more available to people, without having to go through different exchanges to invest in fiat currency altcoins.
It is the first crypto company that has actually received a license from the Japan Financial Services Agency and the QUOINE team seems to have the experience and business partnerships to make this project successful.
Over the next 12 months, we will most likely find out if QUOINE can live up to the high expectations.
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*Altcoin Buzz is no way affiliated with the QUOINE team nor did we get paid for this article. Furthermore, this article is not financial advice and we always urge readers to do their own due diligence before they invest in any cryptocurrency.
