Liquid Q3 Progress Report
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Products, Blockchain

By Mike Kayamori and Mario Gomez Lozada

We have made some monumental strides throughout the third quarter of this year. The company has expanded globally, increasing the number of staff and users worldwide. We completed the consolidation of our brands into Liquid and executed a number of highly anticipated releases. This should serve as a taster for what’s to come in Q4. We’re not even close to being done.

Company growth

At the heart of it all, the Quoine family has grown. We could not have achieved what we have without our growing number of exceptional employees. Quoine has gained 28 employees over the last three months, reaching a total of 319 staff. This number that wasn’t even double digits at the end of last year.

Launch of liquid.com

This was a BOOM moment, what every member of the community was waiting for: the launch of Liquid.com.

Liquid.com (“Liquid”) is our newly revamped our all in one global digital asset platform that provides trading and exchange services for G3 currencies, including Singapore and Australian dollars, to help bridge the worlds of traditional currencies and the exciting new frontier of cryptocurrencies. We aim to provide financial services to all in this new crypto economy, and that means working hand in hand with governments, regulators and other industry stakeholders to grow the crypto ecosystem in a safe and sustainable manner.

We officially launched Liquid on September 5. A little more than 24 hours before the launch, Quoinex and Qryptos were put into maintenance mode. Our developers worked tirelessly to merge the two exchanges and launch Liquid, ensuring all the new features were up and running. Liquid is now live and many more features are coming.

Liquid means liquidity. The World Book and the Multi-Market Orderbook (MMO) come hand in hand with Liquid. Upon launch, the World Book was switched on for select pairs — BTC, ETH and BCH with fiat pairings. We have noticed a significant decrease in spreads on these pairs. The success of the initial World Book stage is promising and allows us to move forward with additional pairs in Q4.

The new Lending app was also released, allowing Liquid users to lend their holdings to margin traders. For doing so, you have the opportunity to earn interest. It’s a great way to put your assets to work.

New deposit feature

Our vision is to facilitate financial inclusion. In July we introduced deposit automation for EUR via our banking partner, Mistertango. If the bank account of the sender is at Mistertango we accept the deposit for 0 fees, and if the account is not at Mistertango the fee is just 0.99 EUR.

ICOs and token listings

Throughout Q3 we continued to innovate and adapt our ICO platform, hosting a number of successful token sales. ICOs were hosted on Qryptos in July and August, moving to Liquid in September.

In July we hosted three private sales: FanChain (FANZ), Mfun (MFUN), and Cosplay (COT).

In August we had two public sales: Cosplay (COT) and Bryllite (BRC). Bryllite was the first ICO to sell out on our platform. It was a proud moment when Bryllite managed to sell all 5 million BRC tokens in less than three weeks. We extend our congratulations to the Bryllite team, and look forward to working together in the future.

Three ICOs began on Liquid in September, two of which are ongoing. XAYA ICO has now successfully concluded, while iCash and Asobi are still active.

We listed a total of 16 tokens in Q3, including our partners LendingBlock (LND), the first ICO on ICO Mission Control Vuulr (VUU), and our first sell-out ICO Bryllite (BRC).

ICO platform development

Towards the end of the quarter we took a big step forward with our ICO platform. The platform was initially created to provide a safe and easy way to invest in vetted ICOs. As a result, we are always exploring ways we can further streamline and improve the process.

Liquid users can now invest in ICOs directly with USD, which further streamlines the ICO process.

Token issuers can set soft caps for all ICOs on Liquid, which adds another blanket of investor protection. If the ICO doesn’t reach the soft cap, you receive your investment back in full.

Token issuers can now choose to enforce a token lock up to ensure nobody can take unfair advantage of their bonuses.

Finally, we give token issuers complete flexibility over the funds they raise, and we have extended this service to include USD settlement. Issuers can choose to convert their funds into BTC, ETH and USD based on their needs.

Showing Liquid to the world

Marketing began ramping up with the launch of Liquid, and we scaled up our brand awareness efforts of Liquid throughout the entire quarter. Team members have been speaking at or attending conferences, and hosting meetups throughout the three months.

Quoine CEO Mike Kayamori was live on CNBC discussing the important topic of cryptocurrency regulation.

Liquid has appeared on numerous crypto news websites, including Coindesk and Cointelegraph, and we’ve been working with a number of influencers to raise the awareness of our Liquid branding, covering everything from exchange reviews on Youtube and autobiographical interviews, to podcasts and blog interviews with CxOs.

We have been making noise at crypto and tech events around the globe, with a number of our CxOs having the honour of contributing to insightful panel discussions. CEO Mike Kayamori spoke at The World Economic Forum and DRW’s Cumberland Summit, Head of CEO Office Katsu Konno was part of a panel discussion at FINSUM, Head of Global Marketing Katherine Ng partook in a panel at The World Blockchain Summit, and Chief Design Officer Jon Myers spoke at Block Hedge Bangkok, to name a few.

Beyond this, we have attended numerous conferences and events. Consensus Singapore was the most notable event, which we followed up with an industry networking event to celebrate the launch of Liquid. Please watch our video below for behind the scenes action!

Liquid Distributed Ledger

Work has begun on the Liquid Distributed Ledger (LDL). Internally we have decided the route the LDL will be taking. Quoine CTO Ray Hennessey is leading the development of the LDL and he will have a significant update on progress to share with the community shortly.

The LDL is going to solve a number of problems to bring our centralized exchange to the next level. Once the Liquid platform is fully integrated with the LDL, our users will continue to experience the speed of a central database, maintaining your current trading experience. Meanwhile, the inherent trust of the public ledger will dramatically increase the transparency of Liquid.