QASH (pronounced “cash”) is the native currency for the Quoine (pronounced “coin”) which is now rebranded to Liquid. Liquid is a global cryptocurrency firm looking to solve the liquidity problems that have surfaced with crypto investments. Liquid brings liquidity to the cryptocurrency space by providing a means for you to easily buy cryptocurrency with and cash-out to fiat. 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. The Liquid platform connects these silos into one combined pool to give you the greatest liquidity possible. The Liquid World Book compiles the orders and prices from exchanges around the world into one order book for you to use. This gives any trader, no matter their location, the ability to use the fiat currency of their choice when purchasing or selling crypto. It removes the liquidity silos of separate exchanges and gives more trading power to previously underserved markets. The Prime Brokerage half of the Quoine Liquid platform basically gives you access to the features outlined in the previous World Book section. With Prime Brokerage, you have direct market access to all exchanges in the World Book without having to create an account on each individual exchange. Furthermore, Quoine has been building partnerships with a network of banks over the last several years to ensure the quick transfer of your fiat funds. QASH is an ERC20 token you use to pay for services on the Liquid platform. Beyond that, QASH holders may also receive discounts, promotional products, and ICO investment opportunities with coins that Quoine helps to launch. The team also emphasizes in their whitepaper that other organizations may use it for their own purposes similar to how some financial institutions use the Ripple XRP token. Because Quoine enters a few different financial sectors, the company has quite a few competitors. As a credit facility, the company competes with SALT. On the exchange side, there are numerous other businesses like Binance specializing in alternative coins or Gemini and Coinbase focusing on fiat to crypto conversions. Mike Kayamori (CEO) and Mario Gomez Lozada (President and CTO) founded Quoine in 2014. Kayamori was previously a Senior Vice President at SoftBank Group and was the Chief Investment Officer of Gungho Asia. Lozada was the CTO of Merrill Lynch in Japan for 11 years before taking the Chief Information Officer role at Credit Suisse Japan. Quoine is the first cryptocurrency firm in the world to be officially licensed by the Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA). The Liquid platform is actually the result of combining two previous platforms, Quoinex and Qryptos. At one time, those two trading platforms were performing over $12 billion of transactions each year.
Huobi, the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, recently announced and launched a new currency. The Huobi Token (HT) rewards exchange users for their loyalty with lowered transaction fees while also carrying its own value in tradable pairs against popular currencies. The hope was to bring greater value to Huobi’s millions of users, mostly located in Asian countries. The launch of the Huobi Token follows in the footsteps of other loyalty-building tokens that other exchanges have launched. The first and most successful of these tokens has been Binance Coin (BNB). The creation of BNB secured Binance’s place as the world’s leading exchange. It offered discounted trading fees in exchange for customer loyalty, primarily functioning as a loyalty rewards system. Huobi officially announced its intentions to launch a new token on January 22, 2018. Over the course of 15 days, Huobi would distribute 300 million HT (60% of the total supply) to its pro users who purchased a discounted service package. Each morning, a new batch of HT would become available on a first come, first served basis. Huobi declared this token distribution scheme, “not an ICO,” due to the nature of the offering. Users are buying a specific service package, part of which includes HT that give a discount toward trading fees. The exchange launched the Huobi Token as part of an overall strategy to recover its user base after tightening regulations in China severely restricted cryptocurrency trading. In an interview with CoinDesk, Leon Li, Huobi’s founder, revealed that Chinese rule changes had decimated the trading volume on Huobi by 95% between September 15 and November 1, 2017. The HT token distribution began on January 24 and wrapped up on February 7, 2018. Each day of the distribution, millions of tokens sold out in mere minutes after going on sale. At that point, 300 million HT had been distributed to Huobi Pro members who bought packages. That’s 60% of the total supply currently in public circulation. Another 200 million HT, 40% of the total supply, was set aside. 20% goes toward user rewards and platform operation. The other 20% is vested for four years and constitutes the team reward. Huobi isn’t the first exchange to issue its own token. Binance (BNB), Bibox (BIX), KuCoin (KCS) and Coss (COSS) have all issued their own tokens as well.