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.
The fast-growing demand for cryptocurrencies calls for a convenient way to administer them. Melon is one such platform that works through a blockchain protocol allowing easy and efficient maintenance of cryptocurrencies. Acting as a hedge fund, Melon presents a fully customizable administration of your digital assets. You can use it as an online vault that allows you to store and transact your funds through its web portal. Melon was developed to meet the need for a cost-efficient and technologically advanced hedge fund to manage digital assets. Reto Trinkler and Mona El Isa founded the company, Melonport AG in July 2016. The company created Melon as a digital asset management protocol. It is a first of its kind system that enables the users to store, administer, and invest in crypto assets through a decentralized network. Melon works through a fully decentralized infrastructure. All the information of the user, such as smart contracts, assets, and records are saved on a decentralized blockchain network. It not only offers reliability for the storage of information but also reduces the risk of custody. The protocol also offers a decentralized system of execution through the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Smart contracts are distributed across multiple Ethereum networks to provide better efficiency and security for the assets. With the Melon protocol, users can save both time and money for investing in a hedge fund. Additionally, there is no requirement of a third party approval from a lawyer or advisor. Melon’s ICO was launched in February 2017 and sold out within 10 minutes. Melonport is aiming to bridge the gap between the portfolio managers and the investors by removing the role of the third parties such as law firms. Melonport’s CEO, Mona El Isa comes from a strong financial background and is versed with the problems of the investment industry. There is still a lot of work to be done on the Melon project, even though things are looking quite positive already. An audit of the protocol has been completed already, and the project continues to advance. No further specifics have been provided on the website, although it remains to be seen what the future holds. Bringing more value to Melon Coin would be a good idea, yet it remains to be seen how that might be achieved.