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.
Nebulas is a next generation public blockchain, aiming for a continuously improving ecosystem. Based on its blockchain valuation mechanism, Nebulas proposes future-oriented incentive and consensus systems, and the ability to self-evolve without forking. Many in the crypto community are referring to Nebulas as “the new Google”. While the two are similar in a sense, they hold different use cases. Google is intended for day to day internet information searches, while Nebulas focuses on searches among decentralized applications (DApps), smart contracts, and user’s blockchain assets. Nebulas is being built on a decentralized search framework with open-source algorithms, verifiable computing, and distributed data stores.” Nebulas has three core features of its tech such as Nebulas Rank (NR), it is an Open source, core ranking algorithm based on “liquidity, propagation of users’ assets, and the interactivity between users.” and Nebulas Force (NF): “Nebulas Force (NF) provides the Nebulas blockchain & its distributed applications built on top, the capability to self-evolve”. Nebulas’s official website shows an international team of 14 core members, including Hitters Xu, founder and CEO of Nebulas (who also happens to be the founder of AntShares, now known as NEO). Xu is considered a pioneer in the blockchain industry, founding BitsClub (the very first Blockchain/Bitcoin community in China) in 2013 as well as popular ICO platform ICO 365. He also founded the crypto funds firm, FBG capital. On top of that, he directed an Alibaba financial arm (Ant Financial’s Blockchain Platform) and aided Google’s Search & Anti-Fraud team.