On this day, QUOINE’s CEO and Co-founder Mike Kayamori provided an update on QUOINE’s roadmap and their World Book, via a Live AMA on Facebook. Mike answered some important questions pertaining recent situations in the cryptocurrency volatility, as well as the Japan cryptocurrency exchanges and regulatory bodies. Importantly, Mike also shared his plan and thoughts on security issues, where a series of AMAs will be held this month to address these issues.
As cryptocurrencies have had a big ramp up late last year, it was bound to have a correction. This is good for the long term as there is no market that continues to goes up and up. What important is that our QUOINERS know how to protect themselves, by managing risks accordingly. One example of change we had is that we have decreased our trading leverage from 100x to 25x in our exchange.
Another form of protection is choosing the right platform/exchange that prioritizes security over other services. Just because the cryptocurrency exchange industry is regulated, does not mean it is safe. Hacks have always happened in the past, and it will continue to happen in the future. We will have to assume that it will happen internally or externally, and for that, we want to make sure we have the right monitoring system to prevent it. Because of that, we have never ever had a large/major incident, which we are proud of. And also because of recent incidents especially in Japan, the pendulum has shifted, in such a way that the regulators now want to over-regulate. That is how it feels like, as more and more Japanese exchanges are now mandated to improve. Fortunately, we are not one of them!
So let’s move onto the World Book Beta, it is going to be a little delayed (aimed at early Q2, or late Q1), because of the recent news in Japanese exchanges and due to complying to Government regulations. Due to audit and government intervention, we might launch it in the first week of April. Essentially, there will be 5 phases/stages of the World Book:
- Phase 1 (1st week of April) : World Book Beta release (Limited Access Beta / Limited Currency). There will be further instruction on how to join.
- Phase 2 (May/June) : Fully Live. Unified Platform Desktop
- Phase 3 : Full mobile
- Phase 4 : Financial Infrastructure (T+1 agreement, connecting with banks) + Technical Infrastructure = ECN (DMA to exchange)
- Phase 5: Prime brokerage + Custodial
Phase 1: Limited Beta World Book
The first phase is going to be the world book beta, a limited beta (not for everybody), in which we will instruct you on how to become eligible for using and testing the beta. It also means limited access, limited currency, and limited fiat (e.g. BTC, BCH, ETH, QASH, and limited fiat only). This step is extremely important, to make sure that the beta functions well as we improve it. The World Book consists of internal and external parts; this limited beta will be for the internal World Book. For people who are interested in being a beta user, you can let us know and we will let you know how to get started.
Taking a step back, we look at the technology part of the World Book, where we will go LIVE in hidden mode, hopefully a week from next monday (if everything runs well). The core part of this will be the Multi Market Order (MMO). We need to do a natural flow of trading, which means an organic result. We will continue to have QUOINEX and QRYPTOS.
Phase 2: Fully Live Unified Platform
Assuming the hidden mode of MMO goes well, then we will have a unified platform (hopefully within a month or two), with as many crypto and fiat as possible around the May/June time frame. In case the beta has any issues, we will update you guys again. The unified platform is going to be the fully live version, not beta. We will migrate all of our users on QUOINEX and QRYPTOS to our LIQUID platform.
Phase 3: Mobile Version
We need to have a functioning and kickass mobile user experience, which will be phase 3 (especially in Asia where mobile use is significant).
Phase 4: Financial Infrastructure
In phase 4, it is all about putting in the financial infrastructure, as well as the technical infrastructure. It is more about connecting the institutional investors, by providing them with a common/unified API that allows them to select/decide which exchange that they want to connect to.
Phase 5: Prime Brokerage
In short, the big institutional investors can just open an account with us, and they will be able to trade on other exchanges, all without having them to open bank of crypto accounts with other institutions. The big difference between phase 4 and phase 5 is that institutional investors can just open an account with us, and they will be able to use services from other exchanges and other prime brokerages.
In the last week of March, we plan to have Andre who is leading the LIQUID & World Book platform to have a more detailed update to QUOINERs, so that users will be more familiar and understand where we are.
The LIQUID platform will be a game changer.
Touching on QUOINE
About a year ago today, we were 30-35 people, and this was our entire team. Now, we have close to 130 (outsourced & insourced) people in the Philippines alone. It is going to be 24/7/365. We are also continuing to build our team in Vietnam. Tier1 tickets will be handled in the Philippines, whereby those tickets with more technical support will be handled by the Ho Chi Minh office. I think we have one of the largest support teams in the world. Also, we are bringing in a new KYC system, where we can automate customers onboarding with us. We want to make sure that we can support our customers globally at different time zones.
What about QASH?
For this month, we are going to do a lot of AMAs, we will have Andre (on financial infrastructure), Seth (on Iron Shield, ICO self-service), Max (on distributed ledger technology), etc. Let’s talk about QASH a little bit. Max Levy is our head of QASH distributed ledger technology (DLT) team, and I am planning to have him to do an AMA session with you all in greater depth on our DLT QASH.
When it comes to building a financial platform on top of a blockchain, there is nothing like that right now with high performance and low latency. However, we’re not trying to reinvent something, a lot of these technologies are already available; bitcoin side chain, ethereum side chain, etc. Hopefully, by the end of this year, we will be able to get a test net of a DLT QASH. That is when our QASH token become truly a utility token. Once we have a full LIQUID platform, then we will be able to do marketing work for our QASH token as a utility token.
More on Regulation and Security
In March, there is going to be a G20 summit, where countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and others all come together to discuss crypto asset regulations. When we partner with other potential businesses, it is critical to maintain zero security breach and that will make a big difference, compared to other unregulated exchanges where they do not disclose much about their businesses (the opposite of being transparent). This is not something one can continue to avoid. In order for cryptocurrencies to go mainstream, that is a necessary path to go through. Again, we stress that our token and our services are pro-regulation and we will make sure that customer safety/confidence are our priority. I participated in our own ICO and I have not touched my QASH tokens.
Seth is in charge of our Iron Shield program. Speaking at a higher level, we have a lot of hackers changing user password and 2FA. It is very rare for our users who want to reset password and change 2FA at the same time. In such case, there is going to be a cooling period for this type of procedure; to protect customer funds. We will ask for a selfie with some identification. Ultimately, we would like to have this automated as well, in order to have a better user experience and greater satisfaction.
Question: How will the World Book handle regulations?
Mike: It’s not just the World Book, people assume that QRYPTOS doesn’t have to deal with regulation. That is untrue. Last weekend, I was in Malaysia meeting the securities commission of Malaysia and they are looking at crypto and ICO. We are looking for a good partner to connect with, for each country. We have been working with the central government of the Philippines, and we will work with each country and it will take a bit of time. To comply with each country’s regulation, we are going to do it the right way. After all, we want to build a platform that is sustainable and could continue to be the best (even to the day that I am no longer around).
Question: When you launched the unified platform, will US citizens be able to use the platform?
Mike: As EVERY ICO can be viewed as a “security”, we will work closely with the US regulators. There will be dedicated policies and restrictions, should they (US citizens) use the unified platform. The geo-specific policies will allow users to know what services they can enjoy, and what they cannot, just from a regulatory perspective. Another thing to distinguish our services from other exchanges, is that we provide full trading statements, so that our users can provide these documents to their tax authority in their respective country.
For more information of this AMA, you can watch the video here:
https://www.facebook.com/QUOINE.SG/videos/1446513008793944/
Article transcribed by,
Dr. Kester Wong