Mike and Mario’s AMA one day before the QASH Listing day (November 20th, 2017)

On November 20th, both QUOINE’s Co-founders, CEO Mike Kayamori and CTO Mario Gomez Lozada did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) together via Facebook Live. Mike and Mario answered questions pertaining to the pre-listing of the QASH tokens, which will take place on November 21st 2017 on the global fiat-cryptocurrency exchange QUOINEX and the ICO listing platform and crypto-only exchange QRYPTOS. Katherine Ng, the Head of Marketing also joined the AMA towards the end of the live session.

Before diving into answering the AMA questions, Mike mentioned that there were 4988 people who participated in the QASH Token Sale. The team have been working hard over the last week or so, to ensure that the technology is working as expected when QASH is listed on the exchanges. So to celebrate this special day, there will be a quick countdown on November 21st with food and champagne. This event will also be shared on Facebook live with fellow QUOINERs. Below are the summarized AMA by Mike and Mario:

1. Will the listing be paired with QASH/BTC ? If yes, when will it be listed?

M&M: Our tech team is working hard so that there will be other QASH pairs, but there remains other challenges. We will know before the listing which exact pairs will be traded. Until now, QASH/ETH is the only one confirmed.

2. Is the price API made available to Blockfolio for price monitoring?

Mario: Right now it’s not available, but we will make it available on coinmarketcap and other web sites. We are working on it.

3. When will QUOINE list QASH on coinmarketcap? Majority of us are using coinmarketcap to track the current circulation, price, and history?

Mario: As we have discussed, we are working on it. Right now, our priority is to make sure other more pertinent things work fine prior to the listing.

4. Mike, you have previously mentioned about your trip to Korea with CFO. Do you have any good news for us regarding partnership with Korean exchanges ?

Mike: Korea itself is going through its own cryptocurrency regulation where Koreans cannot participate in local ICOs (ICOs outside of Korea are fine). Having said that, we are always looking for good Korean partners, as for now, we are not in a position to enter Korea ourselves.

5. Regarding partnership with Bitfinex. Quoine has always asserted that they only work with good exchanges. As there are allegations/questions over Bitfinex’s conduct, which is tantamount to fraudulent practice, can QUOINE comment on that? In other words, what do you think of the Bitfinex “price manipulation” allegation?

Mike : Other than QUOINE, other exchanges are not regulated and they are not public companies. They do not have audited financial [histories]. However, we do take notice and we are aware of what have been mentioned on the internet. We minimize risks by putting a minimal amount of reserve on Bitfinex as we take risk, safety and security seriously. Not only on Bitfinex, but we also take serious security measures on other exchanges. Mario has also seen and read news about that, but they are not in any position to make any comments on certain issues (as yet), as there are always two sides of a story.

6. We have been informed all the time, that QUOINE use a multi sig wallet in cold storage for safety reasons. Private keys are kept in different geographical locations. This is QUOINE priority. We have been informed that the current policy will not change with regards to the cold storage procedure. But we hope there is a speed-up process of (withdrawals) instead waiting for 1 business day, considering crypto is 24/7, fast transaction is the main thing for us traders. Can Quoine consider instant withdrawals for anything less than 10 ETH? While anything more than 10 ETH will go through a checking process?

Mario: There certainly have been a lot of questions about this particular issue. From my perspective, it is best to be on the safe side, rather than be sorry when exchanges get hacked and money get lost/stolen. We don’t want to be in this situation.

Mike: Everything is in cold wallet as of now.

Mario: We use multisig for any coins that supports it, like we use multisig for Bitcoin. When other coins do not have multisig, such as ETH, we look at other safe options to handle these coins. We put enormous pride in not being hacked ever. Hot wallet is a single point of where hacks happen, but we understand that our customers want their coins fast. We are constantly improving on this.

7. Mike, appreciate it for reducing the minimum withdraw for ETH. However the BTC withdrawal still remains the same, 0.02 BTC. Will management consider lower this amount as well?

Mike: We definitely will look into this one.

8. Mike, will QRYPTOS implement the trading referral fee, for example total trade of referral, to be given a certain % to the referees?

Mike: For QUOINEX, we do have this feature, and we think this is a powerful thing that benefits both. For QRYPTOS, however, it is a little different. The fees are shared with the market maker. As our system can only handle one promotion right now, so we cannot implement this as we share the % with market makers. In our future revision of marketing, we would like to put in multiple promotions at the same time to drive further incentives and better user experience.

9. What is the market cap for QASH? Will all 1bil QASH be released as ‘total supply’? Meaning that the market cap for QASH will be influenced by the total amount of QASH tokens in circulation? How will the QASH tokens designated for strategic partners be released?

Mike: Actually it is not. It will be a little more than 350 Million QASH, but not as significant as 10%. So, on the day of listing, there’s going to be 350 Million coins on the day of the listing. It is not going to be 1 Billion, as was made clear in the white paper.

We acknowledge that this is a sensitive issue, in terms of token distribution. We have a 5yr window working with strategic partners, building the community, I have substantial amount of investment made in QASH, as with any senior management. That said, we are the same as everyone who contributed, that we have the incentive to make this work. So we are all on your side. Over the 5yrs, we will work towards making sure that we and our partners hold only 20% of all the QASH tokens.

10. What’s your price prediction and what’s your strategy of doing that?

Mike: It is not going to be a smooth ride, and there will be ups and downs. But if you look at QASH over the 1–3yr period, I have no doubt that QASH will definitely become the top 3–5 token in the world. We are the only regulated company with licensed ICO, we have working products and we have been working with partners in the financial industry. We have products that are solving real problems

Mario: Given the plans, roadmap, and the technology we have built over the three years, we have come so far. There’s no doubt within 1–2 years, the QASH blockchain that we are going to build to support real financial transactions (among other powerful features) is definitely not going to be like anything that you have seen.

11. Will hard wallet be made available in the future?

Mario: Yes! We are about to support hard wallets, among many other things.

12. Will Telegram stay as a medium of interface?

Mario: Absolutely, we’ve been working on integrating Telegram with our trading dashboard. Currently we have Telegram on these applications on Beta version and they are looking good. Once they pass the Beta, it is going to be integrated.

Mike: Never abandon Telegram! We will also be integrating other communication tools for institutional and financial services.

13. What do you think of major exchange like CME (with regards to Bitcoin futures)?

Mike: I had a meeting with them last week, and I will be presenting at their conference in Singapore next week. When Wall St, Goldman, CME, and mainstream people coming in, the cryptocurrency industry will grow from 200b to 200 trillion. When you think about it, the retail investors (people who contributed to this ICO) will benefit. Interestingly, 50% of Channel News Asia viewers still think of Bitcoin as a scam! So all of you guys came in quite early, and there are still a lot of opportunity. Bitcoin has taken 8 yrs and it’s at it’s the highest point right now. So people are actually thinking of selling BTC now, but my advice is to keep them.

14. Will Quoine go to South America (Brazil)?

Mario: If you know of anybody or any contacts, we would be more than happy to speak with them and see what opportunities that we can have.

Mike: If you know great partners, or see any potential partners for us, let us know! Ideally, they are progressive partners, ones that do look forward but not looking backward, and are already having a robust customer base who are familiar with financial services and products. Those [qualities] would be the best for us.

15. What is the main reason that you think cryptocurrency will explode in the future , and also since the holders of cryptocurrency are only a small percentage of the population now, if only a small amount become wealthy because of this, how will it change how the world handles wealth?

Katherine: Crypto is meant to be accessible to all.

16. Where do you find such a great team?

Katherine: It starts with great management with good leaders. When you have that, you will naturally attract great teams.

However, Mike begged to differ: Actually that’s not correct. We are only good as a team. You can have the greatest guys but if we don’t have a great team, we won’t be able to scale. Last year today, we only had lesser than 20 people, but now we have 80+ people and we are going to double, which is also a challenge when we have offices in four places! Again, we are only as good as our entire team.

Towards the end of the AMA, Mike emphasized that there’s only a few percentage of people who own crypto, and he wants to share the wealth to everybody, that cryptocurrency (especially QASH) shouldn’t be limited to a few. When that happens, cryptoccurency will see an explosive growth.