AMA with Mario Gomez Lozada, QUOINE Founder & CEO: Recap

We have had some questions about our roadmap on Liquid.plus, I wanted to say that there are a number of reasons for the roadmap delay, mainly the JFSA which I will touch on later. These things are unavoidable, technology roadmaps are never static, as technology is always changing. We understand your frustration, believe me, we are working really hard to get Liquid up and running. That is our first priority.

It’s been a while since the community has heard from you. What’s have you been up to?

We have been very busy with the JFSA, as you know. It was very intense, all hands on deck. Everyone had to drop what they have been doing to focus on this. We got an improvement order along with many other exchanges. My focus was making sure we made it through the inspection. Two months of dealing with regulators, making sure they had what they needed from us. There were a number of areas within our company and the way we operate that needed to be improved according the the improvement order. We worked hard on this.

What’s been your main involvement in the development of Liquid?

The product has been my focus, on both the front and back end (with work on the MMO engine). I have been heavily involved in product design UI. I spend a lot of time with designers and devs, making sure we are taking in to account community feedback to provide the best user experience. I have also been working with the backend team with a focus on the MMO engine.

What are you most looking forward to with the Liquid launch?

Increasing the amount of liquidity — as the name suggests, is our main aim of our Liquid platform. The MMO engine is a key part of this and we have done tests in the past which were positive. Andre has showed a demo before, which shows that liquidity is mirrored from existing order books onto other markets on the platform. We did it with JPY to the SGD markets, and the spread significantly tightened. So I am looking forward to the liquidity and tight spreads.

What has your team been working on?

Preparing backend systems, the MMO specifically, it is not a trivial system to build. We have been doing intermittent releases; we do this to reduce risk on the final deliverable. If we do these releases, eventually when you get to the delivery date the risk is minimised, as there aren’t so many changes. We are doing this for other interfaces, such as web interfaces too. A lot of those changes are in line with what we want Liquid to be. There are many other changes coming over the next few weeks that will get us very close to what we want Liquid to be. There is a lot of work going on to merge our two exchanges, there is a lot of data migration required, making sure the same source code is in the back end.

What have we learnt as a company in the time since the QASH ICO?

We have learnt so much, to the point that we have built our ICO platform that we know helps other teams streamline their ICO process. We have launched a few ICOs, the Brylite ICO sold out which was a great achievement for the team. We are passing on our ICO experience to new token issuers. We know what it takes to host a great token sale, and we also recognise it is a lot of work to host your own token sale. By helping hosting the token sales for other teams we can save them precious time, which can be used on product development of the projects.

Why is Liquid going to be worth the wait?

The trading platform liquidity is a massive factor, it’s a key item. We are going to provide liquidity, and we are going to produce it, thanks to our MMOs linking markets together. The World Book will allow us to mirror the liquidity from active markets to ones that are struggling.

Where are we at with JFSA?

We have spent a lot of time, we got the improvement order and we are working towards that right now.

Editor’s note: We have received a lot of questions from the community about JFSA related matters, but as this is a very sensitive topic for us, we’re unable to answer all of these queries.

How far along is the World Book?

MMO has been in development for quite some time now, we are doing the incremental releases, both back end and front end. The MMO is a core part of the World Book. We need to do one more major release, which should be happening within two weeks. This is the last release for the World Book. It doesn’t mean it is going to be turned on, because it’s not, but then the World Book is in production, and can be switched on when Liquid is released.

When will direct market access, t+1, prime brokerage be available? Is work related to these offerings with banking and custody partners or is it mostly development work?

DMA is in the plan, but it won’t be available on launch. We need to do a lot more work with partners, banks and so on before this is available.

Mike said he believes QASH (liquid token) can be in a top 5 crypto mcap-wise. Do you share his vision ?

I do share Mike’s vision. I am a pretty big QASH holder myself. A lot of people when they look at QASH they tend to look at the short term. I look at the long term, and being involved very closely, I strongly believe that we will be successful. I continue to hold regardless of the price.

How is interest from institutional investors?

We have a lot of them involved, I can’t give too much detail, but we have been talking to some of the major banks in the world. This is on the partnership side, and the actual investment side.

What do you see as your biggest risk to launch?

Things not working properly would be the biggest risk, but we have been doing our releases in hidden mode incrementally. We have a lot of QA to ensure that this will not happen, so I am confident. We have looked at the project plans and everything that has to be looked at to minimise the risk at launch. At this point right now I don’t feel there are major risks to be honest.

On a scale of (low) 1–10 (high), how confident are you in the success of LIQUID?

12. Being close to the working teams makes me very confident. The delays have been unfortunate but we make sure we comply with regulators as company policy — this is the road to ensure future growth.

Will the new mobile app be released at the same time as the Liquid platform?

It will not be released with the web app, which will come first, but we are working very hard on the development of both the mobile version of the website and the forthcoming Liquid app, which will provide a truly mobile and refreshing experience for our users.

Can you touch on the MMO?

We have been working on it for quite some time, it was the first piece of software for Liquid that we worked on. There was a major release that was done about two months ago where we had to shut down the exchanges, and from there on we have been doing the incremental releases. The final release of the MMO is the world book. Within the next two weeks we will do the final MMO release. The MMO is the heart of the world book. Then when Liquid is launched, it will be turned on.

What about QASH Utility?

There is a full programme in place which involves a lot of teams. This is almost finalised and will be shared before the liquid launch. We have a lot of interesting ideas that we are applying.

Can you talk about the QASH/LQD tokens that are locked up? What is happening with them?

Nothing is happening with them at the moment, they are staying locked up for the moment.

When it comes to rights, where do token/coin holders stand when compared to say equity shareholders? What is your vision of where this will end up like?

QASH is our token, so we do look after it as we look after our equity, even though it is different. We care a great deal that we will meet our promises. Liquid is our top priority, and the Liquid token (QASH) will be the utility token on this platform.

It is indeed great that JFSA is taking the lead in crypto-regulation. But is this really necessarily an advantage for Quoine?

Yes and no. If you think about it, a lot of the regulations that we had to comply for are things also outside japan. They care about the customers, so they are not wronged. Customer protection matters massively. It is a good thing for our customers, not just in Japan but also outside of Japan. For example, we have to segregate customer funds under the JFSA. We have to do frequent audits and prove that we are meeting regulations, a few times a month. Our regulatory stances make us stand out from our competitors, and we believe that this is an advantage for us.

How do you envision Quoine working with global financial institutions that are regulated by other regulators?

I came from financial institutions before, so being there I understand that when they decide to work with partners, if it is another financial partner they will only work with regulated companies. Our JFSA regulated status is good for our investors, they are more willing to work with us. We are not just regulated anywhere, it is in one of the strictest financial regulated areas, Japan.

Anything else you want to touch on that we haven’t covered?

We understand the frustrations, I am also a QASH holder. I know what you are going through with the delays, but we don’t like it either. There are strong reasons why this happened, and we had to take care of this stuff. We are full back on Liquid delivery, and we are working day and night to make sure we can deliver this.