Earlier this week I hosted an AMA on the Liquid Japan telegram. Since it is important that I address both communities, I have written up the questions and answers from the AMA that are relevant to the global audience.

What has Mike Kayamori been up to recently?

Mike is still extremely busy as always. He still has some travel in his schedule. However, in the past Mike was travelling and attending a lot of conferences.

You might remember that Mike has publicly stated his own aim to restructure his time away from conferences and events, to dedicate more time to internal workings.

Recently, Mike has been working hard on Liquid as a product. We have actually turned down a number of conference appearances. It is not the right time for us to be attending lots of conferences at the moment.

What do you think about the current QASH price?

It isn’t good. I sympathize with our QASH holders at the moment. While the price is ultimately decided by the market, we are highly focussed on product and service improvement to bring more value to QASH.

We have product releases coming that will be great for Liquid and QASH.

What is the role of QASH in the LDL?

The role of QASH is clear: it’s going to be the default payment method for the LDL.

The LDL is a DLT specialized for FinTech companies. FinTech companies will develop their services on the LDL, and QASH will be the default payment coin.

Since the Liquid launch there have been a number of bugs. What’s going on?

I apologize for any inconvenience caused. However, last year we completed a drastic upgrade to the backend of Liquid. The system is now more stable than ever.

Other companies are launching STO platforms before Liquid. Can you talk about your strategy moving into this space?

A license is essential to operate an STO platform. At present, our main focus is on being completely above board. I am personally focussed on license acquisition.

Our Legal and Compliance team has to complete a lot of work to offer security tokens. Licenses are required in each country.

I personally believe that security tokens are the future of virtual currency.

Do you have any plans to purchase QASH and do a lock-up to raise prices?

This is an act equivalent to buying your own shares in the world of stocks. If we were to carry out a scheme like this there is a high possibility of being labelled a security token.

We cannot take this risk as a crypto exchange regulated by the Financial Services Agency. Therefore, this is not something that we will be doing.

What are the working hours like for you at Liquid?

What times people work varies. Some people come to work at 7 in the morning, whereas others like to start later and work later.

Personally, I usually get to work about 9:30am and return home around 9-10pm. However, I am often making calls or responding to emails on the train, or even at home, and we always make time to talk to people in China on Wechat.

Will QASH have voting rights or something similar?

I think voting will fit into the utility of QASH in some way. For example, I think that a listing vote for new coins using QASH is an interesting idea.

When will QASH rebrand?

The timing of the rebrand is very important. There are a lot of things to get right, from brand recognition to market timing. We now have a date for when the rebrand will happen, which we will be sharing in the near future.

Will QASH become a security token?

If QASH were to become a security token a lot of discussion would be required. For example, we would have to decide which profits would be attributed to QASH holders, and whether it conflicts with the profits attributed to existing shareholders of our company.

As you can see there are a lot of problems to clear for this to become a reality. Personally, I would like to see this in the future for QASH.

I think the QASH price is influenced by the distrust coming from the inadequacy of service such as server dropout, application malfunctions, annual transaction report output delay. How are you going to improve your service?

Regarding server dropouts, we believe we have now successfully stabilized the system on the backend, and you should not experience any more of these issues.

I'm really sorry for the problem with the apps, we are working to resolve these.

Regarding the annual transaction report, we have formed a partnership to make it easier for [Japanese customers] to declare your tax report.

Do you have FinTech companies that are already planning to develop on the LDL?

Although the alpha is still in development, we are currently having the preliminary discussion with multiple fintech companies. I think that some of these projects will be launched with us, and may issue security tokens using the LDL.

Do you have a target price for QASH?

Given the current market situation, we cannot give a target price. However, please be aware that we are very unhappy with the current position of QASH, and we are doing what we can behind the scenes to bring QASH to where we think it should be.

What is the progress with improving withdrawals?

About two weeks ago we started a withdrawal test, focussed just on BTC for testing at the moment. The test has more withdrawals on weekends, and includes Saturdays and Sundays. If you have eagle eyes, you may have noticed this.

We are drastically changing the crypto withdrawal process. It was two or three times a day. With the current tests it has improved to 8-10 times a day, including weekends. So, I'm sorry it took some time, but I think that this improvement will be excellent for user experience.

I am really proud of our development and operations teams for making this a reality. As you know, we refuse to compromise on security. We will be releasing more information on this process in due time.