- Liquid Group and Virtual Currency Partners form joint venture to expand Liquid.com into the US market -
TOKYO, April 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Global cryptocurrency platform Liquid.com (Liquid) and Virtual Currency Partners (VCP) today announced the creation of a jointly-owned entity called Liquid Financial USA Inc. (Liquid USA) to expand Liquid's services into the US market. Liquid USA represents Liquid's expansion plans into key growth markets, including the US, on the back of its ongoing Series C fundraise that valued the company at more than US$1 billion. Liquid will enter into the US via its holding company, Liquid Group Inc, founded in March 2019.
VCP is a consortium of successful investors and entrepreneurs investing in the fintech and cryptocurrency industries. VCP is led by Chairman Barry Schiffman, who has over 30 years' experience investing in high-growth companies in his role as Executive Managing Director in JAFCO Ventures, the US arm of leading Japan venture capital fund JAFCO, followed by Globespan Capital Partners. Barry's extensive Japan-US investments experience and JAFCO's continued support over the years uniquely position Tokyo-headquartered Liquid to enter the US market with strong backing by long term investors from both the East and the West.
The parties' commitments of capital, technology and resources to this joint venture have enabled Liquid USA to acquire a FinCEN-registered money service business through which Liquid will access the US market. Liquid USA's plans call for a complete offering of Liquid's products to the US market, subject to US regulatory approvals. Pending those regulatory approvals, Liquid USA plans to make Liquid's native token, QASH, available for utility and trading to US customers. Liquid USA's offices are located in New York, NY, and Atlanta, GA.
Liquid Co-founder and CEO Mike Kayamori said: "The US is one of the world's largest markets for cryptocurrency and we have received widespread expressions of interest from our community, corporate and institutional customers to serve the US market. This joint venture and the acquisition of IQX represents our commitment to expand in the US, and we look forward to working closely with Virtual Currency Partners to accelerate our platform growth. I am personally honored and excited to be working again with Barry Schiffman, the Co-founder and former Executive Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, a mentor of mine from my days at Globespan dating back to 2003."
VCP Chairman Barry Schiffman said: "After nearly a year of studying the cryptocurrency space and researching a number of players, we were extremely impressed with Liquid and the strong foundation it built for itself as Japan's first FSA-approved cryptocurrency exchange and one of the top 5 cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. I am pleased to be working with Mike again, building upon our relationship from Globespan. We are excited to join the Liquid family and to lead its expansion into the US."
Liquid USA is presently working to obtain regulatory approvals throughout the US and is building out its team with the expectation of onboarding US clients by January 2020.
For enquiries on Liquid USA's expansion and employment opportunities, please visit www.liquid.com/us-launch.
About Liquid
Founded in 2014, we are a leading global fintech company that operates Liquid.com ("Liquid"), a global cryptocurrency platform that provides trading, exchange, and next generation financial services powered by blockchain technology. With offices in Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, and now the USA, Liquid combines a strong network of local partners with extensive team experience in banking and financial products to deliver best in class financial services for its customers.
Today, Liquid is the world's largest crypto-fiat platform by transaction volume, regulated in Japan. Powered by the World Book, which provides customers enhanced price matching and deeper liquidity for various fiat and cryptocurrency pairs, Liquid offers trading services for major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum against fiat currency pairs in Japanese yen, US, Singapore and Australian dollars, and euro.
As part of the Liquid roadmap, we are developing a range of new features and services including a distributed ledger, which will allow other fintech companies to build their products and services on distributed ledger technology.
In the span of two years:
- September 2017 -- We became the first global cryptocurrency exchange to be officially licensed by the Japan Financial Services Agency.
- October 2017 -- We became the first licensed global cryptocurrency exchange in Japan to launch a global Initial Coin Offering (ICO), also known as the Qash Token Sale.
- November 2017 -- We successfully raised 350,000 ETH (approximately USD105 million) through the sale of 350 million Qash in an oversubscribed ICO, to fund the growth of the Liquid platform.
- September 2018 -- Our historical trading platforms, Quoinex and Qryptos, were merged and relaunched as Liquid.
- July 2018 -- Our trading platforms exceeded USD50 billion in transaction volume in the past 12 months.
More than just a cryptocurrency exchange, Liquid offers powerful trading features which include:
- Margin trading of up to 25x leverage for select crypto-fiat pairings
- A sophisticated user dashboard for pro traders
- Secure cold wallet storage and KYC compliance for individual and corporate customers
- Proprietary World Book technology that matches orders across global order books, providing access to liquidity pools sourced by a unified platform, Liquid.com
- Liquid Infinity, a Bitcoin Contracts For Difference (CFD) product that provides up to 100x leverage
More information is available at Liquid.com.
Corporate Website: https://quoine.com
Liquid Website: https://liquid.com
Liquid Blog: https://blog.liquid.com/
Telegram Community: https://t.me/Quoine
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Liquid_Global
Facebook: https://facebook.com/LiquidGlobal/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/quoine
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liquid_global/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/liquid
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/LiquidGlobal
SOURCE Liquid.com
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