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Taking Crypto into a New Decade with Liquid

As we prepare to step into a new decade it seems appropriate to start off with some reflection and evaluation, before giving you a glimpse into what the future holds for Liquid.

As we prepare to step into a new decade it seems appropriate to start off with some reflection and evaluation, before giving you a glimpse into what the future holds for Liquid.

Cryptocurrency has come a long way over the last decade. In fact, the past ten years almost represents the entire lifespan of cryptocurrency as we know it and it encompasses all the developments and innovations that put crypto on the map.

At Liquid we are proud to say that we have been serving the crypto-economy with state-of-the-art trading systems for the majority of the last decade. We entered the space before many of our competitors when Quoine Exchange opened in 2014. Ever since then, we have been learning, building and scaling with the aim of providing cutting edge trading interfaces for our users.

December round up

Before we look at the year as a whole, here are a few Liquid updates from December:

Resetting 2FA is now a lot easier
Introduced Advanced Order Entry - further enhanced risk controls at order entry
Matching engine upgrade - more power and speed, lower latency
Platform stability improvements
Platform performance improvements, reducing CPU cost
Introduced the ability to name your withdrawal addresses
Added live chat to the exchange so you can talk to customer champions without going to the help center

A year in review

2019 has been a strong year for us. Our product offering has grown substantially, our brand presence has evolved and we have discovered and explored new avenues that we cannot wait to share with you.

For those who missed it, here’s a quick run through of our greatest achievements from the past year with links for further information:

Liquid Infinity was launched - Bitcoin CFD trading with up to 100x leverage
We announced tech unicorn status
Vastly improved crypto withdrawals using MPC technology, providing speed without compromising our stance on security
Changed the game with 0-block BTC deposits
Announced our expansion with Liquid USA
Added Isolated Margin
Improved risk control with stop loss and take profit at order entry
Added No Touch API withdrawals
Released a new mobile app, Liquid Pro - one of our favourite products with more features to come
Continued World Book development
Additional language support
Updated our fee structure, introduced a high volume trader rebate and simultaneously switched on Qash utility
Removed friction by adding basic accounts - a Liquid account without KYC
Unveiled Quick Exchange - the easiest way to swap between digital assets on Liquid

Reflection

Reflection is a powerful tool. It’s a direct way to unlock additional clarity, discover mistakes and capitalize on success.

At Liquid the last couple of months have been a time for strong reflection and thought. While we are outstandingly proud of our progress, market position and current product offering, we can’t help but think we haven’t reached our potential. Entrepreneurs are never satisfied and those that keep trying to innovate stay in the lead.

Perhaps it’s unorthodox, but we would like to take this opportunity to relay some of our thoughts so you can understand the plans for our company trajectory as we step into a new decade.

As a company we have acknowledged our shortcomings. Every business has them and we are not afraid to recognize the areas where we need to improve. From this we have developed some steps regarding how we are going to approach our product development:

Strengthen our relationship with our users. We want to understand who you are and exactly what you want from Liquid so we can give the best trading experience.
Streamline for success. This will involve quicker improvements, enhanced monitoring and swifter results.
Develop our own path. Competition is great, but the Liquid way has always been to push the boundaries and lead the charge.
Acknowledge weaknesses and dissolve them.
Encourage internal creativity. Culture at Liquid is designed to birth innovation. In 2020 we will push even harder to bring new, exciting concepts from all areas.
Execute aggressively and flawlessly. Everything we do, should be perfect, for you, for us and everyone watching.

Looking forward

Liquid has always been, and always will be, an ambitious company. We aren’t afraid to reach for the stars. Our path into 2020 is looking no different. We are going to channel our drive to succeed and really focus on making Liquid the best platform it can be.

When looking a year ahead, one can only present plans, not guarantees. We know that our community is eager to hear what there is on the horizon for Liquid, but it’s not always clear-cut. Nevertheless, we are going to seize this opportunity to give you a look into the Liquid product plan for the next year.

Liquid Perpetuals

Our Perpetual Swap Bitcoin trading product is currently well underway. This has been hinted at before - now Liquid Perpetuals is undergoing rigorous testing to enable us to launch according to our new plans: flawlessly and aggressively.

Withdrawals

Our operations team won’t stop until crypto withdrawals from Liquid are as good as they can be. There will be continuous improvements to speed up times across the board while maintaining our top tier security standards. This is an important distinction - most crypto withdrawals may be fast, but they don’t excel at security like we do.

Liquid Vision

Phase one of Liquid Vision was released but there is much more to come. We have plans to build in social elements like trader profiles, PnL charts, leaderboards, news feeds and more. Alongside this, the insight provided by Liquid Vision will be enhanced, providing users ultimate control over their portfolio.

Liquid USA

Justin Hertzberg, the CEO of Liquid USA, has established an executive leadership team that is well-positioned to tackle the unique challenges that the USA market presents. The team has deep financial markets knowledge, which includes experience at notable institutions including; the New York Stock Exchange, ING, and the Options Clearing Corporation among others.

Liquid USA is on track to launch in the first half of 2020. As part of its go-to-market strategy, it will eventually be able to offer all digital asset trading products allowable by USA regulators, including security tokens and derivatives.

Liquid Chain

Re-branded from the Liquid Distributed Ledger, the Liquid Chain aims to be an open source decoupled state machine program, shooting to foster adoption of blockchain technology using C, C++ and Rust for programming of smart contracts. The Liquid Chain will utilize the Qash token. Tendermint will be leveraged to reach consensus.

Quick Exchange for Business

Quick Exchange is another one of our favorite products - it’s a no-nonsense, quick and easy way to swap crypto to crypto or crypto to fiat.

Over the last few months since the release of Quick Exchange we have been building a Quick Exchange widget. This widget will allow seamless integration of Quick Exchange into other platforms.

In 2020, our aim is to integrate Quick Exchange with all kinds of different cryptocurrency products and vastly increase the reach of Liquid.

Liquidity

Our efforts to increase liquidity will prevail. There is a focus to both improve the internal World Book and also increase the reach and power of the external World Book.

Beyond this, we are exploring initiatives to enhance liquidity across the platform by creating a designated market maker program.

General platform improvements

There is an evergreen initiative focused on continual evaluation and optimization of every aspect of the Liquid platform.

Moving into 2020 this initiative will be on-going as we strive to streamline Liquid to improve performance, reduce computational usage, lower latency, improved user experience and more.

Other smaller initiatives that fall under this category include: