Liquid News

For the benefit of newcomers to the space.

Peer to peer transactions are directly from user A to user B. It does not go through silly middleman like Banks, Liquid or Lightning Network.

With Blockstream's Liquid, they are aiming to have BTC transactions going through Liquid. Where there is a middle man, it becomes a matter of time when they will milk money from the BTC cash cows (I mean BTC users). It becomes Banks 2.0, no longer peer to peer.

This was Blockstream's plan all along. Intentionally create an artificial problem and then come up with a solution that they can make money from.

If you don't like that, just use Bitcoin Cash, the peer to peer cash for the whole world. Avoid banks, avoid middleman, be in total control of your own money, for freedom and liberation, use Bitcoin Cash. =)

For the benefit of newcomers to the space.

Peer to peer transactions are directly from user A to user B. It does not go through silly middleman like Banks, Liquid or Lightning Network.

With Blockstream's Liquid, they are aiming to have BTC transactions going through Liquid. Where there is a middle man, it becomes a matter of time when they will milk money from the BTC cash cows (I mean BTC users). It becomes Banks 2.0, no longer peer to peer.

This was Blockstream's plan all along. Intentionally create an artificial problem and then come up with a solution that they can make money from.

If you don't like that, just use Bitcoin Cash, the peer to peer cash for the whole world. Avoid banks, avoid middleman, be in total control of your own money, for freedom and liberation, use Bitcoin Cash. =)

According to Blockstream's press release these are the companies involved in Liquid, and one presumes a BTC-Liquid user would need to trust over 50% of them to not be bad actors:-

The Liquid blockchain went live with the first block generated on September 27, 2018 at 1:29 UTC. 23 of the cryptocurrency industry’s biggest players participated in the launch as Liquid members, including Altonomy, Atlantic Financial, Bitbank, Bitfinex, Bitmax, BitMEX, Bitso, BTCBOX, BTSE, Buull Exchange, DGroup, Coinone, Crypto Garage, GOPAX (operated by Streami), Korbit, L2B Global, OKCoin, The Rock Trading, SIX Digital Exchange, Unocoin, Xapo, XBTO, and Zaif. Together, these members comprise the Liquid Network, ensuring users’ assets are protected through a geographically diverse network with no single point of failure.

So just who are these "biggest players" as someone involved in cypto since 2011 the majority I've never heard of. This is a work-in-progress list, please help to contribute info with sources.

Altonomy

Website: https://www.altonomy.com

Locations:

• 140 Broadway, New York, NY 10005, USA
• 10 Marina Boulevard, MBFC Tower 2, Singapore 018983
• Beijing.

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders:

• Bo Dong (CEO). Prev jobs: FBG Capital, Mega Credit, Louis Dreyfus Company
• Ricky Li (Head of N. America) Prev jobs: Crypto Trading, CME Group, PwC

Atlantic Financial

Website: http://atlanticfinancial.com

Location: Norwell Executive Center, 167 Washington St, Norwell, MA 02061, USA

Corporate Info: ?

CoinMarketCap: No Listed

Leaders: Bruce Fenton ( http://www.atlanticfinancial.com/about-atlantic-financial/about-atlantic-financial.htm )

Interesting info: Their client login is broken, and appears to be over insecure HTTP even if it did work. Technical prowness: 0

Further investigation:

If you load up https://atlanticfinancial.com you'll see it uses a self-signed certificate, which has a Common Name of "atlanticfinancial.brucefenton.org". So we load up http://brucefenton.org and what do we see:-

"Bruce Fenton is the Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, the largest and oldest Bitcoin non-profit group. The Bitcoin Foundation focuses on advocacy, education and helping core development and has over 20 global chapters. Bruce is also an investor, consultant and advisor in the Bitcoin space, founder of the Bitcoin Association and is the organizer of the Dubai Bitcoin Conference and the Satoshi Roundtable retreat.

He is the founder of Atlantic Financial which, in 1994, became the first full-service investment firm to use the Internet. Prior to Atlantic Financial, Bruce was with Morgan Stanley and specialized in emerging technologies and emerging markets. He is also Managing Director of a company which focuses on emerging markets, economic, Bitcoin and tech consulting."

Hey /u/bruce_fenton can you confirm your corporate trading name please because I think I was confusing you guys with Atlantic Financial of Boston, MA. Thank you.

Bitbank

Website: https://bitbank.cc

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitbank/

Leaders: Japanese site. Must translate

Interesting info: Trades 15 times more XRP than BTC!

Bitfinex

Website: https://www.bitfinex.com

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitfinex/

Leaders: Lots of info out there regarding Bitfinex, the creators of Tether

Bitmax

Website: https://bitmax.io

CoinMarketCap: No Listed

Leaders: ? Singapore exchange.

BitMEX

Website: https://www.bitmex.com

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitmex/ (deriratives market)

Leaders: TODO

Bitso

Website: https://bitso.com/

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitso/

Leaders: TODO

Interesting info: Less than 1 million dollars volume in 24h. Tiny.

BTCBOX

Website: https://www.btcbox.co.jp/

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/btcbox/

Leaders: TODO

BTSE

Website: https://www.btse.com

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders: TODO

Info: Not even launched yet! United Arab Emirates

Buull Exchange

Website: https://www.buull.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BUULLexchange Twitter followers: 2 (hehe these are big players as Chairman Mow stated)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buullexchange/ (3 likes)

Appear to be Italian, with official registration in Malta. Not much info at all. All I can find is /r/buull/ and /r/buullexchange/ Hey /u/dn2k who are Buull Exchange?

DGroup

Website: https://d.group

Zhao Dong, guy who lost 6000 BTC and Bitfinex shareholder (Bitfinex also on the list which seems to smell a little bit). https://www.blockasia.io/dgroup-zhao-dong-blockchain-is-more-than-just-a-simple-technology/

He is the guy telling the world that bitfinex is safe... "trust him"... https://news.bitcoin.com/vouching-bitfinex-and-tethers-bank-accounts-hold-nearly-3-billion-usd/

Also if you look at their website (which takes ages to load) you'll see Dong is not only invested in bitfinex, but OK Coin too who also appear on this list. So is this list of 23 companies (23 federated nodes to trust) actually 21 real decision makers which is even worse?

Dong's Twitter: https://twitter.com/zhaodong1982

Coinone

Website: https://coinone.co.kr/

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinone/

Leaders: TODO

Crypto Garage (Digital Garage ?)

Website: https://www.garage.co.jp

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders: TODO

GOPAX

Website: https://www.gopax.co.kr

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gopax/

Leaders: TODO

Info: Blockstream made a point to tell us that GOPAX is operated by "Streami" whoever they are.

Korbit

Website: https://www.korbit.co.kr

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/korbit/

Leaders: TODO

L2B Global

Website: https://l2b.global

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Info: Seriously lacking info about this company.

OK Coin

Website: https://www.okcoin.com/

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okcoin-intl/

Leaders: TODO

Info: Less than quarter of a million USD 24hr trading volume! Miniscule!

The Rock Trading

Website: https://therocktrading.com/

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/therocktrading/

Leaders: TODO

Info: $300,000 24hr trading volume!

SIX Digital Exchange

Website: https://www.six-group.com

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders: TODO

Info: According to https://www.six-group.com/en/site/digital-exchange.html comes out mid-2019.

Unocoin

Website: https://www.unocoin.com

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders: TODO

Info: Indian exchange

Xapo

Website: https://xapo.com

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders: C'mon we know Xapo!

XBTO

Website: http://www.xbto.com

Corporate Info: http://derivee.com appear to be the power behind this company. Delaware company XBTO TRADING, LLC file #5697413. XBTO VENTURES, LLC #6609461. XBTO MINING, LLC #6609466. XBTO FUTURES, LLC #6609463. XBTO CRYPTO INDEX FUND, LLC #6616045. XBTO CAPITAL, LP #6616040. XBTO CAPITAL GP, LLC #6616034

Location: 3 Columbus Circle, Suite 1735, New York, New York 10019

CoinMarketCap: Not Listed

Leaders (refers to derivee unless stated):-

• Philipe Bekhazi (CEO)
• Jeffry Caplan (COO)
• Brice Wilson (COO of XBTO)
• Walton Comer (CIO)

Zaif

Website: https://zaif.jp

CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/zaif/

Leaders: TODO

TLDR: I wouldn't buy a second-hand car from 90% of these companies. Other comments: The majority of these companies (over 51%) are tiny. It seems it would only cost a few million to create many of these unheard of companies over the years (remember BlockTheStream have had this planned for over 4 years) and thus control total consensus of the system.

Who's responsible for the software updates? Blockstream. Is there any sort of forking mechanism where an exchange could say "I don't want to run the new version" - what the heck would happen there? One would imagine they'd be black-balled by Blockstream.

What happens when authorities get involved and go to Blockstream and request either access or changes etc.. ? They've already tried to get Linus Torvalds to introduce backdoors into Linux, but as a man of character he refused. Do you guys think Adam Back is a man of character?

So you need to trust Blockstream (total centralization) and you need to trust the majority of the exchanges. Good luck with that.