The contents of this newsletter are point-in-time statements. Please note the date of publication.

July 5, 2022

Welcome to our new monthly newsletter from the Qoin Association where we update the community on the Qoin Project and all things Qoin. Our five community leaders will also publish a regular newsletter to update the community on the progress of each group.

In this first monthly edition, we are sharing with the community the highlights from the latest Qoin Association Annual General Meeting (AGM) director’s update for the 12 months to 30 June 2022.

“We share with you an update of the past 12 months, being the second year of the Qoin project.  We cover the progress made, challenges and disappointments, as well as some plans for the next 6 months.

As we embark into our third year as a trading community, we are proud of what has been achieved but at the same time a little apprehensive of the great task ahead.

The Qoin community has grown to approximately 38,000 businesses and more than 40,000 other wallets across Australia, New Zealand and recently United Kingdom, Singapore, and South Africa.

Let’s start to celebrate some key milestones achieved.

The next chapter for Qoin is all about democratising the Qoin project towards a global community-owned Decentralised Autonomous Organisation. This means that the project will become fully automated, and the global community will vote for key decisions on technology development and governance. The first round of voting commenced on 23 December 2021 and closed a month later, on Monday 24 January 2022. This gave the community enough time to deliberate and discuss amongst each other.

The Qoin community cast their votes on 10 important project matters. We want to thank each of the hundreds of voters for the time you took to cast your vote.

The community overwhelmingly voted YES to all 10 proposals. This gives a clear mandate for the project teams to immediately commence the work to meet the timelines as per the proposals.

We will be communicating frequently to update you on the progress made. The first open merchant community chat zoom meeting commenced on Thursday 2 February 2022 at 10am AEST. This was the start of regular chats on the first Thursday of every month to improve and scale the merchant experience globally. On the home page of your wallet – Press the HELP button and click on “Monthly Qoin Community Chat”

After this first vote a page was planned through your wallet for any community member to propose a motion or suggestion for consideration by peer group review – Press the HELP button and click on “Propose a motion or suggestion” or view here >>>

During February and March this year the community voted for 5 x Group Leaders and 5 x deputies to lead the 5 key community groups that will cover:

1. Standards and conduct of community members
2. Merchant fair trading practices
3. Technology developments
4. Special new projects
5. International expansion and merchant acquisition

These community leaders meet monthly and have met in April, May and June and have presented a framework plan to be built upon that should be ready to launch to the wider community around September this year. The groups are passionate and highly motivated to make a positive impact – Press the HELP button and click on “Community Groups & Leaders” or you can view here >>>

The first digital bridge and its interface has been completed over the past few months and the smart contracts have passed audit. The bridge has been hooked up to the Qoin wallet, the Qoin blockchain as well as to the Ethereum main network.

On 22 December 2021 the very first Qoin was wrapped successfully onto the Ethereum testnet. For security reasons the wrap testing continued to the Ethereum testnet through to April 2022.

A beta testing period was announced. Based on the voting results this beta phase of the wrapping would be an orderly invitation to preference groups over six months. The first preference group being the merchants were invited in March followed by the Package and Block buyers in April, the suppliers, agents and ambassadors in May and the starting batch to the rest of the community in June.

In May the first Qoin was successfully wrapped by BTX onto the Ethereum main net. On 7 June the first 50 merchants were successfully wrapped, and wrapping has continued since. We have now had approximately a hundred merchants owning their first wQoin.

Whilst the beta testing is taking place the Qoin Association and community leaders will conclude investigations and negotiations with preferred market makers, centralised and decentralised exchanges, liquidity pools and other protocols. The objective of these discussions will be to give Wrapped Qoin (wQoin) holders more available options to participate in the much larger crypto world, with an audience now reported in the media to exceed 200 million wallet holders – Press the HELP button and click on “Wrap Qoin – Important Information” or you can view here >>> 

During the past 12 months Perry Jenks has resigned as a Qoin Association councillor and was replaced by Ras Manickan. Ras is a certified public accountant (CPA) with over 25 years of financial and accountants experience. Mark Atkinson has accepted the role as a new Councillor. Mark is a 25- year technology veteran with expertise in infrastructure, security and blockchain. We thank Perry for his contribution as one of the first councillors and wish Ras and Mark well in their important duties.

The Qoin community has now reached 100,000 wallet downloads across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and South Africa.

Over the last 12 months to May 2022, the Qoin community has transacted 154 million Qoins in 285,000 transactions between wallets.

After more than 35,000 businesses registered as merchants in the first 18 months, this astounding growth has slowed the last six months due to the following key reasons:

1. The controls of validating merchants were tightened significantly
2. The “report” button was switched on to educate merchants reported as “not trading”. If required, non-trading merchant’s status are transferred to consumer status and removed from the merchant count.
3. The class action proceedings by a Gold Coast law firm whose managing partner, owner and director is also the founder and CEO of a crypto currency exchange. Less than 0.5% of community members have registered to participate – see the full article titled “Qoin Community Rejects Class Action” here>>>
4. The agents force reducing due to lack of sufficient earnings and tighter compliance controls
5. Negative social media often driven by the usual playbook of trolls and competitors who discredit valid content and spread disinformation using fake accounts and pseudonyms to promote their agendas.

This is the main reason why the Qoin wallet value has remained relatively stable over most of the past 6 months.

We are working very hard on alternative digital ways to attract new merchants to the community in a compliant way. Twenty new videos have been created into an automated merchant onboarding strategy launched in late June. A merchant referral incentive was introduced for the current community to refer their favourite store, restaurant, tradie or business – Press the HELP button and click on “Merchant Referral Incentive” or view here >>>

Billzy Pay has commenced to supply eligible Australian Qoin merchants with finance facilities from $50,000 to $250,000. Billzy has a sophisticated payments platform that will also provide Visa and Mastercard debit card, direct debit and B Pay services to merchants. We will look at finance providers for merchants in other countries in the next year. For Australians – Press the HELP button and click on “Product Replacement Finance Flyer” or view here >>>

It is very important for us to be able to communicate effectively with the whole community. In February 2021 we established QDN (Qoin Digital Network) to bring a weekly news service of everything Qoin and Crypto. In May 2021 the Q mag quality seasonal magazine was first published sharing news, plans as well as inspiring merchant and community stories.

We have also been using Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, email, and text to reach the community. We will soon add in-app notifications, push notifications, Telegram, and a Discord channel. We trust this will attract more engagement from the community as we decentralise – Press the HELP button and click on “QDN”, or “Q Mag”.

Crypto regulation, anti-money laundering and personal identification requirements have increased significantly over the past year as crypto investment enters the mainstream. The Qoin Association has been navigating this progress to ensure that the Qoin project is compliant wherever it operates. We are pleased to report that both the Apple and Android devices now have automated KYC functionality.

There are rapid-changing regulatory landscapes. The Australian government has published their crypto regulatory consultation paper on 21 March 2022 titled “Crypto asset secondary service providers: Licensing and custody requirement”. Public comment and consultations closed on 27 May 2022. We are expecting new Crypto regulation to pass parliament within the next 12 months.

As has been widely reported in the media over the past month or two the public crypto markets have experienced significant decline in prices of almost 70% from the highs of November 2021.  The public crypto crash was caused by the failure of various high – profile crypto projects as well as macro – economic factors which have negatively impacted the wider technology sector. Crypto markets have stabilised over the past two weeks. Commentators have confirmed that only crypto’s with real feasible utility use cases will prevail in the future.

Thank you to our Association Members and the Qoin community for your support over the past 12 months and we look forward to an exciting year of trading by our community.