The world of commerce is ready to adopt a widely used reliable digital currency platform that enables shoppers or buyers to easily obtain global currency to spend at their favourite merchants in-store or online. Merchants on average have 25 to 35% capacity to engage new customers and are keen to accept global currency and reward these shoppers. Sellers continuously seek an edge on their competitors to attract new Buyers as their goods are no longer easily selling on existing marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.

Now is the time to create this new commercial digital currency built on a foundation of blockchain technology. The mission for Qoin is a commercial global currency platform that empowers millions of business owners, sellers and merchants to trade their Goods & Services with shoppers and buyers globally.

Qoin is made of three parts that will work together to create a more inclusive commerce system:

1. It is built on a secure, scalable and reliable blockchain
2. It is backed by the participating merchant’s supply of goods & services in a merchant ecosystem designed to give it intrinsic value
3. The Qoin Association, tasked with evolving and expanding the ecosystem, governs it.

The Qoin currency is built on the Qoin Blockchain, intended to address a global community of buyers and sellers of goods & services. The blockchain has been built on the world’s safest, robust and scalable interoperable technologies. It has been designed for millions of users to hold and transfer Qoins and hence the blockchain and wallets will be hosted in one of the world’s most secure environments.

To read more see below the overview of the Qoin Blockchain or the Technical Information.

The unit of currency is named a Qoin. Qoins will be accepted with confidence backed by the participating merchant’s supply of real goods and services in the ecosystem, creating trust in its intrinsic value. The minting and distribution of Qoins will be administered by the Qoin Reserve with the objective of continuously expanding the merchant base and preserving the value of Qoin over time. To read more see below the Qoin Reserve.

The Qoin Association is a membership organisation headquartered in Australia. The Association’s purpose is to provide a framework for governance of the Blockchain and Reserve. The Association’s membership is formed from the network of validator nodes that operate the Qoin Blockchain.

Members of the Qoin Association will consist of diverse and geographically spread businesses, not-for-profit and academic organisations.

The founding members of the association are Blockchain Investment Group Pty Ltd “BCI” and One Light Charity Foundation Public Trust “OLC”.

BCI is the owner of Bartercard International, the world’s largest goods and services retail trade exchange, with 21,000 business members and 40,000 cardholders in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Thailand. For over 32 years Bartercard has operated its private digital currency known as the Bartercard Trade Dollar, and its members have traded over US$10 Billion on its trading platform. Over this period of 32 years, Bartercard developed its proprietary centralised systems and is proud of its security record trusted by tens of thousands of merchants. See bartercard.com.au.

OLC is an Australian registered Charity Foundation for almost 10 years and partners with over 10,000 businesses to help combat extreme suffering in their local communities. OLC was one of the first registered charities in Australia with a payments checkout that accepts cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. For more information see onelightcharity.com.

BCI and OLC teams have played a key role in the creation of the Qoin Association and the Qoin Blockchain and will maintain a leadership role throughout 2020 and 2021. This will fast-track the initial success of the project due to BCI and OLC’s experience, skills, trust and credibility in the local business communities as well as their access to tens of thousands of members and cardholders.

To maintain the speed, scalability, stability and security required for transactions between buyers and sellers, the Association will in the future only grant access to credible independent validators to ensure a distributed and reliable blockchain. Unlike other blockchains that allow anybody, including bad actors, to operate validator nodes on their systems, Qoin Blockchain will be a Permissioned Distributed Blockchain.