The EQO Story
Singapore-based digital assets financial services firm Diginex has launched the EQUOS Origin (EQO) token. This makes it the first Nasdaq-listed company to issue its own cryptocurrency. Notably, Diginex is not selling the EQO token to raise capital. Instead, users can only earn the token by trading on Diginex’s own crypto exchange EQUOS.
They can also earn the coin by staking on the exchange. A minority portion of the daily allocation will be sent to the EQUOS treasury. According to the announcement, the coin lacking an offering or mining capacities is in line with EQUOS’s “values of transparency, fairness, and equality.”
The EQO “Utilities”
Apart from reducing fees for trading on EQUOS, EQO will have multiple other “utilities.” EQUOS plans to enable borrowing and lending later in the year. When it does, EQO-holders can use the coin as collateral for derivative margining. EQO will also boost yields on assets held in Digivault, EQUOS’s integrated wallet custodian. EQO-holders will also be entitled to future utility tokens when they are issued.
The tokens primary purpose is to bring people to the platform and retain them, says CEO Richard Byworth. He also noted that deep liquidity and consistent volume growth were critical components for large institutional investors. “EQUOS Origin is being issued specifically to drive activity, volume, and balances on the platform. It has been carefully designed to incentivize traders for trading and holders for holding and bringing balances to the platform,” he explained.
The Details Released
Diginex token, EQO, will have a finite supply of 21 million tokens. The figure is an homage to Bitcoin, which will also be capped at 21 million coins. Although, in the case of EQO they will not be mined. Rather, the exchange will distribute EQO on a daily basis through “Reward Blocks”. These will occur over a two-year “Issuance Period”. Also similar to Bitcoin, EQO will have a regular supply reduction, which will happen every 90 Reward Blocks. EQO will launch with 11 Reward Blocks on April 8.
Recently, Byworth mentioned the launch of the coin during an interview with Bloomberg. He also noted that it would be the first time an exchange issued a token without offering it for sale. During the same interview, he highlighted that his company projected that Bitcoin would likely reach $175,000 by the end of the year.
