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When Stockhouse Editorial last caught up with
Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc.(LQID) (
CSE.LQID,
OTCMKTS: LQAVF,
Forum), the company had just launched their new Liquid Avatar App in the Apple Store and Google Play along with game-changing Non-Fungible Tokens and Augmented Reality-Enhanced Non-Fungible Tokens.
In this fascinating video Q&A follow-up interview, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson reconnected with Liquid Avatar Technologies’ Chief Executive Officer David Lucatch to get our investor audience up-to-date with new company developments, its recent partnership with the Indicio Network Consortium, and the long-term strategy for the company moving into 2021 and beyond.
SH: A lot has gone on with the company since we last caught up in January, David. Can you update our investor audience and your Liquid Avatar shareholders on all the new company developments?
DL: Wow. So that's a loaded question, it's probably several many releases ago, but generally speaking the company has met its objectives as we move forward. Our whole mandate has been to set a stake in the ground andthen reach that milestone and really for usit was launching the liquid avatar mobile app, which we did in February. We said that we're going to launch four phases of the product for the initial launch. We did thatand now Dave, we're in the process of gathering all the feedback from that initial launch of finding out what we can do better. We have just around 20,000 downloads, which I think is good. I'd like them to be much larger and I think we could be a much larger.
However, what we didn't want to do is really pushed the envelope until we knew what people liked and what people didn't like because you've got to be responsive, especially in this industry. So we're doing a revamp right now. We're continuing with the product as it is, and we expect to have a new version of the product out probably by mid September-ish. So for usthat'll mean a really good product based on what people honestly loved and didn't like, so I think that's really important. The other thing that came to light in the last several months has been the fact that although we are very focused on the consumer market for digital identityas everyone knows, we didn't want to forget our business opportunities or business to business opportunities. So we're launching a number of products that are going to power businesses that want to issue digital credentials or verifiable credentials and want to verify verifiable credentials.
Now, what that means is if you think about the ecosystem for digital identity, there are really three players. The first being the holder, someone who actually holds that credential like your eye. Then there is someone who issues the credential, someone who like an organization, like a government or a bank that issues this verifiable credential. Then there is the third party that wants to verify that credential and wants to know that you are vaccinated, that you are negative tested, and you have a credential approve it. So we were in an amazing position to be able to create additional products that are SAS based or software asservice, you have potential reoccurring revenue opportunities for especially the smaller, medium sized enterprises that don't or can't spend the resources or don't have the resources to invest in the blockchain industry. So we're there to support them.
SH: For investors new to Liquid Avatar, what’s the company and its technology all about?
DL: Well it's actually rather simple. We're in the business of empowering users and now businesses to manage and control digital identity and so what does that really mean? Well, we've got a regular identity that we use every day in the real world but as we use more and more mobile applications and internet technology, the identity side of the business has been pretty much a forgotten entity primarily because the technology wasn't there. So with blockchain technology, companies like ours have emerged very quickly and we've been doing this now for four years, but we've accelerated in recent days very quickly to be able to support this new part of the economy, the new part of the digital economy. If you think about it, everyone online who was active as a real person, so everyone could use digital identity, which makes the addressable market for digital identitythe ability to now be able to control my own identity and use it as I see fitand personal data. That's addressable to 100% of the online market. So in North America, that's over 320 million people and globally that's 5 billion people. So we have to be a player in the industry not the player in the industry to do well in our humble opinion.
SH: You just announced you’ve joined the Indicio Network Consortium to drive global adoption of decentralized identity. Can you expand on this initiative for our investor audience?
DL: Indicio has been a partner of ours for quite some time. They're supporting the build of our digital wallet platform and we've been part of the Indicio network andwe're actually a founder and a steering committee member of the Indicio network which also has cardia, which is part of the Linux foundation, public health project. So we're all involved in that network. There's about 21 of us as partners. We're all involved in promoting the open standards of digital identity and what that means is while we allsome days are compliment or some days cooperators and some days co competitors, we're working together to make sure that the establishment of open standards are available. So everyone is using the same standards to move identity.
So that makes it interoperable and if you think about that just for a second, it's like when ATMs first came out, there were different networks. Although they do operate in different networks, Visa might operate a different network than MasterCard and Chase or TB or CIBC or Bank of America might offer different networks. They have open standards in which allow all the ATMs to communicate. So we're using the same type of open standards to create those protocols for identity and Indicio is one of the networks were actually involved in leadership at many different well-established networks and foundations but in Indicio is important to us because we think that there's a great group of partners there that can help move the needle in things like public health, where identity can be used to supportyour own personal health initiatives, whether it's testing or credentials or patient data. We work with other organizations as well that do that but that's why we joined the Indicio network.
SH: You’ve recently launched trading on the OTCQB. This may be news to many investors. Can you unpack the benefits of it?
DL: Sure. when we did our reverse takeover last June of 2020, we were very fortunate that the company came with a US symbol, although that was what wetraditionally called pink or gray market trading and we knew as we havein previous companies, we knew we wanted to be able to affect opportunities in the US markets but on the CSE, we're not going to be on NASDAQ right away. I mean I can't tell you that is a goal or aspiration, but obviously like any company we'd like to be on NASDAQ someday. At the end of the day knowing the people at the OTC markets, we met with them, and we made application and I would have liked to have done this earlier and so did the team, but we effected a name change from KABN to Liquid Avatar in the middle of the process. So it took us a little bit longer but what it does is it opens up opportunities in the US. The OTC markets has great region into many different states and many different brokerage systems. So it now allows us investors to start to freely buy Liquid Avatar shares on the U S markets.
SH: The Company looks set for strong growth metrics in 2021. How are you placed to expand operations?
DL: I think we're well-placed, Dave. We have all our technology assets in what I would think are in really good shape. I mean, there's still building to be done but we're really in good shape and we're in either liveor demonstration versions of our software’s right now. There is another part of our software that's coming out a bit later this year that we were not ready to start talking about yet, but I think we're well positioned for strong growth through the rest of 2021 and accelerating hopefully that in 2022, we believe that we have an opportunity to be a significant industry player in the digital identity space.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect with your mobile app and augmented reality platforms.
DL: For the mobile app,as I mentioned a bit earlier in this conversation that we're really have taken a lot of great feedback. I mean we're marketers first and technologist second, so we've taken a lot of feedback and we've brought in a great firm to help us look at our user experience or user interfaces and so I think the users and new users can expect to see something really new and exciting in September.Now that's hard to say because we only launched in February, butwe didn't want to take a long time to get user feedback and the best way to have gotten user feedback was to actually launch in market.Soif we're going to takeany positive or negative comments, you want to do it right away and in the vast majority of the comments were positive, but we knew there's things we could do better.
Plus both Apple and Google were changing the privacy policies. Now we're always in compliance with that but that meant a change in tracking a change in a lot of different ways to do things and we've updated that immediately. So with our mobile app, we're also bringing out a series of new augmented reality opportunities, especially with our NFT division Oasis digital studios and so you're going to see a new application forthcoming for augmented realitywith that organization as well. So we really think that augmented reality and we've got a few surprises that we can't talk about yet and yes, Stockhouse will be among the first to know hopefully the first, but among the first to know there's some really cool things coming with augmented reality, and we're really excited about that as well.
SH: I have to mention your stock has had a been on a bit of a roller coaster ride over the past 12 months. What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it’s a good buy right now?
DL: Well we opened up at about 15 cents. We built our first phases last year and we stayed around that mark until we did quite a bitof marketing and awareness starting in January and, really, we exploded, But then, as every company that does financing, we had to face the reality of stock coming off a four month hold and that usually is a challenge. That coupled with sort of a malaise or a down-turning in the microcap markets has affected not only ourselves, but others, as well. So I think the company personally has progressed well through last two quarters and so if you look at the company on a progressive basis as a business all you do is see growth opportunities. So I thinkas anygood CEO would say I think we're well undervalued personally. When the opportunity has arisen, I've actually purchased additional shares and I've cashed warrants in because I am personally under an escrow, some of those warrants that have cash has got to go back into escrow even though I paid for cash. So I'm very bullish on the company as is management and our core team. So I think it's worth a look. Everyone should always do their own due diligence and they should consider very carefully any investments and they should talk to an investment professional, but I think if you look at the industry and where we're going, we're well positioned for future growth.
SH: What’s the long-term strategy for the company moving into 2021 and beyond, and what retail and institutional investors should be looking out for?
DL: Well, I think the trend in this case, the trend is our friend. When we start lookingat the broader market in terms of where governments are going, where industries are going, I mean we're seeing a massive amount of talk about vaccination passports and digital credential and health records. So we're in the eye of that particular vortex right now. I meanwe're involved heavily in the industry but we're also looking at education, you know, password replacement, all kinds of different sectors, e-commerce travel. SoI think again, we're well positioned for growth through the next and this year and beyond and I think strategically what the company is looking at is fixing a position within the SME market and the consumer market to ensure that those markets are taken care of because there is no lack of resources with major corporations like financial institutions that can bring in large teams and internal resources to power digital credentials, digital wallets, but what do all the apps do? What do all the small and medium size enterprises do? What are all the factories do that want to bring staff back? What are thetourism agencies around the world dothat don't have these resources and we're building turnkey solutions for digital identity and for verification and for consumers that allow these people to power up and use these services at a fraction of the cost that they would be if they tried to build it on their own?
SH: Can you tell our audience a little bit about your corporate management and board teams, along with the experience and innovative ideas they bring to the
A-R / digital I-D space?
DL: Yeah, I mean, Dave, I'm working with the best group of people I've ever worked with in my life. It'sjust amazing.I will say that we started as a remote organization, and we remain a remote organization and we will remain aremote organization and now we're global. We have staffand teams around the world. So we're very fortunate. Theleadership teamis amazing. Everyone should just take a look atour background, and you knownot that this is material or not, but I've just recently been named to the Forbes business council. So we've got a really interesting team and I'm very honored by that distinction. So there's been a lot of us that have had successful access. We've had challenges and we've learned from our challenges andour boardis small but healed but if you look at our industry advisory committee, we've got phenomenal people around us that are help providingnot day-to-day guidance, but general guidanceandan acumen around what we're doing togive us an outsider's view, a bird's eye view of the industryand their industries. So we're learning a lot as we go, as the old saying goes, you're never too old to learn and we continue to learn every day and at the same time, we're helping others learn and we're blazing trails for others to follow.
SH: And finally, David, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked please feel free to elaborate.
DL: No, Dave, I think you've covered everything, but about the kitchen sink.
For regular updates, visit
liquidavatar.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.