What is Bitcoin’s Liquid sidechain and why does it matter?

On October 10th, the Blockstream social media channels announced the successful launch of the Liquid Network. In a nutshell, the project is a Bitcoin sidechain whose birth is due to a collaboration between Blockstream and 23 of the biggest institutional players from the industry. At a quick glance, one can spot on the list of participating entities names like Bitfinex, BitMEX, Coinone, OKCoin, and Xapo.
All of these parters have been picked carefully in order to create a geographically-diverse n