Bisq announced that it would be adding Dash as a base currency on its platform soon, drawing ire and boycott threats from communities of other coins.

Formerly known as Bitsquare, Bisq is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange and trading platform. While it supports hundreds of different currencies, few are employed as main markets with fiat trading pairs. Earlier this month, Bisq announced the addition of Litecoin and Dogecoin as base currencies, as well as Dash coming soon, likely in conjunction with the release of multisig support.

Voices in both Litecoin and Monero communities now calling for Bisq boycott

While this announced integration was well-received in the Dash community, the same cannot be said for elsewhere in the cryptosphere. The Monero community in particular, typically a big fan of Bisq, threatened a boycott or fork of the platform if the plan to add Dash as a base currency moved forward:

Why a long time fan of Bisq/Bitsquare sadly is considering pulling her support for moral/philosophical reasons. from Monero

The comment thread reached 87 comments in length, and includes a clear consensus of hostility against Dash, mostly calling it a “scam.” Bisq reiterated its position of cryptocurrency agnosticism, maintaining that they support hundreds of coins on their platform and are not in the businesses of picking favorites:

“We are luckily not the ethics police who decide which currency is ethically correct and not. Ok there are completely clear scams like OneCoin, which we would never support but beside those we are tolerant even if we have personally our own opinions.”

The opposition continued in another thread, this time an innocent one on the Litecoin subreddit about that currency being added as a base currency for Bisq as well. Spearheaded by the same Monero fan who started the previous controversy, that 25-comment thread, despite being for a post about Litecoin in the Litecoin subreddit, nonetheless mentions Dash specifically in 15 of those comments:

Not the first time Dash-accepting businesses have received threats

This is far from the first or only instance of businesses receiving hate because of their use of Dash. In late 2015, virtual private network provider BolehVPN added Dash as a payment option, and was subject to aggression from the Monero community as a result. This caused BolehVPN to release a post specifically calling out the threats they had received, and even indicated they would not accept Monero as a payment option as a result:

“More importantly, I have personally witnessed many of Monero’s representatives employing questionable marketing tactics that often involve trolling and bullying and as such we have decided not to accept it at this point in time as a matter of principle. We even received a strongly worded anonymous warning to threaten to boycott and spread negative publicity about us if we continued to accept Dash. We strongly believe in healthy competition and hope that Monero’s official team takes a stronger stance in regulating its spokespersons (even if they may be on paper unofficial). We look forward to accepting Monero once these problems are rectified.”

Since then, members of the Monero community reached out to BolehVPN to offer a more cordial approach than had been attempted previously.