TRAKI, a large department store chain throughout Venezuela, has started to accept Dash and other cryptocurrencies, which furthers a growing trend in the country.

Last month, TRAKI tweeted that they are accepting cryptocurrencies as payment; Dash, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. More recently, reddior ImViTo and her Twitter account recently posted a video of her purchasing 884 school supply items for the equivalent of $260 USD in Bitcoin at TRAKI. The money for her purchases was actually raised through the Reddit community and she posted the transaction ID so individuals could verify that the transaction occurred.

TRAKI has been in Venezuela over 30 years and operates 49 branches across numerous cities that sell items ranging from fashion to food and cookware; ImViTo compared it to the “Wal-Mart” of Venezuela in her video. The transaction occurred among the backdrop of Venezuelans looking for solutions to their currency crisis caused by extreme hyperinflation.

Venezuelans turn to Dash and cryptocurrency for solutions

Hyperinflation in Venezuela is projected to go above 1 million percent by the end of 2018, which is causing Venezuelans to look towards more realistic currency and payment alternatives that they can use in everyday purchases. Dash is providing that solution with its acceptance at over 2,200 merchants throughout the country, which is rapidly growing. Tu Pana Charcuter, an online grocery store that even offers discounts to those that pay in Dash, is just one example of Dash helping Venezuelans escape economic and fiscal calamity while they make everyday necessary purchases. The impact that Dash is having on Venezuela is so large that Rodrigo Ambrissi of Dash Brazil filmed a documentary of the progress Dash is making towards large-scale adoption and how Dash is helping improve the lives of ordinary Venezuelans.

Dash enables these everyday purchases for commonplace items thanks to its extremely inexpensive transaction costs. Dash’s median transaction fee is around $0.0005 USD and during the most recent stress test of over 3 million transactions in 24 hours that fee hovered around $0.03 USD. This is all for transactions that fit into 2.6 minute blocks, however, InstantSend, which locks in transactions in just over 1 second will soon be available at no additional cost for all transactions on the network with 4 inputs or less. This speed and transaction fee is among the best, and some even consider it to be the best, in the cryptocurrency sector, which is all too important for merchants that cannot wait 10 minutes or more for a transaction to confirm nor want to risk a doublespend attack.

Usability is the differentiator when speculation disappears

The cryptocurrency market fiat exchange prices are in a steep decline, and thus many individuals are starting to reevaluate different cryptocurrencies when compared to their evaluations made earlier in the year when all prices were increasing. Since a product’s value can be argued to be the sum of its speculative value and its real usable value, once speculation leaves a market, all that is left is real value. Thus, many coins that saw price appreciation earlier in the year due to speculation, are now struggling since they have no significant real usable value to support their price and usage once the speculation disappeared.

Dash separates itself from its peers by focusing on usability in everyday purchases since it recognizes this as key to adoption and usage despite fiat exchange price movements. Additionally, Dash not only enables everyday usability with its code, but also can encourage adoption by funding community outreach groups through its treasury to educate individuals how to use Dash and how Dash can benefit them. This is also key since great technology does not always mean adoption if consumers do not know about it, cannot learn about it, or the UX/UI is not built with the consumer in mind. Dash harnesses these attributes to inspire confidence among Dash users and deliver decentralized and peer-to-peer sound money at all levels of supply chains, which begins to mitigate its dependence on fiat exchange price levels.