Leadership in Dash and prominent projects, including Neptune Dash, have continued to personally invest in the projects throughout the bear market, indicating faith in their long-term viability.

Dash Trust protector and Dash Force Director of Media and PR Mark Mason has long believed in Dash and has continued to buy throughout the various market cycles, indicating that he had taken advantage of recent dips”

“Did I add to my Dash holdings in recent dip? Absolutely! I’m very bullish on Dash for a number reasons. I believe it’s a strong buy not only from a technical analysis indicator and moving averages perspective but most importantly the utility and payment solution Dash provides.”

https://twitter.com/StayDashy/status/1134443302831501312

Other employees of the Dash DAO have similarly indicated to be buying during the bear market as well. During an episode of the Dash Podcast at the end of last year, Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor indicated that he had also invested at the project during this period:

“Well, obviously the price can’t go to zero. I’m disclosing that I am buying right now at these levels. I’m actively buying on a regular basis, so I think there’s a lot of people like me who have a lot of faith in the project, and as along as there are people with faith in the project, people who are willing to contribute their time, invest, obviously it’s not going to go away.”

For the past few months, Dash was trading in the $80 USD to the low $100 USD range and then the exchange price increased to the $110 to $130 USD range, all significantly off of its December 2017 peak of over $1,600. Dash then had a spike to above $150 USD and then to above $170 USD, before most recently retreating to the $160 USD level as other cryptocurrencies also experienced a pull back.

(Ryan Taylor quote above at 07:08 video timestamp)

Dash masternode company Neptune Dash’s leadership has similarly reinvested in the company

Neptune Dash, a publicly-traded company that runs Dash masternodes and additionally enables its holders to be invested in these masternodes and their respective rewards, has similarly faced a price dip roughly following that of Dash. However, the founders have indicated that they have also personally invested in the company during price declines. As a sign of the company’s confidence, the publicly available filings of the COO, CFO, CEO provided to Dash News shows that all of them have only acquired and not sold any of their stocks in 2018 and 2019. Neptune Dash’s CFO, Troy Wong, talked about how this helped Dash persevere through the crypto winter:

“We always believed in crypto and wanted to support the company through the winter. The best way to do that is purchasing the stock on the open market which is what we have done.”

A publicly-recognized sign of potential success that many investors look for in new technologies and businesses is how much of his/her own time and money the creator/owner has invested. This “skin-in-the-game” is a sign of potential success since the creator/owner knows the business the best, and thus, its potential, as well as having an incentive to make the project/business work.

Dash’s ambitious release schedule signifies a strong future

Dash has included a strong schedule of major releases recently in the lead up to the Evolution upgrade. During 2019 alone, Dash had two major releases, version 0.13 and version 0.14, which both further enhances the network. The former introduced automatic InstantSend, Deterministic Masternode Lists to enable key delegation without revealing collateral keys, and enhancements to PrivateSend. The latter introduced ChainLocks, which further protects Dash against 51% attacks more than what other coins can currently offer.

Furthermore, Dash has version 1.0, also known as Evolution, in development and planned for release that will include overhauled features like Blockchain usernames and contact books. The combination of Dash development news, along with current Dash personalities investing more heavily in Dash, signals that there is confidence around its eventual success.