The Dash network has sponsored a US-wide bus tour with Max Keiser for $500,000, the largest cryptocurrency sponsorship to date.
Dubbed the Great American Pilgrimage, Max Keiser and Stephen Baldwin of popular media channel RT will embark on a road trip across America in early September, producing 16 episodes of a show documenting the trip. This show will reach RT’s global audience of 700 million, 85 million of those in the US. The sponsorship is for $500,000, the largest such cryptocurrency-only deal in the relatively short history of the technology.
Dash Core team member and respected community member Jeff Smith submitted the proposal, and will safeguard the funds to ensure that they properly reach their end destination, with updates to become available at GreenCandle.io. Smith was recently involved with the $10,000 Dash giveaway to the contestant who successfully guessed the outcome of the Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing match.
A sponsorship only made possible by Dash’s unique system
According to Keiser, it was this unique treasury function, that first drew his attention to Dash from the early Darkcoin days:
“I’m a fan of splitting the block reward and creating a funding pool. The Dash story and how it morphed in 2014 to support crypto ideas that were talked about but not happening necessarily with Bitcoin showed great entrepreneurial efforts can move the needle and create new applications and markets. Innovation is cool. Especially when it works.”
Keiser reports being approached by other projects for sponsorships, but ultimately Dash won out with a little push from its enthusiastic community:
“Many other coins approached us, and we had discussions going on but then this video dropped and within a few days we were funded.”
The most vocal community voice for the sponsorship was Dash Force’s own Mark Mason, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to broker the deal. According to Mason, this feat was only possible because of Dash’s decentralized governance system, which gives the weight of a large corporation behind decentralized community decisions:
“We’re actually making history right now with this sponsorship. This is the biggest budget proposal ever in blockchain history to date! The power of Dash is that we we’re the first DAO in cryptocurrency which means we’re totally decentralized. From governance to treasury, all major issues are governed and voted on by the Dash Masternode network.”
A springboard to mass awareness
As a result of the awareness that the Great American Pilgrimage will bring, Keiser sees a long-term “virtuous cycle” of rises in attention following rises in price and themselves giving way to new price rises:
“I think my friend Trace Mayer’s analysis on Crypto adoption is the best. He talks about the 7 network effects with higher prices being number 1. Fact is, higher prices bring media attention which in turn bring higher prices. This might be a problem if cryptos were not essentially Gold 2.0, but they are. So this virtuous cycle won’t end until cryptos grab at least 20% of Gold’s market so we’re talking close to $2 trillion.”
Mason sees this as a nexus of the message of true financial freedom with the traditional American culture of liberty and self-reliance, a culture which should resonate greatly with the tour:
“Many of the problems and divides in America today revolve around political, monetary and social issues. DASH is digital cash and is totally decentralized, as DASH is community based and governed we’re the perfect partner for this road trip. DASH is true to the values of freedom, liberty and independence. Essentially all the ingredients the Great American Pilgrimage road trip sets out to explore.”
As to what to expect from this sponsorship, Keiser remained succinct:
“I’m Max Keiser, damn it!”
