This Week In Dash: October 29 – November 3

This week has been another fabulous week for Dash with some awesome news developments! Continue reading to get a summary of the week!

Dash Community Outreach of the Week:

• Dash Colombia Furthers Dash Adoption with Dash Conference: The Dash Colombia team hosted a conference this past weekend to educate current and new Dash users about the ecosystem. The event also allowed merchants to buy and sell locally made goods for Dash. However, the conference was an abnormal activity for Dash Colombia since they typical focus on their Invites (Invita) program that emphasizes getting new individuals setup with and using Dash wallets.
• Dash Embassy Thailand Focuses on Tourism Industry: The newly launched Dash Embassy Thailand is focusing adoption efforts on the large and rapidly growing tourism sector of Thailand. In their first month of operation, they have hosted 5 meetups, totaling 143 attendees, and got 8 merchants to accept Dash. Their Dash Tuesday events have so far seemed to be the most popular with a diverse selection of attendees, but they have hosted specialized events for different topics such as cryptocurrency legal compliance for businesses.
• Dash Force Meetup Contest: In October, Dash meetups were held in Austria, Venezuela and Africa and they were posted on meetup.com, Facebook, Twitter, and Evernote. Head on over to see who won some Dash and how you can organize your own meetup and potentially win some Dash!

Dash Integrations of the Week:

• CoinLogiq Makes Cryptocurrency Access Easier for Latin Americans: CoinLogiq provides two-way ATMs in Latin America to aid the liquidity and remittance issues individuals face in these countries. They currently have ATMs in Colombia and are expanding to Brazil and Venezuela. Dash adoption is booming in Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil, but there is nevertheless still risks for families that need to pay certain bills that do not currently accept Dash. These ATMs help bridge that adoption gap.
• Cryptocurrency Debit Cards Help Bridge Adoption Gap: Cryptocurrency debit cards allow consumers to use their cryptocurrency in areas where there is not wide cryptocurrency acceptance. FuzeX made their initial announcement to integrate Dash a couple months ago, but recently celebrated the announcement with a signing ceremony at Money 20/20 with the Dash Core Team. Paycent and PolisPay are some other crypto debit cards that trying to aid Dash consumers by increasing their ability to spend Dash in everyday transactions.

Dash Adoption of the Week:

• 4,000 Merchants Accept Dash, Dash Hashrate Reaches New Highs: There are now over 4,000 merchants, worldwide, that accept Dash, which is also potentially a conservative number since Dash accepting multi-coin POS providers further add to these numbers. Then the Dash hashrate is now at an incredible 2.89 petahashes, which is higher than the previous high of 2.63 petahashes reached in December and Dash is now only 10% of that previous exchange price. This signals rising confidence in Dash, despite the bear market, as more individuals dedicate more resources to help secure the Dash network.
• Venezuela Utilizes Social Media To Reach More Consumers: Dash usage in Venezuela recently got a writeup in MarketWatch for its significant role in alleviating financial and monetary pains of Venezuelans. This adoption has been possible due to the on-the-ground work by the Venezuela community outreach groups, such as Dash Venezuela. Dash Merchant, Dash Help, and Dash Text also recently released results from their social media influencer campaign from the first two weeks. Dash Help has seen 624 new Instagram followers, while Dash Merchant received 1,434 new followers on Instagram.

Dash Market Research of the Week:

• Dash India Survey Reveals Indians Unsatisfied with Remittances: A new survey conducted in India by Dash India (aka Remit Dash) has shed light on just how much Indians are unsatisfied with their current remittance services. The average transaction rate is around 5%-7.5% but can be even higher and can take 3-7 days or even longer to process. When respondents were asked if they were satisfied with their rates and lead times, a majority either ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’. The total Indian remittance industry is $70 billion USD, which provides a huge opportunity for Dash.

General News of the Week:

• Bitcoin Whitepaper Turns 10: On October 31, it became 10 years since Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the whitepaper of a peer-to-peer, decentralized, digital currency. Bitcoin revolutionized how individuals could transact, save money, and escape the current monetary and financial framework. However, Bitcoin has since become bogged down with scaling issues. Dash was founded in 2014 by Evan Duffield and improved upon the many features of Bitcoin with enhancements such as the X11 algorithm and the Dark Gravity Wave difficulty-adjustment algorithm. Dash soon introduced InstantSend, PrivateSend, Masternodes, Sporks, and one of the first and longest running DAOs in the cryptocurrency space to help achieve the original goals of creating a peer-to-peer, decentralized, and digital currency.
• Cryptocurrency Businesses Thrive in a Bear Market: Coinbase recently announced Series E funding for $300 million USD, which places its total valuation at $8 billion USD. Coinbase also expects revenue of $1.3 billion USD for 2018 with a profit of $456 million USD, which is a major increase from revenue of $17 million USD in 2016 with a net loss of $16 million USD. Other sector leaders such as Binance is projecting $1 billion USD in profit in 2018 and Bitmain is on target for $10 billion USD in revenue. These numbers reflect that consumer usability brings in revenue and positive potential even if exchange prices are not rapidly increasing, which bodes well for Dash, which is pursuing everyday usability by consumers.
• Government-backed Cryptocurrencies Highlight Need for Open Source Collaboration: More and more stablecoins are emerging, which are either government funded such as the Petro or are privately funded and attempt to peg to a currency like the USD, such as Tether or USDC. Dash Core Group CEO, Ryan Taylor, recently said how central bank-issued cryptocurrencies are the “inevitable future”, but also highlighted that the majority of the innovation will come from other areas of the cryptocurrency industry. Dash is pursuing that innovation by enabling everyday usability and ease of use, which helps establish a real value and mitigates speculation that contributes to extreme price volatility.

Dash Media of the Week:

• Three Amigos Interview Karen Hsu & Lorenzo Rey: Karen is head of growth at Blockcypher and Lorenzo is the CTO of Dash Text. Dash Text discussed their recent official launch and how the system harnesses Blockcypher’s API to enable individuals to make Dash transactions via SMS text messages. Dash Text is an integral service for many individuals in developing nations that do not have smartphones. Make sure to check out this video as you do not want to miss this knowledge!

It has been a tremendous week for Dash with awesome community outreach, integrations, adoption stats, and overall developments! Stay tuned into our site and social media networks to see all the upcoming Dash News! We hope that our content and coverage was very informative and enjoyable this week and we cannot wait to see what awesome Dash News awaits us next week!