In case you missed it, last week Dash was announced to be listed on Coinbase Pro, the exchange powering the popular Coinbase platform. Many were skeptical that anything like this would ever happen due to a longstanding history of adding just about every other asset they could. This breakthrough seems to indicate that things may be different around crypto land, for so-dubbed “altcoins” in particular.

Previous industry consensus focused on insider relationships and rumors

In the past, this nascent industry operated quite a bit on word-of-mouth, personal relationships, and other non-objective criteria. Infamously, this included the listing of Litecoin, a barely-used altcoin on a clear trajectory out of the top ten, on to Coinbase as one of the earliest coins added, very likely based solely on the undue influence of founder Charlie Lee, who at that time served as an engineering director at the company. This resulted in a tenfold price increase of the course of a few weeks. Anyone with common sense could see the massive conflict of interest and cronyism at play in that move, however because of the early stages the industry was at in 2017, most people simply let it slide.

Dash’s long struggle against false narratives

As an unfortunate result of all this, Dash ended up being a project blacklisted by the intelligentsia. Over the years I heard countless individuals decry Dash as a scam, with no clear reason why or evidence behind it. For a while this seemed to be mostly trolls, but after a while I noticed serious figures with valuable placement in the ecosystem were saying the same things. I heard a few say that their company stayed away from Dash because of this reputation issue. All unfounded, mind you. This likely delayed a potential Coinbase listing for Dash for years.

Since then it has been a long and hard road of emphasizing growing adoption, highlighting technical innovations, showing growing use and network decentralization, and, of course, refuting false rumors and setting the record straight.

A breakthrough in the “bunch of scam coins” narrative may signal renewed interest in altcoins

Now, with the Coinbase Pro listing of Dash, we finally have a breakthrough. One of the oldest and most well-connected crypto companies has added support for an asset who their very influential former director of engineering decried as a shady scam, and continues to do so up to this very day. This shows that things may be changing. For the longest time, an acute discrepancy existed between the hyped and “respected” projects at the top and all others, completely regardless of innovation or technical soundness. Dash has been the flagship project for disparity between innovation and reputation, and its slow fight upwards may well pave the way for other projects which have been building amazing things without a shred of recognition.

Before, the markets lived and died by what the crypto good old boys said. Now that they have allowed their biggest foe to start breaking into the older and more respected institutions, it may open the doors for other overlooked altcoins. Or, in the parlance of our time: “When #altseason?”