In recent times, popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin have seen their prices explode. Another cryptocurrency that also took off but that people overlook is Dash (DASH). At the start of 2017, one Dash was worth $11.22 (January 1, 2017). At its peak, Dash was $1,541.99 per DASH (December 20, 2017). 137 times your money – not a bad return! (For comparison, Bitcoin was a 20x play for the same time period). However, along with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, Dash has cooled off and you can now buy DASH for $476.16 (April 23, 2018).
Originally known as XCoin, Dash was released on January 18, 2014. XCoin was a fork of Litecoin, which itself is a fork of Bitcoin, which means that Dash is based on Bitcoin. 10 days after the release of XCoin, the project was renamed Darkcoin. On March 25, 2015, Darkcoin assumed its current name of Dash. Dash stands for Digital Cash and was designed for instantaneous and private payments both online and in person.
Let’s explore whether or not the Dash price could explode moving forward.
What makes Dash different from other cryptocurrencies?
Low Transaction Fees
One reason we think Dash could potentially explode is its low transaction fees. Any cryptocurrency that wants to be “digital cash” stands to benefit from low or no transaction fees since people won’t use the cryptocurrency like cash for everyday purchases if the fee for a single transaction is too high. The king of crypto, Bitcoin, is currently suffering from insane transaction fees and as a result, demand for Bitcoin as a currency has cooled off considerably. The example many like to use is buying a cup of coffee. If the transaction fee for buying a cup of coffee is higher than the cost of the coffee itself, what’s the point of using cryptocurrency?
If Dash continues to offer lower transaction fees than other cryptocurrencies, demand for Dash will increase as people seek to use it as a medium of exchange, which should ultimately drive up the price of Dash.
Instant Payments
Another Dash feature that people might like is InstantX. InstantX allows transactions to be confirmed in seconds, whereas cryptocurrency transactions, such as those of Bitcoin, can take minutes, hours, or even days.
If people can use Dash to send money anywhere, instantly, with low transaction fees (as mentioned above), demand for Dash should increase, which could also have a positive impact on price.
Privacy Features
In the age of corporate and government snooping, consumer concerns about privacy are higher than ever. Dash offers enhanced transaction privacy – no one can identify a Dash user using a transaction ID or Dash wallet address. Privacy, along with low fees and quick transactions, are another factor that users might prefer to use Dash, driving up both demand and price.
Improved Governance Model
Dash has a governance model that has worked well so far. There is no mining centralization as with other cryptocurrencies – the Dash miners mine and governance is left to Dash masternodes, who are individuals or groups that gain voting rights by putting up 1,000 DASH and then not touching it.
Anyone in the Dash community can submit proposals. Masternodes are the ones that vote on them. This governance model has proven to work well (so far) as improvements like the previously mentioned bigger block sizes and lower transaction fees are actually moving forward.
If this user-focused approach where Dash community members themselves submit suggestions for improvement to Dash instead of developers pushing unpopular changes down users’ throats, Dash could continue to improve and draw in people looking to buy Dash, driving up the price.
**Self-Funded Developers **
Another great Dash feature is that the developers are self-funded. Every Dash block that gets mined sends 10% of the block’s Dash to Dash’s budget system, which acts as a sort of “treasury” for development purposes. This prevents conflicts of interest and ensures that Dash developers will focus on what’s important, making Dash a better cryptocurrency.
What else to keep your eye out for?
Improved Scalability
While big-hitter cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum suffer from scalability issues, as they grow more and more popular, Dash is proactively taking measures to prevent these issues. For example, Dash is working on increasing blocksizes (allowing more transactions to be processed at once) and lowering transaction fees even further.
On the other hand, Bitcoin’s inability to move forward on scalability proposals has even led to forks in the blockchain like Bitcoin Cash, which split to implement larger blocksizes because the original Bitcoin community wouldn’t.
Granted, Dash is nowhere near as popular as Bitcoin or even Ethereum, so whether it truly has “good scalability” is yet to be seen.
Partnerships
Although cryptocurrency teams love to throw the word “partnership” around in order to garner interest for their projects, Dash is actually forming significant partnerships.
Dash, along with KuvaCash, is aiming to launch a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency payment service in the embattled country of Zimbabwe, whose currency is collapsing. If Dash can show that through its expertise, it can actually replace government-issued money systems. By that Dash could gain a lot of credibility and massive amounts of people buying into it.
Ease of Use
The Dash team is also trying to make Dash very easy to use, which is something that prevents cryptocurrency from assuming mainstream adoption. For example, Dash Evolution will allow anyone to signup and access Dash from any device and make transactions as easy as they would be with services like PayPal.
When considered in tandem with all of its other, aforementioned favorable qualities, we could see demand for Dash explode, as more and more people seek to use it in their day-to-day lives.
Conclusion
From a fundamentals standpoint, Dash is truly at the front of the cryptocurrency pack. Its strong features have paid off as its network has grown significantly over the years.
However, awareness of Dash is still low compared to other cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It could be some time before Dash picks up steam (if ever) and the price really takes off. Moreover, there are many cryptocurrencies trying to do the same things as Dash (cheap, fast, and private transactions). Dash’s price also seems to track Bitcoin’s price (for now).
While Dash surely has a lot of factors that could help in exploding its price, nothing is sure in the world of cryptocurrency, and it remains to be seen if its price will take off in 2018 and beyond.