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Exclusive: Speculated and Branded Value are Not Enough for Success, Says Dash Co-Founder

The Dash cryptocurrency may not be widespread across the world – yet, but don’t be fooled – they’re getting there.

Dash is a cryptocurrency, which doesn’t try to be anything more than that. In comparison to other blockchain projects, such as Ethereum, where the digital coins are only a part of the whole project, Dash set out to be a payment method and nothing else. The name itself reflects its ideology, as Dash is simply the combination of the words “digital” and “cash”.

We spoke to Felix Mago, one of the co-founders of Dash Thailand and he explained just that – that the key mission that stands behind Dash is being very simple and very straight forward.

“We are doing what the name says – digital cash. We do payments. We don’t put love or water on the blockchain,” he laughs.

Launched in 2014, pretty well established, Dash is on the 13th place on CoinMarketCap with a billion market capitalization and huge everyday trading volume. Mago admits that for a longer time Dash was actually among top 5 of cryptos but, as the other projects came out, it fell few places down.

“I hope we are getting there back,” he admits.

Mago exclusively for CoinSpeaker explains, that one of the key points that makes Dash different is that with their InstantSend, Dash has a transfer rate of 1,7 seconds, which is the fastest compared to other cryptocurrency competitors. He says:

“That feature is very important if you want to do payment. No one wants to sit there and wait ten minutes for your copy for a confirmation without a third person. What the Dash has, and that’s another thing that make us different from other project, is governance system.

That means that the money which has been created is shared in a way that 45% goes to the miners (because they have very important job to do), 45 % goes to masternodes (people who are approving transactions without having to go back to the block or the blockchain to check it again), and by doing that in return they are getting some money out of that.

That is distributed to the masternode owners which is around 7 percent of an annual interest rate. The last 10 percent goes to community funds. Everything in Dash is financed from community funds: development, marketing, business development and by local team that goes around the world.”

Mago notes that if you don’t have the business model, there is no general reason for your token to be worth anything.

“If you don’t do stuff why is your business worth anything? At the end of the day every company has to have its own customers because it cannot be same old business all along. You have to do business and create the cash flow.

Look what is happening to stock market. Look at the Apple. Apple is selling the iPhone and they are really earning money with it. But that it’s all to a brand name value and this combines to a speculated value and it’s ok to have this speculated value as well. But it can not be only that. If it’s only that, most probably it would fail or go down.”

Straightforward Key Challenges in Front

“Of course we want to have Dash everywhere in the world and the possibility to pay everywhere in a world with Dash, but obviously the key element is enabling people to buy not only from exchanges but also to earn it – giving them more of easy ways to go in and out of cash.

What we have realized is that, for now, nobody wants to deal with the price volatility so you have to give the merchant option. One key factor is to give them option of the fiat money, and stablecoins will not fulfill that function.

Assume you have business in Thailand and they give you a stablecoin based in USD – you still have volatility, because it is USD versus Thai Bakht.“

He also mentions Venezuela as one of the biggest use cases they have. Since September 2017 Dash has held conferences in Venezuela, and a pool has been opened, whereby Venezuelan citizens could get free Dash, if they signed up as users on the network, and downloaded Dash’s payment solution on their phone or computer. This has led to over 40.000 registered Venezuelans, which in the crypto world is a significant increase in the number of users.

“It is very sad and tough situation in country but for a Dash team there is an obvious sales argument. We are way less volatile then the Bolivar is. However, it still has to be seen what will happen to Petro.”

It’s important to accent, says Mago, that payment is a very complex matter and there are many different verticals for payments.

“For example it’s something completely different if you talk about online payment and let’s say brick and mortar payment. There are differences in terms of process, integration, ways of making it happen and the things that hav to be done on the business side of thing. Also it’s a completely different story if you’re selling a travel package or if you sell a hamburger.

The way you have to integrate, and the way the payment flow goes at the background is completely different. I think that what’s the most important thing that blockchain companies need to do is learn how payment works and really find the right verticals.

For me every vertical is interesting, especially the online-offline retail and travel industries for the future. But even other verticals like loyalty programs or some other kind of platforms are still interesting as well.”

Once known as XCoin, the name which after a month was switched to Darkcoin, and one year later to the current Dash – and now among the 15 biggest cryptos, Dash is showing that everything is possible.

Exclusive: Speculated and Branded Value are Not Enough for Success, Says Dash Co-Founder