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A Case For Venezuela. Why Focus DASH Promotion in Venezuela and Latin America

DeepBlue

Active member
A Venezuela team leader asked me to share my thoughts and contributions with the Dash Community. Due to time constraints I do not post often in this forum or on Discord so you may not know me or my contributions to the Venezuela projects. I personally believe focusing most of our efforts on Venezuela first is important to create a blueprint for other LatAm countries to take up DASH.

Goal: Making Venezuela the First DASH Nation
In the DASH Core team marketing proposal posted by Ryan Taylor / Fernando on 21st February 2018 https://www.dashcentral.org/p/mrktg-coregroup-032018 I suggested we need to focus our efforts and finances on converting Venezuela to using DASH as its primary currency. To my knowledge, this was the first time this concept had been raised in the community. Craig Mason highlighted these points in his “unleashed” video.


Which are the Best Countries For DASH? The following shows how I came to the conclusion that establishing DASH in Venezuela and other Latam countries is the preferred geographical location for us to focus our marketing strategy and the treasury budget.

Reasons for suggesting we focus first on Venezuela and Latin American countries. I raised the reasons for focusing our marketing efforts first in Venezuela in the “Ignore Dash” proposal by Amanda B. Johnson. https://www.dashcentral.org/p/IGNORE-DASH-1#comments
and also later in the Dash LATAM expansion proposal https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dash-latam-expansion#comments I have summarized these points below.

1. Legal Framework That Encourages Use Of Crypto: Venezuelan Government has issued a decree that it actively supports the people using Cryptocurrency and they have fully legalized its use. https://news.bitcoin.com/venezuela-approves-decree-use-cryptocurrencies/

There are no legal barriers for DASH becoming established in Venezuela. This cannot be said for most other countries of the world were the use of cryptocurrency is not actively encouraged. Some governments even warning about the future of cryptocurrency like bitcoin:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billyb...sues-worrying-warning-over-future-of-bitcoin/

Some banks have closed accounts of people and businesses dealing with cryptocurrencies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ays-cat-and-mouse-with-banks-closing-accounts

It's my view view that we will have more success in establishing DASH if we focus on a country that actively wants to establish cryptocurrency. Currently Venezuela is at the top of that list for the reasons presented in this post. Question: Which country does it make the most sense to establish first? Countries that have a legal framework that encourages crypto use or countries that have a high barrier to entry due to uncertain legal framework?

2. DASH as a working currency - not a speculative investment. In Venezuela end users and merchants are using DASH as a working day-to-day currency. In my opinion it is much more preferable for us to have real world users of DASH as an active working currency rather than speculative investors. Speculative investors are fickle and will sell at the slightest bad news. Real world users need DASH for day to day purchases we should focus on using DASH as a currency a view shared by DCG lead developer quantumexplorer :
https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dashnexus-topup
https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-...-exceeds-all-other-cryptocurrencies-combined/

Question: Which do you prefer: 1. real world users using DASH as a currency or 2) speculative investors / hodlers that can sell at the slightest bad news?

3. Countries with the highest inflation are more likely to be motivated in using crypto
It is my opinion that people are more likely to take up DASH as a day to day working currency in countries that have high inflation. The reason is that in these countries cryptocurrency offers a source of relative stability to their native currency and therefore the people would be highly motivated to learn about a solution. People in countries with low inflation would have considerably less motivation to learn how to use crypto because they do not have a pressing problem.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/20/whats-keeping-cryptocurrencies-from-mass-adoption/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inflation_rate (Venezuela highest inflation country)

Zimbabwe only had an inflation rate of 2.5% in 2017 while Venezuela has an inflation rate of 1,000,000 % in 2018 Question: Which country is most likely to have the greatest motivation to take up cryptocurrency based on the inflation rates shown in the reference table?

4. Moral Reasons: Which country would benefit the most from using cryptocurrencies?
In countries with high inflation life savings can be wiped out in a few months and food prices can vary greatly from day to day. Prices for basic food items become unaffordable people lose their savings. With such a tremendous benefit of stability of a currency the people in Venezuela are highly motivated to get DASH established as a working currency. In contrast countries with a relatively stable banking system and currency such as the USD, or Euro do not benefit that much from using cryptocurrency. Questions: Which country would the people get the most benefit from using DASH? One with a rapidly devaluing currency or one with a stable currency? List the advantages of using DASH in the USA or Europe compared other than speculative investment and niche markets such as cannabis? In my opinion all 32 million people in Venezuela would greatly benefit from using DASH as their day to day currency more than other countries.

5. Dash Projects in countries with related projects are more likely to gain traction due to a synergistic effect? In Venezuela there are many different teams working on different DASH projects to name a few examples there is Dash Venezuela, Dash Merchants, Dash Text, Dash Help Support, Dash Maracay, Dash Trip, AgroCognitive and 19 other Dash communities all working together to establish DASH in Venezuela with a common goal of making Venezuela the first DASH Nation. Compare that to other countries that may only have one, possibly two projects that are often unrelated. Question: Which country is most likely to establish DASH as a working currency, one that has many synergistic projects that support each other and are working together to a common goal or in a country in which there is one or two unrelated promotional projects that are unconnected?

6. Expansion potential to neighbourhood countries Venezuela has friendly ties with Colombia, Brazil and many other Latin American countries. The population of people living in South America is approximately 414 million people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_American_countries_by_population

The majority of South America, which have a population speak primarily two languages Spanish and Portuguese with a few minor languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_South_America

This means that if DASH is established in Venezuela the country would be an example for other countries with similar problems to become established. Other Latin American countries that have also suffered from devaluation of currency (e.g. Colombia, Argentina and Brazil) and have no language barrier in sharing their learnings with other Latin American countries in South American continent.

Compare this to the other continents of the world where many different languages are spoken making the language barrier a problem in spreading the word of DASH between different countries in that continent.

Europe (24 languages) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe
Asia (More than 57 languages and hundreds of dialets) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Asia
Africa (7 Major languages with many dialets) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa

The continent of North America and central America mainly speak English and Spanish languages.
A common language makes communication between countries in a continent simpler. South America only has 2 major languages to contend with which is considerably better than Europe, Asia and Africa.

7. Getting the biggest bang for our buck - The Cost of Living and the cost of labour

The cost of living in Venezuela and South America is a fraction of the cost to that of USA and Europe. Although the average monthly wage in Venezuela is 98% less than the average monthly wage in the USA people cannot survive on this. Speaking with Venezuela team leaders I have learned if a person is to get by without struggling the very basic amount required for living which includes an apartment rental of reasonable standard, car and food, bills they need to spend a minimum of between $250 - $300. Note this is for a very basic level of living in Venezuela. For a more comfortable level a Venezuelan would need to earn a minimum of $500 USD in Venezuela. The fact that the current minimum wage in Venezuela is around $12 USD is not enough money for people to survive and I will explain in a separate forum post why the $12 / month minimum wage is not enough to survive on. We will therefore take the figure of around $300 - $500 USD for a basic comfortable monthly salary in Venezuela and around $3400 for the average wage for US.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-livi...jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Venezuela

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808
Therefore in Venezuela we could hire approximately anything between 6 to 11 people for the same price as one person in the USA. We could hire considerably more people in Venezuela that are equally as qualified as the US that would make our funds go further. Question: Which makes more business sense to hire 10 qualified people or to hire 1 qualified person to promote DASH?

8. Internet and Electricity availability
South America has an extensive and excellent Internet infrastructure: Unlike locations such as Africa, South America has some of the strongest internet infrastructures in the world. The main internet backbone lines pass through and branch off, throughout South America as you can see from this map of the internet routes and activity:
https://www.telegeography.com/asset...raffic-map-2010/global-traffic-map-2010-x.jpg

According the the World Bank Electricity supply is comprehensive in South America - unlike African countries in which it is sparse. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS?view=map

9. Potential for growth - Venezuela Oil
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves
It is my opinion that establishing a stable currency in Venezuela will lead to a more stable economy which will make it more likely that the country can re-invest in the infrastructure for its petroleum industry.

10. Huge Remittance Market For Venezuela I raised the potential for remittances to Venezuela using DASH in the first DASH HELP proposal which passed in February 2018. I notice that for some reason the original comments in that funding proposal are not showing now. However if anyone wishes to confirm my contribution in raising awareness of the potential for remittances to Venezuela you can contact AlejandroE or Lorenzo of DASH Help. According to EuroNews 2.3 million Venezuelans have now left Venezuela. Venezuelans that have left their country to find a job oversees and they need to make remittances back to family members in Venezuela. However due to strong restrictions and sanctions against Venezuela the people are currently having to pay very high fees - between 12 to 95% in fees according to Investopedia:

https://www.investopedia.com/articl...hree-things-know-about-remittance-economy.asp

According to Washington post the estimated remittance amount to Venezuela is approximately 1 Billion USD per year. However remember this is with capital controls in place. This amount is only of the money that we are aware of. Money could also be smuggled in.

https://wtop.com/latin-america/2018/05/migrant-remittances-a-big-business-in-cash-starved-venezuela/

In my opinion, if Venezuelans could make remittances to their country without it being blocked, with minimal fees with DASH the value of the remittance market for Venezuela would be expected to dramatically increase. The remittance market for Venezuela is a huge market for DASH which I first raised awareness of in February 2018 but had researched in Q4 of 2017. I had provided a PDF report to AlejandroE with the results of my research.

11. Vision Statement For Venezuela I shared a vision statement for the Venezuelan teams which I posted in the DASH Maracay funding proposal. https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Dash-Maracay-First-Conference

This vision statement was to help to create a common vision amongst the Venezuelan teams for establishing DASH as the first Dash Nation. I was honoured that this vision statement was adopted by the Venezuelan teams and mentioned in the Maracay conference.

Mission statement is at 12:23 to 15:15 (in Spanish)

12. Proven results now, not in the future Venezuela is No.1 in the world for merchants accepting DASH https://discoverdash.com/statistics/

Deciding what not to do is just as important as deciding what to do” - Steve Jobs

With limited funds we need to focus our efforts on funding projects that give us the greatest return on investment and are most likely to work in countries that are welcoming to DASH. Projects that establish DASH as a working currency and follow the spirit of decentralization. Projects that promote the DASH brand in their promotions which increases awareness of DASH. Therefore my view is we need to focus the majority of our funds on converting Venezuela to DASH first and not spend money on a diverse set of unfocused projects that are not in an optimal country for adoption. Later we could return to those projects. My view is focusing on projects that are leading to real results now will help to increase the DASH price. They have worked out a strategy for mass adoption and just need to scale up. I hope this post demonstrates why I believe Venezuela should be a priority for DASH. The Venezuela team leaders work incredibly hard and I am in awe at their passion, drive and ingenuity.
 
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Hi DeepBlue,

Thanks for the support. I agree with you. Venezuela is the perfect country/laboratory to encourage a massive adoption of cryptocurrencies (I hope Dash). I truly believe that if we (I include myself) fail in this task in Venezuela, all we can lose hope in a global mass adoption.
 
Great insights! I can with no doubt confirm that you are right on the situation analysis and shows all the time and effort you have put to understand the current state and possibilities for Dash in Venezuela!

As a Dash team member and enthusiast I say: This is one clear business opportunity!
And as a Venezuelan I say: Thanks for pointing efforts into our country!

We must find activities where a path for development is clear and growing the market for Dash will help both Dash and the ecosystem where it is used!
This is a great starting point for mass adoption of a Cryptocurrency... by solving today's real-world problems with Dash!
 
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I largely agree with your analysis and believe if we managed to onboard Venezuela to dash we would have achieved a major stepping stone and greatly helped out the venezuelan people.

Yet I have two main concerns I’d like to hear your opinion on:

1. Even though the situation in Venezuela is horrific, the venezuelan people don’t seem to enthusiastically adopt the solution dash is offering. Dash Venezuela has prompted dash for one year now in their conferences and regularly in media. Dash merchant has onboarded 2000+ merchants. Yet very few users actually bother to use dash in their everyday life’s. Reports range from 50-100 pos transactions in dash per day. That indicated Venezuelans don’t see the need to use dash as means of payment.

Furthermore dash doesn’t trade on any significant premium in Venezuela compared to the rest of the world. This after one whole year of promotion indicates Venezuelans don’t see dash as a particularly desirable store of value.

How do you plan on addressing these two issues going forward. I’ve heard plans about incentivized consumption but how many more incentives do Venezuelans need? Isn’t a rapidly devaluing currency and broken payment methods enough of a incentive already?

2. The government in Venezuela has recently announced a direct competitor to dash. Unfortunately it happens to have the power of completely getting rid of the frankly insignificant dash adoption like flipping a switch. Recent events of devaluing the currency 95% have shown that this government doesn’t care about their own laws or guidelines.

You openly advocate for fuenlling all adoption budgets into Venezuela. Why don’t you see the need to diversify the Daos investments?
 
Hello @Quansen thanks for your feedback. I will answer each of your points below.

Once a merchant has been educated and trained on what DASH is and how to use it there is a very high conversion rate. Dash Merchants gave the statistics that when asked before the training 92% of Merchants did not want DASH but after the training 90.4% said they wanted it. See the graph showing the results of the poll made by Dash Merchants:

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...ion-program-2000-merchants-in-3-months.30858/

This shows the real barrier is not that Venezuelans don't want to use DASH it is that they need to be trained on, and shown, how to use DASH and how it will benefit them.

DASH is an International pier to pier payments system, that cannot be controlled or censored by any organization or government, cannot be corrupted, that offers secure payments, Instant payments, optional privacy that hold its value with near zero fees.

Therefore from this observation one of the main barriers to mass adoption seems to be down to scale up issues of education.

If you consider what has been achieved from a standing start in just one year, with the very limited financial resources the Venezuela teams have had to work with I think it is an outstanding achievement.

At the beginning of the year just a few merchants were accepting DASH. Now in October 2018 there are 2,000 Merchants are accepting DASH and that number is increasing daily.

In order for there to be mass adoption however we need tens of thousands of merchants to be accepting DASH and we need millions of people to be using DASH. The formula clearly is working it just needs to be scaled up.

These are the barriers that I feel need to be overcome for mass adoption
1.
Getting an entire nation to adopt a new form of payment like DASH, that has had nothing similar in terms of technology in the past, will take some time because there are a lot of barriers to overcome in acceptance. First the technology is still way too geeky. Evolution will go some way to relieving that but even then there is a time period for people to adapt to a new way of thinking.

2. There needs to be more customers educated on DASH with scalable education programs. Currently I feel conferences and one on one sales visits are not enough. They need to be designed to be scalable.

3. We need more DASH to flow into Venezuela. (Remittances and new exchange options)

4. Scalable marketing strategies are required

I also feel that the Venezuela teams need to start developing more scalable strategies. I've noticed that they are a little reluctant to do this preferring one-on-one type training of merchants and conferences to train people. However this strategy severely limits the number of people that can be trained. I believe there has to be a shift to using the leverage of the internet to scale. I have raised ideas along those lines many times but they have not been taken up. The youtube channels e.g. on Dash Venezuela need to be organized into cohesive training for people. At the moment the teams are putting up videos which are interesting but they follow no logic or order to take a beginner all the way through to a competent user.

Dash is getting its name out as the go to solution in Venezuela as you can see from these recent articles:

https://ambcrypto.com/crypto-exchan...-partnership-with-dash-launches-in-venezuela/

https://todaysgazette.com/dash-dash...ela-deepens-with-over-2000-merchant-adoption/

From the above articles you can see that big exchanges like coincola are noticing the progress DASH is making in Venezuela and are setting up business there.

Uphold also recently has been making inroads to Venezuela. These companies are realising that Venezuela is a huge untapped market where their exchange can benefit from millions of new users.

These companies are integrating DASH into their exchanges because of our success in Venezuela. If a crypto / fiat exchange wants to be successful in Venezuela they know they need to integrate DASH.

There needs to be an easy and simple way for people to get DASH in their hands in Venezuela and I think one of THE best ways is through the remittance markets. Making remittances with DASH to families in Venezuela solves 2 problems at once.

a. Venezuelans can make safe, low cost, secure, instant transfers oversees without limits, without commissions, without blocks or sanctions and without a "middle man or third party" interfering or taking its cut or commission. Currently no reasonable options for making remittances to Venezuela exist without high fees.

b. The inflow of DASH into the country will provide liquidity in the Venezuelan market for DASH.

5. Payment systems need to be considerably easier to use - even simpler than we currently have. QR codes on "Apps" will scare grandmas . We need a simpler system. I think an NFC based system may be the solution here with easy charge points. Similar to the Octupus card in Hong Kong or the Oyster Card in London. These NFC enabled cards are quick to charge, secure, don't require a smartphone and are considerably quicker than dealing with QR codes on apps on smartphones.

QR code payment: Open phone, open app, ensure camera is enabled with app, align camera with QR code until it is scanned. This can take anything up to 30 seconds to 1 minute to fully complete to make the payment.

NFC payment: Tap card against NFC terminal. Completed in a few seconds. No smartphone or any phone required. Just a low cost plastic card or wrist band. Customers can then charge up their wrist bands with their Smartphones or through an NFC charge point similar to how it is set up on the London underground.

The NFC passive cards (like credit cards) cost just a few dollars to make, which means they will be affordable for everyone. No need to buy a phone.

I believe in order for DASH to go mainstream we need an NFC payment system network established in Venezuela. This way even Grandmas can use it without having to deal with apps, smart phones etc. If we can eventually get this into the main government controlled transport system then the people would also be able to buy DASH from the NFC charging terminals. This also solves the problem of Dash liquidity. I realise however the Venezuelan Government would need to allow us to accept NFC payments on their state controlled transport systems. DASH could possibly provide such NFC payment systems however the government would have to permit us to install them. Since the Petro is based on the DASH source code perhaps there is a possibility there that we could also enable Petro payments as an option if we also have an agreement that the payment system must also always accept DASH? This is just an idea I don't know how feasible it would be or if the government would be willing to consider this idea.

The other advantage of NFC is security. It is more secure than QR code payments because it is possible for an organization to place a QR code sticker over static QR codes. This cannot happen with NFC in which the device needs to be within 10 cm of the terminal.

Secondly NFC passive devices are cheap and therefore people don't need to carry smart phones around with them which posses a theft risk in Venezuela.

Therefore I feel we need NFC enabled merchants and transport systems. I realise that the government is in control of the main transport systems however bus systems are not state controlled and could be a good first start to get NFC devices established. Once tens of thousands of people are using the NFC devices on buses small convenience shops could also start installing NFC terminals which are also considerably cheaper than normal POS devices. In Hong Kong many thousands of shops now accept the Octopus card.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card

6. The Venezuela people need to realise that the power to solve the problem is in their own hands for the first time in history.

The Venezuelan people have suffered for a long time on the currency crisis. Losing jobs, homes and their savings is completely demoralizing. But now there is a solution whereby this problem can be solved and the solution lies in the hands of the Venezuelan people here, today, right now. I also feel that the people need to fully understand and realise this.

Venezuelans need to stop expecting the government or another organization to fix this situation and claim the responsibility for sorting out this problem for themselves. I feel this is a big barrier to entry for people to realise now that they hold the power to solve the issue right here an now.

The above takes time to set up. But DASH is very well placed as the leader in Venezuela. The first stage of adoption is to train the leaders. The second stage which will begin happening in 2019 is for those leaders to develop mass adoption programs for DASH in Venezuela.

Government Competition

If you are referring to the Petro as competition to DASH I do not think that it will afford much competition because for a currency to be usable world wide it has to be accepted world wide. Currently I am not aware of any of the big exchanges that accept the Petro and I think they may also possibly be blocked from doing so by sanctions. DASH however is accepted World Wide and is not controlled by any government.

Dash Focusing on Venezuela Honestly, my opinion is if we cannot make it work in Venezuela I don't know where we can make it work. Dash is legalised in Venezuela and the Venezuelan government is encouraging people to use cryptocurrencies. That cannot be said for the US and Europe. If anything doing projects in the USA and Europe is riskier than in Venezuela because who is to say the US and Europe would not ban the use of crypto currency? They certainly have not made it easy for us to get established by not giving any solid legal framework. Venezuela has set a decree legalizing the use of cryptocurrency therefore to me it makes sense to focus our efforts on Venezuela.

It is true there are risks with focusing on Venezuela but there is also a risk in doing promotion in USA and Europe - and in my opinion a much greater risk because USA and European financial systems have got far more to lose than Venezuela. Imagine if we could take all our resources and focus on Venezuela for just one year. We could establish DASH there.

I would like to see every Dash funded project thinking how their contribution could be used toward supporting the adoption of DASH in Venezuela. Instead of dozens of projects focused on many different markets and in different countries where crypto is not welcomed I feel we would have a much better chance to focus all our energy, money, resources and creativity on Venezuela first with an emphasis on Caracas. There are only 1.5 million people in Caracas. If Caracas converts to DASH the rest of the country must follow. We should also promote projects outside of Caracas but what I'm saying is the main drive ought to be Caracas in my opinion because we have limited funds at this moment.

Show me projects that we have funded that have lead to merchant uptakes like we have seen in Venezuela and then I would consider changing my opinion. The numbers speak for themselves. Venezuela has at least 2,000 merchants signed up - with, I am sure, many others that have not yet been documented. The world only has 3600 DASH merchants according to this DFN article:

https://www.dashforcenews.com/venezuelan-merchants-increasingly-turn-to-dash-as-inflation-balloons/

The current DASH merchant signed up to using DASH can be found here:

https://discoverdash.com/statistics/

Note I am talking about merchants using DASH, not POS integration of DASH. POS integration of DASH is not merchant use of DASH, it gives only the potential for use. The merchants and the customers still needs to be educated on using DASH before they will use it. In my personal opinion projects like Alt36 currently have little chance of being successful without first educating the merchants and the customers of those merchants on how to use DASH on the POS. It is not enough to integrate DASH into a POS. We need educated merchants and customers who are actually using DASH for day to day transactions. That is what we are seeing in Venezuela.

In my experience focus is crucial for success. My personal view is if the entire DASH community focused on converting Venezuela to DASH we could do it. I have no doubt about that.

Before we do this however the DASH community would have to accept the risk. Yes, our projects may not work, but the chances of making it work in Venezuela are considerably higher if we focus our efforts. The question remains, is the DASH community willing to take that risk? If it was down to me I would take that risk. There is risk in most everything we do. Walking down the road, getting on a plane, or driving a car there is a risk. But we take those risks daily. What we have to ask is, is it worth the return for taking a calculated, well thought out risk?

I believe that there is no problem that the Dash community cannot solve. We just need focus.
 
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@DeepBlue thank you a lot for taking the time and responding so extensively. I largely agree especially in points 4. and 6.

It is my understanding that 12.000+ Venezuelans in Caracas have been trained in multi hour conferences. They have downloaded their wallets, recieved their first dash and got their questions answered. A strong merchant base is established.

Yet the daily active user count of the pos system used is well below 1%(<100 tx/day) of the people trained.
Despite the circumstances most Venezuelans don’t bother signing up to cryptobuyer or similar solutions and don’t opt out of their failing currency.

That is beyond me, I simply don’t get it. Yes, the apps are not that great yet, yes, we can’t expect grannies to figure it out at this stage but the normal Venezuelan already has a huge economic incentive and incentives of convenience(I have heard most other payments systems are broken most of the time) to figure it out. The conversation rate in the conferences is below 1% even though Dash offers a real solution to a gigantic problem.

There seems to be a fundamental error in the strategies used, that’s why we need to ask these hard questions.



While Venezuela seems to be the best shot we currently have I personally wouldn’t lay all Dash eggs in this basket. But I guess that’s personal preference.
 
@Quansen thank you for your reply. I really appreciate constructive feedback and questions like yours.

I have a few questions below which I hope you could answer. I would like to be certain we are dealing with accurate data before we can come to a conclusion.

Yet the daily active user count of the POS system used is well below 1%(<100 tx/day) of the people trained.

1. What is the source of your information for the POS stats you quoted above of 1% <100 tx/ day?
2. How do you know this value is accurate?
3. Where can I can look this POS information up?
4. Where can we obtain the historical data for the numbers of transactions per day?
5. Which POS system specifically are you referring to?
6. Are all merchants using the same POS system or are merchants using different means of accepting transactions? If so, how can we look up all transactions made on their own phones so that we have a true value of total DASH transactions per day for merchants?

There seems to be a fundamental error in the strategies used, that’s why we need to ask these hard questions.

Personally, I feel it is a little too early to assume there is a fundamental error in the promotion of DASH in Venezuela. 12,000 people is a very small number compared to 32,000 million people (population of Venezuela). All the ventures I've started over the last 25 years I have been in business took several years before they started to take off. There is a start up period with any new venture that is unavoidable. It takes time to establish a base and to "learn the ropes" i.e. build the systems and the processes, build the teams. Train the teams etc. This all takes time. 1 year is a very small amount of time to come to any conclusion -all we can see is a very positive increase in key performance indicators. What is important is to keep going when the numbers are improving. The numbers are improving in Venezuela with now 2,000 merchants and increasing. Eventually a tipping point is reached and the growth takes off exponentially. 12K people and 2,000 merchants is well short of a tipping point. I have had many businesses and they all followed the same route. There is a start up period that lasts several years and then usually around year 3 things start to take off.

I would be grateful if you could send the answers to my questions above - it would be helpful for me to know the source of your information so I can keep track of these figures for my own assessments of progress. Thank you.
 
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I largely agree with your analysis and believe if we managed to onboard Venezuela to dash we would have achieved a major stepping stone and greatly helped out the venezuelan people.

Yet I have two main concerns I’d like to hear your opinion on:

1. Even though the situation in Venezuela is horrific, the venezuelan people don’t seem to enthusiastically adopt the solution dash is offering. Dash Venezuela has prompted dash for one year now in their conferences and regularly in media. Dash merchant has onboarded 2000+ merchants. Yet very few users actually bother to use dash in their everyday life’s. Reports range from 50-100 pos transactions in dash per day. That indicated Venezuelans don’t see the need to use dash as means of payment.

Furthermore dash doesn’t trade on any significant premium in Venezuela compared to the rest of the world. This after one whole year of promotion indicates Venezuelans don’t see dash as a particularly desirable store of value.

How do you plan on addressing these two issues going forward. I’ve heard plans about incentivized consumption but how many more incentives do Venezuelans need? Isn’t a rapidly devaluing currency and broken payment methods enough of a incentive already?

You openly advocate for fuenlling all adoption budgets into Venezuela. Why don’t you see the need to diversify the Daos investments?

Hi Quansen,

I'm currently living in Venezuela and I've been watching the evolution of Dash in the country. I must say it has been amazing but there is still a lot of work to do. I mean, our goal is to get a whole country or a large part of it, to adopt a cryptocurrency as a way of payment. This is something that has never been done and therefore there are no experts, everyone who participates are implementing strategies into practice, studying the results and correcting mistakes along the way. I have been asking people in Caracas if they accept Dash and if they know what is Dash and to be honest must people says they don't even know what is Dash. You can watch a video made by me some days ago buy I've been adding more people.

I must say that we have been trying to implement massive adoption strategies to a whole country at once and to be honest, that would require huge resources and I realize that despite the great work done so far, there is still a great general lack of knowledge of Dash. Basically, it does not matter how many merchants accept Dash in their stores if people don't know what Dash is.

I've been talking with the Dash Venezuela team and with some people from the core team about this. I know that right now the community is reluctant to invest in marketing proposals, so me and a group of people (my team nowadays) found a way of implementing mass marketing strategies and at the same time encouraging the adoption by giving large audience a real experience of how dash works, and much more than that.
 
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I largely agree with your analysis and believe if we managed to onboard Venezuela to dash we would have achieved a major stepping stone and greatly helped out the venezuelan people.


2. The government in Venezuela has recently announced a direct competitor to dash. Unfortunately it happens to have the power of completely getting rid of the frankly insignificant dash adoption like flipping a switch. Recent events of devaluing the currency 95% have shown that this government doesn’t care about their own laws or guidelines.

You openly advocate for fuenlling all adoption budgets into Venezuela. Why don’t you see the need to diversify the Daos investments?


About that... I went to a meeting with the guys who are implementing the Petro in Venezuela.

Reunion%20Superintendencia%20Criptomonedas.jpeg


The guy in the center is the cryptocurrencies superintendent in Venezuela... he is the boss in that area. I asked him about the acceptance of other criptocurrencies in Venezuela... and I asked him about why the access to official Dash website from Venezuela is blocked which he answered: "We are encouraging the use of other cryptocurrencies as well and I truly didn't know about the block to the official Dash website, let me inquire on this. If you have any contact with the Core team of Dash, please, help me to establish contact with them in order to solve this issue."

I think it would be smart to maintain diplomatic communication with them, and I could facilitate the link.
 
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Great insights! I can with no doubt confirm that you are right on the situation analysis and shows all the time and effort you have put to understand the current state and possibilities for Dash in Venezuela!

As a Dash team member and enthusiast I say: This is one clear business opportunity!
And as a Venezuelan I say: Thanks for pointing efforts into our country!

We must find activities where a path for development is clear and growing the market for Dash will help both Dash and the ecosystem where it is used!
This is a great starting point for mass adoption of a Cryptocurrency... by solving today's real-world problems with Dash!

Hi Ernesto,

You know that we have a proposal that I truly believe can help solve some of the problems we are discussing here. I don't know if I should give details about it on this forum thread but I would love to share it in order to get some feedback.
 
1. What is the source of your information for the POS stats you quoted above of 1% <100 tx/ day?
2. How do you know this value is accurate?
3. Where can I can look this POS information up?
4. Where can we obtain the historical data for the numbers of transactions per day?
5. Which POS system specifically are you referring to?
6. Are all merchants using the same POS system or are merchants using different means of accepting transactions? If so, how can we look up all transactions made on their own phones so that we have a true value of total DASH transactions per day for merchants?

1. alejandroE posted these Numerus some time ago on discord. I believe it was 40-60 tx per day on the qr.cr Pos which is the dominantly used pos in Venezuela. 12.000 attendees were from the 12 conferences over the last year. I believe it was even more but I didn’t wanted to go through the last year of reporting. So the 1 percent came from a generous 120tx / 12.000 people educated in multi hour sessions.

2. it came directly from the head of dash merchant Venezuela.

3.+4. They don’t publish it on a regular basis, but I think you can get these numbers privately from dash merchant Venezuela.

5. The qr.cr pos from Hans which is the overwhelmingly used pos in venezuela afaik.

6. Most likely not, that is why I double the number to make sure I don’t misrepresent the achievements of the various teams in Venezuela.


I also acknowledge that such a change doesn’t happen fast. But the fact remains that >12.000 persons have recieved very extensive education about money, dash, how to use and what problems it solves. Yet a very low percentage of these persons actually use dash as a solution to their currency problems.

Yes, 12.000 conference participants are very few relative to Venezuelans inhabitants count. But I think the question is valid why these few persons don’t take the solution dash is offering for
 
1. alejandroE posted these Numerus some time ago on discord. I believe it was 40-60 tx per day on the qr.cr Pos which is the dominantly used pos in Venezuela. 12.000 attendees were from the 12 conferences over the last year. I believe it was even more but I didn’t wanted to go through the last year of reporting. So the 1 percent came from a generous 120tx / 12.000 people educated in multi hour sessions.

I also acknowledge that such a change doesn’t happen fast. But the fact remains that >12.000 persons have recieved very extensive education about money, dash, how to use and what problems it solves. Yet a very low percentage of these persons actually use dash as a solution to their currency problems.

Yes, 12.000 conference participants are very few relative to Venezuelans inhabitants count. But I think the question is valid why these few persons don’t take the solution dash is offering for

Hi Quansen,

There are more than 2000 merchants already accepting Dash but many customers doesn't know what is Dash, some others maybe have heard about it but it is not that easy to get Dash and many people are reluctant to use online exchanges to buy Dash, we need to put Dashes in front of their faces (I believe there are going to be ATM and kiosks proposals soon). Also, many of those 2000 new merchants are not big business and they don't have a lot of sales... Think about those merchants monthly sales and the actual percentage of people who are using Dash to pay at their stores... 1% ? maybe less...

Regarding the Dash conferences, I must point something that should be quite obvious: There are not 12000 new participants as many of the participants are from the previews conferences... that's the negative side of airdrops. But there must be a database of the total participants of the conferences.
 
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Hi Ernesto,

You know that we have a proposal that I truly believe can help solve some of the problems we are discussing here. I don't know if I should give details about it on this forum thread but I would love to share it in order to get some feedback.
Sure Pedro, feel free to reach out directly please! You can find me on discord Ernesto_Contreras#6223 or on twitter at @ernestocontrer or just let me know your email and I'll write to you!

Thanks!
 
Hi Everyone!

Very interesting all the analysis that is being done about the adoption process of Dash in Venezuela.
Thank you very much @DeepBlue for your support and your feedback, always promoting a better performance of the teams that are working in Venezuela.
I am Co-Founder of Dash Maracay community and after so much interaction with merchants and users, it is evident that there are two main problems to solve:

1) The amount of Dash circulating in the Venezuelan market is very low.
2) The process of changing Bolivares to Dash is uncomfortable for most people.

@DeepBlue mentioned a viable solution to the first problem, remittances.

What can we do to solve the second problem?

What we have discovered is that when we put the Dash in people's wallet in a simple way, they are happy to use Dash for their payments.
What do we do then to solve this problem?

Dash Maracay is working on a solution to this problem and we hope to share more details, soon.

Keep working!
 
Hi Everyone!

Very interesting all the analysis that is being done about the adoption process of Dash in Venezuela.
Thank you very much @DeepBlue for your support and your feedback, always promoting a better performance of the teams that are working in Venezuela.
I am Co-Founder of Dash Maracay community and after so much interaction with merchants and users, it is evident that there are two main problems to solve:

1) The amount of Dash circulating in the Venezuelan market is very low.
2) The process of changing Bolivares to Dash is uncomfortable for most people.

@DeepBlue mentioned a viable solution to the first problem, remittances.

What can we do to solve the second problem?

What we have discovered is that when we put the Dash in people's wallet in a simple way, they are happy to use Dash for their payments.
What do we do then to solve this problem?

Dash Maracay is working on a solution to this problem and we hope to share more details, soon.

Keep working!
A challenge, that once solved will be very rewarding to all of us! :)
 
1) The amount of Dash circulating in the Venezuelan market is very low.
2) The process of changing Bolivares to Dash is uncomfortable for most people.

@DeepBlue mentioned a viable solution to the first problem, remittances.

What can we do to solve the second problem?



For mass adoption we need DASH to be so simple to use that granny can use it without any training.

Therefore my opinion is that NFC is the way forward for mobile payments in Venezuela and in fact anywhere in the World. My view is NFC is superior to QR for payments in the following respects:

See this comparison between NFC and QR by google:

In the Youtube video below fast forward to time code 7:47 onwards where they undertake the comparison between NFC and QR code


1. NFC is quicker than QR code. See the google above comparing NFC and QR code: The difference is significant. NFC is considerably faster.
2. NFC passive devices are very cheap e.g. an NFC wristband or card e.g Oyster Card (London) or Octopus card (Hong Kong) can be manufactured for around $1 to $2 USD per card this makes a payment system affordable for anyone. No smartphone and in fact no phone of any type is necessary.
3. NFC requires no training. QR code requires some training to use.
4. NFC can work in any light conditions QR code needs good light conditions.
5 NFC is more secure because it has to be in close physical proximity to work and does not require visual identification to register. QR payment code can be easily printed out and stuck over an official QR code.
6. NFC can be used by a Granny (tap and go) with no training. QR code can be confusing for a new user and they also need to open a specific app in order for it to work.
7. NFC does not require the user to have a smart phone. QR code user needs to have a smart phone, with a functional camera.
8. NFC works with a simple tap. QR code focusing is required for it to work as well as a having a smartphone.
9. NFC on a phone does not require opening a specific App. QR code a specific app first needs to be opened.

In every respect NFC is more suitable technology than QR code for mobile payments.

NFC is easier, cheaper, faster and more secure and does not require training to use. The passive NFC devices can make DASH available and accessible to the masses without the need for any training, wallets, or even Evolution. QR codes and DASH wallets needs people to be trained. NFC payment passive device does not. This means that the barrier to entry for the user is considerably lower when we use NFC compared to QR codes.

In essence NFC = Granny Friendly. We do not need Evolution. NFC is already granny friendly.

The following is a complete Granny Training Course on how to make payments with DASH using a passive NFC device (e.g. an NFC plastic card loaded with DASH):

"Granny go over and tap your card on the device at that shop. Check the amount is correct on the screen. If if it correct tap yes on the screen" Well done Granny. You can now make payments with DASH.

To charge up your card go to any official charge point shop, hand over your bolivars to the attendant. Tap your card against the recharge device, make sure the amount shown on the charge point screen is the amount you gave to the attendant, minus the small recharge fee that is shown separately and tap YES if it is or CANCEL if it is not.

By the way Granny, if you don't feel comfortable going to a authorized charge point I can always charge up your card at any time from my smartphone."

END OF GRANNY TRAINING


I believe that an NFC payments system in Venezuela is required for mass adoption. Stores can sell NFC wristbands or cards at a low cost and the store keepers could charge up their customer's NFC passive devices using a NFC smartphone with DASH in return for receiving Bolivars. In return the store keeper could take a small commission for undertaking the recharge for the customer.
 
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It was rather obvious that the use of the Petro would eventually be forced. That process has begun with pensioners, etc...

Aren't you concerned that all of the effort you're putting in now will be undone when the next step is taken? The obvious denunciation of cryptos other than the Petro as "undermining the nation/economy?" Followed by "you're a traitor if you use anything but the Petro." Followed by criminalization of the same...

Do you not see this path in front of you? Or did Maduro suddenly re-invent himself as a guy who wouldn't do exactly this...?

I'm concerned that you're investing a ton of work, money, effort, and time into something that will be blown up with the stroke of a pen, by exactly the sort of people who would do that...

I'm concerned that you're going to burn out pushing wet spaghetti up a hill with your nose...

I'm concerned that the combination of those two things is going to be overwhelming when you finally start meeting with resistance... Heavy-handed state-backed resistance... You can barely move forward as it is...
 
EN EFF SEE
Why not both?

Old, used phones that can do NFC and QR can have a simple app made for them that supports an address in an instant-sell exchange.

We had a crude prototype of this 4 years ago...

The only thing missing was an instant-sell exchange, but we had a goofy-but-effective way around that, too...

I'm pretty sure you've got such an exchange and don't need the work around, which was actually the hardest part...

The QR/NFC bit is not an exclusive OR. There's nothing that stops a payment terminal type device from supporting both.

What if grandma doesn't have an NFC capable device? QR isn't that tough to figure out... My mom (RIP) figured it out in a few seconds at the ripe old age of 70, and sh was the most tech-incompetent person ever to walk this Earth... She was the first to test the vending machine that went to Miami so many years ago...
 
1) The amount of Dash circulating in the Venezuelan market is very low.
2) The process of changing Bolivares to Dash is uncomfortable for most people.
A challenge, that once solved will be very rewarding to all of us! :)
Hello?

You're having trouble penetrating this.

The Petro is being funneled to them without having to know anything (whether they like it or not).

DASH; prohibitively high friction
PETRO; zero friction.

DASH; moderate knowledge.
PETRO; zero knowledge.

DASH; soon to be illegal.
PETRO; soon to be mandated.

Your budget is bankrupt
 
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