Jump start dash adoption by acquiring 400k users in 4 months

[Dashmaximalist]

This idea implicitly targets third world folks to whom $1 is significant. I shall vote "yes" if it becomes a proposal.

Thanks a lot , yes thats correct , the proposal targets countries whose financial systems are shaky at the moment and where getting SIM cards is not free and involves ID verification like zimbabwe, venezuela, nigeria

i will make the proposal for December , we are doing a initial pilot with $500 for 500 people and will share the results with the team after that , the plan is to bring millions of people in developing countries into Dash

 

[masternube]

Which countries are you targeting exactly? And will you only allow phone numbers from those countries?
Can you link to some information about not being able to buy phone numbers in bulk in those countries?
Sim cards aren't the only way to get a phone number. You can get a phone number through services like Skype and Google Voice for example. If those companies can get phone numbers in bulk, there must be a way.
And have you done any research into how interested people are in getting $1 and in which demographics?

 

[Dashmaximalist]

First of all , i really appreciate you taking time to come up with some very interesting questions and i would rather prefer some thoughtful questions like this than some mumbo jumbo privacy activist type questions.

we are targeting zimbabwe in the first run as we feel this is the country that is well aware of bitcoin and is suffering from severe import restrictions, also the price of bitcoin is double the market rate , shows people are desperate to get in. to the second one , yes we will only allow phone numbers from a specific country we are targeting, you can check this link which mentions the type of ID requirements for getting SIM card in various geographies , As you expect the developed countries usually have no or less restrictions and the developing ones have strict ones, which is perfect because we are going to totally make use of it

Now Google phone, skype cost a lot of money even in US like $10 or so and they only actually work for a handful of countries ( US plus europe )

$1 in most of these desperate countries is a lot , it's like say $10 in US or 20. now if we feel that $1 is proving too high we can think of reducing it , the idea to pull in 15-30 age old population who are most open to new technologies

Also would like to remind everyone , getfreedash.com is not just about throwing $1 at people, it's mainly about educating them and teaching them everything related to dash and digital currency sort of like bitcoin.com by roger if you have seen it

i have bunch of ideas to make it an one-stop shop for everything related to dash

 

[masternube]

I didn't mean that people would sign up for Google Voice. I meant that the existence of such services shows that it's possible to acquire phone numbers in bulk without SIM.

If people in Zimbabwe get interested because of this campaign, do they have any way of buying Dash there? What is the Bitcoin volume in Zimbabwe?

 

[Dashmaximalist]

there are couple of small dash based exchanges out there , we funded one of them called dash kuva and there are doing a great job !

https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/bitcoin-zimbabwe-price-spike.html bitcoin is trading at $14,000 there because of currency controls

edit: its bitcoin fundi

 

[demo]

there are couple of small dash based exchanges out there , we funded one of them called dash kuva and there are doing a great job !

Kuvacash is about a webminar, not about merchants. Isnt it? As far as I can see, there is no merchant in zimbabwe, until now.

I think it is critical to have merchants in zimbabwe, in order to incentivize people not to exchange their dash with other coins, but to create a dash economy there. Unless of course we admit that this is a pure charity and we dont care whether they will exchange their dash immediatly.

 

[masternube]

bitcoin is trading at $14,000 there because of currency controls

I didn't ask about price, I asked about volume. If the volume is tiny, the price doesn't really matter.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

The volume apparently increased 10 fold this year whatever you can check on google

 

[UltimateCrypto]

SMS otp is a great way to reach out to more people more especially in Africa and developing nations. privacy is out of board, you think about privacy when youre rich. If your currency fluctuates almost everyday and lose value to the US dollar adoption of Dash will be on your mind not secrecy.

Only that $1dollar is too meagre. I think $10 dollars is enticing and could enable the poor invest more in Dash in the long run

 

[Dashmaximalist]

SMS otp is a great way to reach out to more people more especially in Africa and developing nations. privacy is out of board, you think about privacy when youre rich. If your currency fluctuates almost everyday and lose value to the US dollar adoption of Dash will be on your mind not secrecy.

Only that $1dollar is too meagre. I think $10 dollars is enticing and could enable the poor invest more in Dash in the long run

Thanks for that , i couldnt agree more , Privacy is a luxury only for rich, most people dont understand that unfortunately , for those whose only life savings are currency ( the most vulnerable population of society like old and poor) and to see it depreciate is the worst thing ever. we need to fix this and fix it urgently !

we will start with $1 but may increase later , but remember this we want to pull in as many people as possible for as little as possible , the power of dash network is directly proportional to the no of participants in it ,also giving $10 means 1 person will simply buy 1000 sim cards and claim our benefit which is not what we want. once there are on the dash network there will be many ways of earning dash , so thats not a problem per se.

Thanks again.

 

[demo]

Although this project is for profit, I still want to help.

Because the more profit it gets (and taking into account that the greed of the project owner remains stable) the more Dash will go to the poor people.

The cheapest solution is not to buy bulk SMS from a telecom company. The cheapest solution is to built an autonomous system similar to the below, and send someone to install it to the targeted country. So here you are, a detailed description of the system you should built.

Please , dont delay this project. Time is money, and this money is missing from the poor.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

Ok thanks , we are in the final testing phases .. we will post the proposal very soon ... Get your MNO friends to vote for us

 

[demo]

Ok thanks , we are in the final testing phases .. we will post the proposal very soon ... Get your MNO friends to vote for us

I have no MNO friends.

 

[AlejandroE]

Hello, I love the idea but I think it should be launched with another advertising methods in order to increase the efficiency of the campaign.

Im from Venezuela and I have 2 experiences with SMS broadcast campaigns for my company in 2 differents times: Oct 2016 and Oct 2017. On Oct 2016 almost nobody knew our company, but on Oct 2017, after a advertisment campaigns (ATL, commercial TV, radio, etc) our brand was well known.

So, what happen?

Oct 2016 campaign failed, and we only experienced. I think people didnt want click any link from a company they didnt know nothing
Oct 2017 campaign was highly succesfull. Our previous advertising campaigns helped a LOT.

For example, in Venezuela, a few advertising fences on the most important highways and some "ads" on social networks would do to HUGE impact and then when people receive our SMS they will know that they have seen DASH recently and the probabilties of success will increase.

What do you think?

 

[Dashmaximalist]

Hello, I love the idea but I think it should be launched with another advertising methods in order to increase the efficiency of the campaign.

Im from Venezuela and I have 2 experiences with SMS broadcast campaigns for my company in 2 differents times: Oct 2016 and Oct 2017. On Oct 2016 almost nobody knew our company, but on Oct 2017, after a advertisment campaigns (ATL, commercial TV, radio, etc) our brand was well known.

So, what happen?

Oct 2016 campaign failed, and we only experienced. I think people didnt want click any link from a company they didnt know nothing
Oct 2017 campaign was highly succesfull. Our previous advertising campaigns helped a LOT.

For example, in Venezuela, a few advertising fences on the most important highways and some "ads" on social networks would do to HUGE impact and then when people receive our SMS they will know that they have seen DASH recently and the probabilties of success will increase.

What do you think?

Thanks a lot , yes we would consider doing a social media marketing sort of thing . , but remember you get $1 for referring friends too so i am guessing people would take up this opportunity to refer as many friends as possible and this could quickly scale up, but feel free to correct me if i am wrong

 

[AlejandroE]

Yes, you got your point and is completely valid. But think that everything will sume, also a social media ¨ads¨ are very cheap, you could put it for a future proposal. Anyways, im sure this proposal will past. Good luck!

 

[AlejandroE]

Yes, you got your point and is completely valid. But think that everything will sume, also a social media ¨ads¨ are very cheap, you could put it for a future proposal. Anyways, im sure this proposal will past. Good luck!

will sum***

 

[Dashmaximalist]

Yes, you got your point and is completely valid. But think that everything will sume, also a social media ¨ads¨ are very cheap, you could put it for a future proposal. Anyways, im sure this proposal will past. Good luck!

Thanks again , hoping for the best !

 

[Max Yoga]

Hi Dashmaximalist,
Drako here from Kuvacash. I like your enthusiasm and drive to make things happen in Zim, but want to give a word or two of warning.

In principle giving $1 equivalent of Dash to people in Zim (according to our research) can’t at present actually do anything for them. Businesses won’t take it as they can’t pay their suppliers with it either, and individuals have no idea what it is (even if it’s ‘worth’ $1). USD is king in Zimbabwe, so a careful approach to building trust in its value needs to be taken. To build adoption of Dash at present there, on and off-ramps to either Zim Bond or USD, ie a cash service would be required. We are employing the same principle for Kuvacash MGM (Member-Get-Member) campaign - $1-2 usd for the other person when they invite someone to install the app or send them Dash; the difference is that they can immediately redeem their Dash for clean USD cash. According to our research, when that story is told on the ground, people are very interested indeed.

Some comments about SMS loop validation; this is a non-ideal security mechanism to rely on for the reasons indicated in earlier comments on this forum so for example, with Kuvacash we must also capture identity card information on registration (which is required by the regulator under the license we are going for, essential for us to be able to legally operate in the country and build legitimacy) we can’t provide the cash services otherwise which people currently need at the moment to trust that Dash has ‘value’.

Anyway I hope these comments are helpful, I suggest that if you want to go forward with this that you try a pilot and see how it goes, but definitely start with research on the ground! Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further ok!

 

[Dashmaximalist]

hi Max yoga

Thanks for taking time to respond , i really appreciate it.

I believe sms based marketing acts as a compliment to the exchange type work you are doing and it's extremely important in the bigger scheme of things.

The point of sms based marketing is to make it extremely easy for users to sign up without any additional validation which means the reward which we give can be very small ( for example coin bases spends $20 on acquiring 1 user , where as we plan to do it at $1-2 per user -- 10-20 cheaper ). The fact that you are licensed and can deal with cash in hand is very useful to us and we are going to direct our users to exchanges like yours who can redeem dash to USD if they see the need. we will take a similar approach in Venezuela as well , we will give the exchange details for those who want to exchange their dash.

However here is the important bit, a large number of users may not be interested in exchanging their dash at all ,given the fact dash went up 100% in the last month ( along with the fact that local currencies are depreciating all the time or they might want to a bit of online gambling who knows ) , they might want to hold on to dash itself and when say 5-10% population of a country opens a dash wallet they can start use dash for 'buying a coffee' purely in dash which is the holy grail of our marketing.

sms based marketing ( and other digital marketing techniques ) will act as foundation on which exchanges like yours can thrive ,else we would be spending a ton of money unnecessarily.

hope this makes sense , let me know if you have more comments or concerns

 

[demo]

which is required by the regulator under the license we are going for, essential for us to be able to legally operate in the country and build legitimacy

This is the point. Why asking legitimacy from the corrupted FIAT money system?
The goal of cryptocurrencies is to ignore the corrupted fiat money system, not to beg legitimacy from it!

 

[Dashmaximalist]

This is the point. Why asking legitimacy from the corrupted FIAT money system?
The goal of cryptocurrencies is to ignore the corrupted fiat money system, not to beg legitimacy from it!

we need the fiat money system during the transition, there is no escaping that

 

[demo]

we need the fiat money system during the transition, there is no escaping that

I dont think so. We dont need fiat, if we have merchants that can escape from fiat.
And this can be done if we broadcast the blockchain from space, or from any other secure transport medium that the government cannot control.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

hi guys , the proposal has posted and its live now , please give your Yes VOTE , thanks

 

[UltimateCrypto]

hi guys , the proposal has posted and its live now , please give your Yes VOTE , thanks

Hi Dashmaximalist, wish you the very best on your proposal.. Hope to be part of the execution team for Ghana, West Africa. Am always available for You.
Cheers!

 

[hamzaian]

Don't get me wrong, im just a noob but kinda taking over bitcoin shouldnt be our goals(at least for now).
I think the dash community should focus more on targeting a different kind of audience, one who wants an actual crypto'currency'(cos at this point bitcoin is no more a currency).
Also integrating it in different markets and eventually economies.
Kudos for the article by the way
Cheers!

 

[feedbands]

Will there be people on the ground in Zimbabwe making this happen? If so and how many people and how exactly will they be approaching and informing people?

 

[hamzaian]

Hi everyone,

This is one of very first marketing campaigns which is a Direct result oriented meaning you get precise results per $ spent, which would be very reassuring for those who are looking at the marketing effectiveness.

Bitcoin is expected have around 10-25 million users and it's raising exponentially thanks to 100s of affiliate channels ( like coinbase offering $10 , genesis giving 3% discount on referrals for account opening etc). If we want to take over bitcoin we need to act fast, if bitcoin manages to cross 100 million users it would get extremely difficult to take them over.

we all agree that evolution is a wonderful product, but just having a sexy product doesn't pull users automatically. Users need to be incentivised atleast initially ( thats why my bank offers £200 if you switch).

Most proposals so far have focused enabling dash payments for businesses, which is basically pretty slow and ineffective , users don't start using dash because couple of shops are accepting dash ( that's just common sense right , which unfortunately most proposals miss )

This is exactly why one of first big user oriented campaign @amanda_b_johnson 's #firstdashwallet was a huge success. 1000s of people opened their wallets and posted pics on twitter so much so that the team handling verifications was overwhelmed.

we want to continue on this legacy, and thought of using facial recognition based approach to give $5 to each person , however after having feisty discussions about using facial recognition for unique verification , we figured out that SMS OTP verification is a better and easier thing to handle and has much better privacy protection etc

we propose to give $1 in dash to everyone who downloads dash wallet and verifies through SMS OTP and $1 to for every referral they refer who signs up and does the verification in specific countries where getting a SIM Card is not free*

This has many benefits compared to any other method that can be used for mass marketing that can bring millions of users.

first off , people are very comfortable with SMS OTP verification and it hardly takes any effort except for putting your phone no

In Most developing countries it costs more than $1 to get a SIM CARD ( and most have a limit on the no of sim cards you can get) so our little one dollar gift will not be big enough to entice hackers to hack our system

Sim cards technology is extremely reliant and has withstood any technical hacking done by hackers ( not social engineering which cant be done en masse)

The amount of personal data that we need to collect very little and we are planning to delete all the phone numbers from a particular country once we are done with a country ( all those privacy buffs take sigh now)

Last but not least, total cost per user acquisition is just $2 ( much less than the #firstdashwallet give away ) and we can track it directly with the no of app downloads and reviews we get on our playstore/appstore.

The strategy is not to pay everyone in a particular country , but to pay just 2-5% of a country to sign up, this sort of forms a root over there , and the rest picks on itself.

Bitcoin has huge earlier mover advantage in big countries like china, india , japan and korea but have missed out in the smaller and poorer countries, a stable currency ( or appreciating currency ) like dash can bring numerous advantages to the developing countries. Many of these countries are run by quasi dictators / dictators who impose crushing currency controls and have high/hyper inflation, if dash becomes their national currencies ( i know its a big IF but frankly it's a when ) , it literally gives huge boost to their economies

What does this project basically aim to do ?

Bitcoin is extremely popular with users because 100s of websites are catered to bitcoin, 100s of sites cater to bitcoin because millions of users are using bitcoin, this is catch-22 problem and unless we manage to get a couple of million users we can't really think of competing with bitcoin.

This project aims to introduce dash to millions of users at a nominal cost, who will then be catered by 100s of dash based businesses in future. Once we have a million plus users using dash, we can start running other interesting marketing campaigns.

The current timing is an awesome opportunity for dash as bitcoin is under heavy stress ( because of the insane transaction fees and slow confirmation), before bitcoin solves these issues in a meaningful way, we should capitalize on it

Update: getfreedash.com is hosted now (feel free to test it out), this site will host lot of dash related material and will be a go to guide , in future we aim to include dash wallet and dash merchant map and sort of become the blockchain.info for dash , your feedback is welcome

Hi everyone,

This is one of very first marketing campaigns which is a Direct result oriented meaning you get precise results per $ spent, which would be very reassuring for those who are looking at the marketing effectiveness.

Bitcoin is expected have around 10-25 million users and it's raising exponentially thanks to 100s of affiliate channels ( like coinbase offering $10 , genesis giving 3% discount on referrals for account opening etc). If we want to take over bitcoin we need to act fast, if bitcoin manages to cross 100 million users it would get extremely difficult to take them over.

we all agree that evolution is a wonderful product, but just having a sexy product doesn't pull users automatically. Users need to be incentivised atleast initially ( thats why my bank offers £200 if you switch).

Most proposals so far have focused enabling dash payments for businesses, which is basically pretty slow and ineffective , users don't start using dash because couple of shops are accepting dash ( that's just common sense right , which unfortunately most proposals miss )

This is exactly why one of first big user oriented campaign @amanda_b_johnson 's #firstdashwallet was a huge success. 1000s of people opened their wallets and posted pics on twitter so much so that the team handling verifications was overwhelmed.

we want to continue on this legacy, and thought of using facial recognition based approach to give $5 to each person , however after having feisty discussions about using facial recognition for unique verification , we figured out that SMS OTP verification is a better and easier thing to handle and has much better privacy protection etc

we propose to give $1 in dash to everyone who downloads dash wallet and verifies through SMS OTP and $1 to for every referral they refer who signs up and does the verification in specific countries where getting a SIM Card is not free*

This has many benefits compared to any other method that can be used for mass marketing that can bring millions of users.

first off , people are very comfortable with SMS OTP verification and it hardly takes any effort except for putting your phone no

In Most developing countries it costs more than $1 to get a SIM CARD ( and most have a limit on the no of sim cards you can get) so our little one dollar gift will not be big enough to entice hackers to hack our system

Sim cards technology is extremely reliant and has withstood any technical hacking done by hackers ( not social engineering which cant be done en masse)

The amount of personal data that we need to collect very little and we are planning to delete all the phone numbers from a particular country once we are done with a country ( all those privacy buffs take sigh now)

Last but not least, total cost per user acquisition is just $2 ( much less than the #firstdashwallet give away ) and we can track it directly with the no of app downloads and reviews we get on our playstore/appstore.

The strategy is not to pay everyone in a particular country , but to pay just 2-5% of a country to sign up, this sort of forms a root over there , and the rest picks on itself.

Bitcoin has huge earlier mover advantage in big countries like china, india , japan and korea but have missed out in the smaller and poorer countries, a stable currency ( or appreciating currency ) like dash can bring numerous advantages to the developing countries. Many of these countries are run by quasi dictators / dictators who impose crushing currency controls and have high/hyper inflation, if dash becomes their national currencies ( i know its a big IF but frankly it's a when ) , it literally gives huge boost to their economies

What does this project basically aim to do ?

Bitcoin is extremely popular with users because 100s of websites are catered to bitcoin, 100s of sites cater to bitcoin because millions of users are using bitcoin, this is catch-22 problem and unless we manage to get a couple of million users we can't really think of competing with bitcoin.

This project aims to introduce dash to millions of users at a nominal cost, who will then be catered by 100s of dash based businesses in future. Once we have a million plus users using dash, we can start running other interesting marketing campaigns.

The current timing is an awesome opportunity for dash as bitcoin is under heavy stress ( because of the insane transaction fees and slow confirmation), before bitcoin solves these issues in a meaningful way, we should capitalize on it

Update: getfreedash.com is hosted now (feel free to test it out), this site will host lot of dash related material and will be a go to guide , in future we aim to include dash wallet and dash merchant map and sort of become the blockchain.info for dash , your feedback is welcome

 

[Dashmaximalist]

Will there be people on the ground in Zimbabwe making this happen? If so and how many people and how exactly will they be approaching and informing people?

we will not be needing people on the ground in zim right now , we will start with social media marketing/digital marketing for the initial kick off, having said that we will partner with various Dash partners both in Zim and Venezuela

 

[feedbands]

So then how will these people be reached?