Last week the cancellation of the Hard Fork in Bitcoin had the markets jumping and in particular the altcoins gained a lot of ground (60% in some cases) before things levelled off. Dash was one of the alt coins to be so positively affected and while it jumped all over the place it settled back to a comfortable gain of a net 40% to lie at the $430 mark. Given its gain in value since the start of the month this might be argued to be a function of more than just the cancellation of the SegWit2x or at least the head of legal at Dash, Fernando Gutierrez would argue as such.<\/p>\n
Based in Spain, Gutierrez has been involved with Dash for three years. The first non-developer to be appointed to the board, Gutierrez is genuinely cryto-curious, a specialisation from general curiosity before.<\/p>\n
\u2018My wife is relieved,\u2019 laughs Gutierrez. \u2018Previously my curiosity led me to online learning constantly. I was doing all-nighters taking online courses on everything from sociology to physics. Now I am just concentrating on cryptocurrency.\u2019<\/p>\n
Gutierrez is self-deprecating as he is also a fully-qualified lawyer, economist and owner of a number of successful business across gaming, video and health service \u2013 a true renaissance man.<\/p>\n
Gutierrez argues that while the hard fork naturally impacting the markets, the surge in price for Dash was inexorable. \u2018The same weekend we begun trading on Asian exchanges which pushed our price,\u2019 he says on the phone from Spain. \u2018And coupled with the release of new software, Version 12.2, we had a lot of good things to talk about, not least the fact that the very schism that divided Bitcoin was being addressed by our upgrades; notably the extension of the size of our Block to 2Mg. It was a natural flight to our coin.\u2019<\/p>\n
The argument of Dash being a safe haven must be tempered by its somewhat unruly past and in particular it\u2019s first launch day where 2 million coins were mined creating a dubious instamine. The founder claims that the community did not wish to see a relaunch and mining has continued at a more sedate pace where on average 3k coins are mined daily. Despite this start, Dash has set up to tackle the payments industry and operates a number of separate technologies which separates and arguably improves on the core Bitcoin structure.<\/p>\n
Most notable is the two tier structure. Miners mine new blocks and are paid a percentage (originally at 80% and now to 45%), while Masternodes are used for payments\u00a0 \u2013 Private Send, InstantSend and governance of the eco system. To become a Masternode requires the holding of 1000 Dash coins, an expensive business at today\u2019s prices, and anyone cashing in and going below that volume automatically loses their vote. Skin in the game is the rationale behind that. 10% of fees go back into Dash to pay for full time developers. This is key according to Gutierrez.<\/p>\n
\u2018We can afford to pay developers and that is another reason to favour Dash over Bitcoin and other coins,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
Gutierrez feels that the cancellation of 2x signals strongly that Bitcoin is abandoning the payment model. \u2018Slowed transactions and higher fees can only mean one thing \u2013 Bitcoin is going full-on for the storied value model,\u2019 he argues. \u2018They are not properly addressing the horrible user experience. The Lighting Network is being touted as a solution but that is not in place as yet.\u00a0 In the short term, Bitcoin cannot compete in its current form as a payments carrier.\u2019<\/p>\n
The crisis of the size of the Bitcoin blockchain has ironically already been addressed by Dash \u2013 it has already increased its blocksize to that of 2Mgs and promised faster, cheaper transactions as a result.<\/p>\n
Gutierrez is pretty confident about the future of Dash. V 12.2 has brought a lot of new features to the market \u2013 \u2018We don\u2019t do fake news,\u2019 he says, \u2018we only announce when we have features locked down,\u2019 \u2013 and Evolution is planned for mid 2018.<\/p>\n
\u2018We are very excited about Evolution,\u2019 he says. \u2018We have a number of key features that are going to make Dash very engaging \u2013 DAPI and DashDrive in particular. DAPI or Distributed APIs mean we can connect randomly to any cluster of servers. This will increase speed and security. While DashDrive means we can simplify the process of payments, work outside the blockchain and swap in usernames for long private keys. Having a username on the DashDrive means we can also offer password recovery.<\/p>\n
\u2018And we are launching a HD Wallet on DashDrive making it easier again,\u2019 says Gutierrez. \u2018We know that the average Dash or alt coin holder is not a deep techie. They don\u2019t want to be bothered by security and keys and keeping everything up to date. They want to use their digital wallet in much the same way as their physical one. We are building that on user experience to simplify, speed up and lower the costs of using Dash.\u2019<\/p>\n
All up Gutierrez\u2019s argument that Dash\u2019s appreciation of value is less to do with the cancellation of the hard fork and more to do with their concerted development seems to hold water. \u2018We can\u2019t ignore Bitcoin, when it rallies, alt coins surge in its slipstream,\u2019 he says. \u2018But we are doing things for ourselves. We are building value for ourselves as well and we\u2019re not just piggy-backing on a trend.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week the cancellation of the Hard Fork in Bitcoin had the markets jumping and in particular the altcoins gained a lot of ground (60% in some cases) before things levelled off. Dash was one of the alt coins to be so positively affected and while it jumped all over the place it settled back to a comfortable gain of a net 40% to lie at the $430 mark. Given its gain in value since the start of the month this might be argued to be a function of more than just the cancellation of the SegWit2x or at least the head of legal at Dash, Fernando Gutierrez would argue as such.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n