Exclusive: Speculative and Branded Value are Not Enough for Success, Says Co-founder of Dash Thailand

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by Teuta Franjkovic · 5 min read
Exclusive: Speculative and Branded Value are Not Enough for Success, Says Co-founder of Dash Thailand
Felix Mago. Photo: Teuta Franjkovic / Coinspeaker

In an exclusive interview for Coinspeaker, Felix Mago, one of the co-founders of Dash Thailand, reveals that the key mission behind Dash is being very simple and very straight forward: “We are doing what the name says – digital cash.”

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 payments. No one wants to sit there and wait ten minutes for your copy for a confirmation without a third person. What Dash has, and that’s another thing that make us different from other project, is a 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 all the local teams 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 must have its own customers. In this sense, Blockchain is same old business all along – you have to do business and create the cash flow.

Look what is happening at the stock market. Look at the Apple. Apple is selling the iPhone and they are really earning money with it. Of course, they also have high brand value. This combines to a speculated value and it’s ok to have this speculated value as well. But it cannot be only that. If it’s only that, most probably it would fail or go down in the long run.”

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 or giving them more of easy ways to go in and out of Dash to fiat.

What we have realized is that, for now, nobody wants to deal with the price volatility, so you have to give the merchant options. One key factor is to give them option to go back to 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 Baht.“

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 a very sad and tough situation in that 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 payments or let’s say brick and mortar payments. There are differences in terms of process, integration, ways of making it happen and the things that must be done on the business side. Also, it’s a completely different story if you’re selling a travel package or a hamburger.

The way you must integrate, and the way the payment flow goes in the background is completely different. I think that the most important thing a payment-oriented Blockchain companies need to do is to learn how payments work and really find the right verticals.

For me every vertical is interesting, especially the online and offline retail or the travel industry. But even other verticals like loyalty programs or other platforms are still interesting.”

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.

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