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.
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.
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.
Last edited:
