Pre-Proposal: Integrating Dash into exchange in Africa

Leonidas said:
Well, let's wait for Tawanda to answer now, coz we are all talking but he is not saying anything back... :)
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That's a lot of material he has to work through + real life. Tawanda, it might be a good idea to pop in and say if you are still working on it, or the community will just forget about this thread - just another chancer. Come tell us what you are doing, and answer the questions asked higher in the thread or ...... Bye
 
Biltong, I went to register on Tawanda's site yesterday.

He has a real website, that looks completely legit.

But I could make a website too. Tawanda, what volumes are you trading?

It takes a lot of perseverance to find answers to questions like this. Are guys legit, or are they busking chancers?

Biltong has offered Twawnda a challenge: prove your legitamacy, and Dash will fund you. If you can't make us trust you, it ain't gonna happen.

Please excuse my tout, but I think that that is what the PEC is for. Somebody needs to be paid for the hours that they invest to check whether guys like you are scamsters or legit.

If you're legit, then we are friends already :D but if you're a busker, the Dash community will know soon enough.

Any comment, Tawanda?
 
Tawanda is rather conspicuously quiet. But maybe he's busy with other things. Let's wait to hear from him!
 
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Biltong said:
That's a lot of material he has to work through + real life. Tawanda, it might be a good idea to pop in and say if you are still working on it, or the community will just forget about this thread - just another chancer. Come tell us what you are doing, and answer the questions asked higher in the thread or ...... Bye
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Sorry for being queit - I've been offline for the last couple of days. I'm back now. Let me respond to your question - I'm humbled by the interest though
 
DashingDude said:
Hi Tawanda

My mother is Zimbabwean, so I understand the situation there. Many of my relatives are still in Zim, but I'm South African.

I am working with the same sort of goals that you seem to have.

Your pre-proposal is very eloquently written, but needs more work. We'd need to know HOW you intend to do the integration, marketing and launch. Especially, how will you manage to have DASH added as the second cryptocurrency?

BTW, is Bitcoin commonly traded in Zim already? I'd like to understand how! Please explain....
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Thanks for the questions.

We already have two currency pairs on BitcoinFundi btc/usd and btc/zar. We plan to add two more currency pairs dash/usd and dash/btc. We will cover the full cost and time of the integration in house but as we learnt from experience, particularly with the btc/zar pair, adding a currency pair in our market is unlikely to get any traction if there is no liquidity on the markets and if there are now awareness efforts. We plan to provide liquidity by doing market making ourselves, that is we shall be providing both buy and sell side liquidity ourselves. We also plan to raise awareness though making use of the two customer acquisition channels that have given us the most results in the last couple of years that we have been in business and these are:

  1. Speaking engagements - i.e. crashing events and teaching the audience about bitcoin
  2. Blog posts in Zimbabwe's biggest technology blog , TechZim.

I have created a detailed budget explaining what I want to use the money for and detailed how I will spend. You can also comment here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kdXxUOUMw2nOYZYmPybShYdS9OXM8iQtZMvjzzg7cbU/edit?usp=sharing

To answer the last part of your question: Yes. In fact the demand for bitcoin is now significantly higher than supply and there is not enough bitcoin on our exchange to meet the demand. This is for a few reasons:

  1. Zimbabwe does not have a currency on it's own and it has a forex crisis. Locally people can't get cash and are sleeping in queues to get cash. Most banks now have a withdrawal limit of $50 per day but not everyone is lucking to get this.
  2. The forex crisis extends to the banks Nostro account. To give you some background: you can only make an international transfer through your bank if your bank has enough funds in it's foreign bank account , called a Nostro account. Many Zimbabwean banks have no money in their Nostro accounts so people cannot make make international transfers to pay suppliers abroad or make online payments. For many individuals and businesses, bitcoin is the only way to make cross-border payments and online payments. But here is not enough bitcoin on the exchange to meet the local demand. It's the biggest reason we are looking at other cryptocurrencies and dash specifically.
  3. half our our customers use bitcoin for remittances. Here is a blog post by one of them explaining how he saves money using bitcoin to send money to Zimbabwe: http://www.techzim.co.zw/2016/11/save-money-using-bitcoin-send-money-zimbabwe/
  4. Here is another blog post explaining how to we use bitcoin to help Zimbabweans to make cross border payments for cars: https://blog.bitcoinfundi.com/how-we-are-helping-our-customers-buy-cars-from-beforward-b41f25c5fc92
 
Dima said:
The 30 day volume on your exchange is only about 20 btc, not much..
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It's true, our volume is low but we have been growing slowly every month. Here is a spreadsheet that shows how our volume (as well as other important metrics we track) has been growing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UXpa01CmOgiF8S8AwwzOGBNWLGSbmHr6E7yCd-dYwHE/edit?usp=sharing

One reason we have not been able to grow as fast as other international bitcoin exchanges is because there is generally not enough bitcoin liquidity in Africa. The demand is huge but there is not just enough supply. I think adding another cryptocurrency (in this case Dash) could help grow that volume significantly.

I have written a whole blog post last year explaining why there is not enough cryptocurrency on the continent even though the demand exists. You can read it here: https://blog.bitcoinfundi.com/why-t...han-it-is-on-other-international-56bd85db1445
 
Dima said:
The monthly volume of BitcoinFundi is about 20 BTC, you can check it on the bottom of this page https://bitcoinfundi.com/
He ask us to invest in something very very small. This is all what I wanna say. We can't expect big profit from this.
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It's true that our volume is low right now but the potential is huge and the demand for cryptocurency is significantly bigger than the volume. This is because there are real use cases and real problems Dash can solve today. And you can see from the link in my earlier post that there is growth that has been consistent.
 
Dima said:
I didn't said I dont like this proposal. I said we can't expect big profit from this. And it's true. But the question is - how much money he actually need? He didn't tell us yet. If the amount of money is congruent to the volume of his business, then we can support him. But it is senseless to give him a lot of money.
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I need 177 Dash. Here is a breakdown and explanation of how we plan to spend it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kdXxUOUMw2nOYZYmPybShYdS9OXM8iQtZMvjzzg7cbU/edit?usp=sharing
 
kbu66 said:
Hi Tawanda,

At first glance your proposal idea makes sense.
It would probably help your proposal a lot if you sit down and work out the cost-ballpark for the integration and a realistic timeplan.
Try not to be overly optimistic stay realistic.

Personally I like conservative plans that are met or exceeded much better than overly optimistic plans that always end in disappointment.
But that may be just my mentality and personal preference ( I am not american ;) ).

If you manage to sketch out a plan that shows how Dash can solve some of the monetary issues in your country/contient with a long-term growth perspective for Dash - your chances of succeeding with a proposal are good IMHO.
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Thanks for this feedback. I will use your suggestions to improve my proposal
 
JZA said:
I would love to get behind this proposal, but I do want to get some kind of development of how much money he needs, and how he expects to benefit. some kind of projection.

For example, I would like to see (maybe on a next round) integration with major retailers in the area. That would certainly bring the volume that we hope for. Remember we want DASH to be used, more than traded and speculated, is a big thing if a major merchant can adapt it to their infrastructure. How far are you from that?

Does your exchange has an API?
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Yes @JZA we have an API (https://bitcoinfundi.com/api_documentation) and our goal is to eventually see people use Dash as a utility (for things such as payments) rather than for speculative reasons but we also believe that you can't really have one without the other. Let me explain with an example:
When bitcoin started getting popular, everyone said that one of the biggest potential use cases of the technology was remittances. But in reality, there were no exchanges in places such as Africa at the time so if you sent remittances to Africa with bitcoin at the time, there was no way to convert it to local currency. It wasn't until exchanges came up that it became possible to do bitcoin remittances. Today people use our exchange to facilitate remittances (http://www.techzim.co.zw/2016/11/save-money-using-bitcoin-send-money-zimbabwe/). Today, it would be impossible for merchants to accept bitcoin through services like Bitpay if Bitpay couldn't quickly convert the bitcoin to fiat on exchanges. Exchanges are the important use cases for all the important uses of Dash but they need enough liquidity and activity - hence why we think that it's important that we market make there.
 
noobtrader said:
i will vote yes if requested Dash amount is reasonable AND OP can prove his connection with said exchange either in twitter feed or/or blog.
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Hello @noobtrader

What's your Twitter handle. I would like to tweet to your from our Twitter account to prove my connection with the exchange. Let me know if there is anything you want me to include in the tweet.
 
Biltong said:
Howzit Tawanda,
I'm an African as well and you are facing a shitload of work, but I will help you where I can. We need dash in Africa ASAP as a money transmitter and everywhere once Evolution is live. https://www.dash.org/evolution/

Couple of things:
Amanda's videos will give you an excellent understanding of dash - way too much to read on all the forums/slacks. Start from+- Jan/Feb this year and look through all of them if you can - lots happened the last 4 months and she covered it all. She brings out 2 or 3 per week - pick up her weekly videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiFMZOlhgsYJPIiG0bjT1_SuT5h7NqPCC
and subscribe to her.

The Pre-Proposal phase is becoming quite formalised and you might be one of the first to be officially evaluated by the PEC (Proposal Evaluation Committee), so have a look here on how to submit a Pre-Proposal https://goo.gl/RgIlEq
Then here at the Evaluator Guidelines (under construction) and it will give you an idea how we will evaluate your proposal. https://goo.gl/bIydYX

Any questions - post in this thread.
When you have a reasonable idea of what is needed edit your 1st post and replace the existing description with a more 'correct' Pre-Proposal description, to get more feedback.
If you are ready/comfortable you can post the actual Proposal +- 8 June ( I would recommend not publishing a cost here until you are very sure of what you are doing)
Your Pre-Proposal will be dissected by the community, but I will try and guide you in adapting the Pre-Proposal until it's ready to be launched as an official Proposal.

PM me when you have read through all the material and replaced the description with a more 'correct' Pre-Proposal.
You will notice that you have 2 serious problems: You are unknown and you are asking for Dash up front - the rest of your proposal will have to be extremely good to give you a chance of making the Short List, but, don't give up hope... We can work on both problems. There's always a way to make big problems smaller.
Good Luck :D
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Biltong said:
Amanda's videos will give you an excellent understanding of dash - way too much to read on all the forums/slacks. Start from+- Jan/Feb this year and look through all of them if you can - lots happened the last 4 months and she covered it all.
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I follow Amanda on YouTube - I love her videos.

Thank you for the guidance on how to write a Dash Pre-Proposal. I will follow the guideline and then PM you as soon as I have replaced the description with a formal Pre-Proposal
 
dashly said:
I like the idea and would probably vote yes depending on how much your asking for. How long has your exchange been around and what is the growth rate? Will this proposal include integration for InstantSend?

Also, for people to feel comfortable voting on this proposal you'll need to prove you are who you say you are. Can you create a page on bitcoinfundi.com dedicated to this proposal? Doesn't matter what's on it, it would just be for verification.

Thanks!
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Hi @dashly

dashly said:
How long has your exchange been around and what is the growth rate?
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BitocinFundi has been live since 16 September 2015. Here is a spreadsheet showing how we've been growing between then and now: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UXpa01CmOgiF8S8AwwzOGBNWLGSbmHr6E7yCd-dYwHE/edit?usp=sharing

dashly said:
Will this proposal include integration for InstantSend?
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I think we probably will but I'm not sure yet. InstantSend for us will be great, particularly for customers that are depositing Dash on to the exchange - zero confirmation deposits will enhance the user experience but we haven't made any technical implementation decisions yet because we haven't gotten to that stage. Right now I don't know if InstantSend will come out on top as the best way to integrate Dash initially but I hope it will.

dashly said:
Also, for people to feel comfortable voting on this proposal you'll need to prove you are who you say you are. Can you create a page on bitcoinfundi.com dedicated to this proposal? Doesn't matter what's on it, it would just be for verification.

Thanks!
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I have. I've created this page: https://bitcoinfundi.com/dash-proposal.html

Will that do?
 
Any way that South Africans will be able to buy Dash from your exchange? Can we send you money using M-Pesa? Or some other way? That will solve your liquidity problem in a Dash ;)
 
Biltong said:
Any way that South Africans will be able to buy Dash from your exchange? Can we send you money using M-Pesa? Or some other way? That will solve your liquidity problem in a Dash ;)
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South Africans will not be able to to easily buy Dash from our exchange after integration. We have some people in South Africa who have deposited fiat on our exchange via Ecocash (Ecocash is to Zimbabwe what M-Pesa in Kenya and it's now available in PEP stores in South Africa) but it hasn't been easy and it has been expensive in every one of the cases because of the exchange rate losses. I believe we can make it easier and cheaper by working towards opening a bank account in South Africa but we can't make it a focus area for us in the short term because we have other more pressing issues.
The short answer is that in the short term, no. It won't be easy to buy Dash with fiat from South Africa. Only with bitcoin. But in the long term, definitely.
 
Tawanda,

That was an excellent reply. You've made a good start toward earning the support of this community. Now I must go and read all of the links that you provided.

Cheers!
 
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