Dash Text offers Venmo type payments with Dash (DASH)
A company called Dash Text is offering SMS-based Dash (DASH) cryptocurrency transactions in Venezuela.
If it works as advertised, Dash Text will let mobile phone users send Dash (DASH) payments to each other instantly. Therefore, a good way to think of Dash Text is as a Venmo or peer-to-peer (P2P) payment app for Dash.
Uniquely, Dash Text is now available to the Venezuelan public, CryptoNinjas claims. In particular, DashText is conducting a public beta test of its SMS payments service in Venezuela.
Demand for cryptocurrencies like DASH is growing in Venezuela because of runaway hyperinflation. Thus, Venezuela is an excellent market to test DASH Text in.
“The bolivar loses around 3-4% of its value per day, so Dash is the perfect alternative for Venezuelans to save their money against hyperinflation,” Dash Text co-founder Alejandro Echeverría estimates. To clarify, the bolivar is Venezuela’s fiat currency.
Dash Text Aims to Cash in on Cross-Border Payments
Under those circumstances, Echeverría is betting that Venezuelans will be more receptive to cash alternatives like Dash Text. For example, he thinks Venezuelans will use DASH to protect remittance payments from inflation.
Remittances are cross-border payments that people send to friends and family in other nations. Dash Text estimates that Venezuelans receive $1 billion in remittances every year.
Theoretically, a service like Dash Text will protect remittance funds from inflation because the funds will not have to be converted into bolivars. To clarify, remittance money loses its values when it is converted into bolivars.
Dash (DASH) is attractive to Venezuelans because it is being used in the country. In fact, a DASH press release claims over 500 Venezuelan merchants were accepting the cryptocurrency in July 2018.
How Dash Text could beat Hyperinflation
Hence, it could be possible to use Dash (DASH) or Dash Text to make purchases at some brick and mortar stores in Venezuela. Merchants will accept Dash (DASH) because it is less susceptible to inflation than Bolivars.
Dash (DASH) offers an extra layer of security because it is hard for thugs with guns to steal. Armed robbery by criminals and corrupt police officers and military members is a growing problem in Venezuelan. Not surprisingly, armed robbers prefer Venezuela’s favorite fiat currency the US Dollar to bolivars.
The closest thing to Dash Text in the United States is PayPal’s (NASDAQ: PYPL) fast growing Venmo peer-to-peer (P2P) payment app. Like, Dash Text Venmo lets users send money via SMS messages. The difference is that you can only make Venmo payments in US Dollars and Venmo is only available in the USA.
Venmo is growing like a weed. For example, Statista calculates Venmo’s payment volume grew from $6.8 billion in 1st Quarter 2018 to $17 billion in 3rd Quarter 2018. Statista calculates that Venmo’s payment volume has a 78% growth rate.
Will Dash Text increase Dash’s (DASH) Coin Price?
Under those circumstances, Dash (DASH) and Dash Text could experience similar growth. However, Dash’s price has fallen in the past year, DASH had a Coin Price of $295.05 on November 8, 2017, that fell to $160.19 on 9 November 2018.
Dash (DASH) was the number 12 cryptocurrency according to CoinMarketCap. CoinMarket Cap gave DASH a Market Capitalization of $1.351 billion and a 24-Hour Market Volume of $171.653 million on 9 November 2018.
In addition, there was a Circulating Supply of 8.435 million DASH and a Maximum Supply of 18.9 million DASH on the same day.
Speculators must watch Dash Text carefully because it could drive DASH’s price up. Dash Text could be the killer app that takes cryptocurrency to a mass market if it works.
Notably, there will be a huge demand for Dash Text in countries like Venezuela where nobody trusts the fiat currency.