Tag Archives: Digital Currency

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, International, Opinion, Technology

Dash Supporting Healthy Communities in Africa

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Dash Africa is one of a several grassroots efforts coming from the Dash community. The grassroots efforts in places like Africa take community outreach to the next level while increasing awareness of Dash around the globe.

Dash Africa is supporting the Dash Leopards soccer team; they are working to enable a better life for kids in Africa through sports, education, and social activities. Thanks to Dash, soccer program founder Coach Ricardo— along with the other coaches— use soccer as a tool to help the players achieve comprehensive life skills.

The Dash Leopards program also offers tutoring to help children with their schoolwork. They’re learning about healthy food and nutrition and preparing snacks and smoothies prepared with fresh ingredients.

Dash Africa’s community outreach efforts have brought awareness of Dash to the African continent, a place where Dash can flourish due to Africa’s large numbers of unbanked individuals who could benefit from digital currency.

Cryptocurrencies like Dash are fit particularly well with countries dealing with continuous problems stemming from devaluation and corruption associated with fiat currency. Dash Force News notes that Zimbabwe has been dealing with hyperinflation of their currency since 2009 and at one point destroyed their currency altogether. In developing countries, many would prefer a decentralized, secure, and valuable currency than the insecure fiat alternative.

The Kuva project is another initiative funded by the Dash community; this project is working with Zimbabweans to use Dash as their currency, rather than foreign fiat currencies. With Dash, the people of Zimbabwe can now have a secure place to store value, cheaper transaction costs, and a more reliable way to transact.

Cryptocurrencies like Dash will be needed now more than ever in areas like Zimbabwe. CCN recently reported that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has “banned financial institutions in the country from processing cryptocurrency transactions for cryptocurrency traders and investors despite growing interest in digital monetary assets in the country.”

CCN further reported that “in order to safeguard the integrity, safety, and soundness of the country’s financial system, and to protect the public in general, all financial institutions are hereby required to ensure that they do not use, trade, hold and/or transact in any way in virtual currencies.”

As the central banking attempts to dictate how the people of Zimbabwe secure their money, efforts like Dash Africa, the Dash Leopards and the Kuva Project will be needed to not only raise awareness about alternative options and provide valuable programs for youth, but to help in freeing everyday transactions from centralized banking systems. Given that Zimbabwe has a history of an unstable currency and financial system, this step has become crucial.

Editor’s note: Dash Digital Cash is the exclusive sponsor of Reality Check and the Truth in Media project.

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Featured, Technology, Videos

Watch: Ben Swann Talks Media Disruption at Block2TheFuture

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In early April, Ben Swann attended the Block2TheFuture blockchain and digital currency conference in San Francisco, CA. During his time there, Swann gave an informative talk that detailed the imminent transformation in how news and media will be produced and consumed, largely due to decentralization and cryptocurrencies.

Swann, the first independent journalist to be solely funded by cryptocurrency, summarized his professional career, including his transition from conventional broadcast reporting to founding his own independent media organization. He explained how the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) of Dash Digital Cash played a primary role in Swann’s mission to remain an independent journalist.

Swann highlighted how digital currencies such as Dash make it possible for independent creators to endure by freeing themselves from the longstanding corporate funding structure that has exerted power over the news for generations, noting that following his sponsorship with Dash many other independent organizations have subsequently followed suit in seeking funding through similar DAOs including the Dash treasury.

Swann also noted that real-life experiences with the blockchain, cryptocurrency and decentralization and their potential to solve a number of societal problems starkly contrast mainstream media narratives that paint these aspects as harmful to “the greater good.”

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

VIDEO: CNN Highlights Real-World Digital Currency Use

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While mainstream media reporting in recent months has expanded to cover blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, coverage is often limited to discussion of the market and regulations. CNN International recently visited New Hampshire and provided a closer look into how individuals live day-to-day using cryptocurrency, an act not often seen in the media.

Joël Valenzuela is a longtime cryptocurrency advocate and the chief editor of Dash Force News, a news service that provides current-event reports cryptocurrency and the blockchain, as well as updates and developments related to the Dash digital currency. Valenzuela accepts wages and pays for expenses solely using Dash, and allowed CNN International to accompany him in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a day as he exemplified everyday crypto use.

[Related: Dash: The First DAO]

Valenzuela uses Dash to pay for a plethora of costs including rent, gas, coffee and recreation; CNN International noted that all of his purchases took about the same amount of time as a typical credit card transaction.

Valenzuela told Truth In Media that he is paid Dash directly from the blockchain, and the amount is determined by the exchange rate. He also clarified that cryptocurrency is not actually “legal tender” in Portsmouth as explained in the video, but is widely accepted in the city of just over 20,000 people.

In response to CNN International’s inquiry about how cryptocurrency will survive regulations, Valenzuela remarked that a better-suited question is how regulations will survive in cryptocurrency environments, and added that the coexistence of regulations and cryptocurrencies is being sought by the community.

 

 

 

Business, Technology

Citibank Is Developing Citicoin, a Bitcoin-Inspired Cryptocurrency

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In the wake of the rise of bitcoin, an anonymous digital cryptocurrency whose value can not be manipulated by the whims of government-chartered central bankers, many prominent businesses have begun to incrementally incorporate digital currency technology into their business models. According to International Business Times, Citibank is interested in the new craze and is now developing and testing its own cryptocurrency.

Ken Moore, chief of the banking giant’s technological development subsidiary Citi Innovation Labs said earlier this month, “We have up and running three separate systems within Citi now that actually deploy blockchain distributed ledger technologies. They are all within the labs just now so there is no real money passing through these systems yet, they are at a pre-production level to be clear… We also have an equivalent to bitcoin up and running, again within the labs, so we can mine what we call a ‘Citicoin’, for want of a better term. It’s in the labs, but it’s to make sure we are at the leading edge of this technology and that we can exploit the opportunities within it.”

TechCrunch points out the fact that Bitcoin Magazine cited a Dec 2014 presentation by Citigroup wherein company representatives said, “Due to the potential benefits, we believe the adoption of Digital Money is inevitable. While we believe that the use of Digital Money is certain, the future of specific cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is less clear.”

Citi Innovation Labs’ Ken Moore said that the fast-paced, international nature of digital currencies, which can cross borders without facing time-consuming regulatory hurdles, is attractive to Citibank, “Because we are a global network, a global bank, we can look for opportunities to use this technology to move money from country to country – country A to country B, across our network.”

Additionally, Citibank officials told International Business Times that cryptocurrencies can benefit banks by helping them transact with people from developing countries who lack bank accounts. “You don’t need a bank account. It goes straight into the mobile phone, it goes into a wallet,” said Ireti Samuel-Ogbu, managing director of Citibank’s Payments and Receivables EMEA.