Dash shares experiences of two people living off P2P digital currency

Dash, the peer-to-peer (P2P) digital currency for payments, has shared the recent experiences of two people living off dash in two different economic conditions.

According to a press release CoinReport received from communications professional Jan Jahosky, Eugenia Alcalá Sucre, a businesswoman in Venezuela, had to move to cryptocurrency because of the severe inflation in the country, while Joel Valenzuela, a digital currency enthusiast living in New Hampshire in the United States, has been living entirely off dash for the past three years to test out the viability of decentralized money.

Sucre is also the founder of Dash Caracas, an educational nonprofit with the mission to spread knowledge and use of digital currencies in Venezuela.

“I began paying for things in Dash since September 2017 when I organized the first Dash conference in Venezuela.” she said. “That’s when I first spoke to entrepreneurs about Dash and they started to agree to sell goods and services to me using this cryptocurrency. Not everyone at first agreed to do that, but in time, more entrepreneurs and merchants have learned how to use Dash as a payment method.”

Valenzuela stated, “I always had a keen interest in sound money that wasn’t under the control of any one entity, and when I heard you could be your own bank with cryptocurrency, I wanted to try it to see if that was true.”

One of the world’s most widely-used digital currencies, dash has more than 2,400 businesses listed on DiscoverDash.com, a free business directory for all businesses accepting the P2P cryptocurrency, including large online retailers such as Overstock, and to fill in the gaps, services like Bitrefill sell gift cards for dash to platforms such as eBay, Hotels.com and Amazon.

In Venezuela, over 1,000 businesses accept dash, while in Caracas alone, 700 of them accept the digital currency. In the Venezuelan capital, thus, about one dash merchant is available for every 4,285 people. New Hampshire, on the other hand, has 76 merchants that accept dash for payment, with 27 around the city of Portsmouth or about one for every 785 people.

Although the facility to convert dash into gift cards enables people to get goods and services pretty easily, living on the cryptocurrency can require some additional planning in New Hampshire. As paying with bolivars is difficult with hyperinflation in Venezuela (scarce cash and debit cards with very low spending limits), dash can be a huge step up from conventional payment methods.

Image via PR firm Wachsman