It has be an incredible week for Dash with awesome new integrations and announcements! Continue reading to get a brief summary of the week.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

Travala Travel Agency Accepts Dash: The online hotel booking service that exclusively accepts cryptocurrency payments and accepts 45 different coins recently added Dash as a payment option. The integration not only allows consumers to protect more of their personal data when booking travel plans, but also provides an alternative to the other popular cryptocurrency travel booking service, CheapAir.com. CheapAir recently announced that they temporarily stopped taking Dash, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin due to issues with their payment processor, but hope to reintegrate soon.

Charities in Nigeria and Germany Utilize Dash: The Borneo Orang-Utan Survival Foundation (BOS) in Germany and adopt1000families in Nigeria both recently started to accept donations in Dash, which expands their donor pool. However, they are not currently at the stage of holding and paying operating costs in Dash. Nevertheless, it provides opportunity for more funds, as it must do so for other organizations, such as Wikileaks, which have been excommunicated from mainstream payment processors.

Buycrypto Increases Access to Sound Money with Dash: The Greek peer-to-peer cryptocurrency-fiat exchange will enable Greeks that have been plagued by a harsh decade of economic recession to now have easier access to Dash. Dash will help provide Greeks with sound money and more control over their fiscal and monetary policies, which currently have maligned incentives due to being split between the Greek government and the EU, respectively.

Coinvertit Will Integrate Dash by Popular Demand: After Dash won a Twitter poll over PIVX, the Coinvertit team announced plans to integrate Dash first for their customers concentrated in Romania, but also service all 28 EU countries. The integration provides a chance for greater liquidity, which aids the adoption process. It also demonstrates the importance of an online presence for the Dash community.

AvaTrade Adds Dash to their Trading Platform: The forex and CFD broker that offers trades in more than 250 financial instruments recently added a Dash/USD trade-able pair, which will aid the price discovery journey, but does not enable consumers to buy and own Dash. The downside is that the derivative market could begin to influence the real price, but the upside is that it increases investors’ exposure and evaluation of Dash leading to less volatility as consensus is discovered.

Dash Announcements of the Week:

Venezuela Achieves 2,500 Dash Accepting Merchants and Leads Wallet Downloads: Venezuela’s DiscoverDash.com listings recently passed the 2,500 merchants threshold, which is more than 50% of the 4,482 merchants around the world that accept Dash. The local teams have able to get both family shops as well as big names like Subway, Papa John’s, Church’s Chicken, and more. This comes as the country also becomes the top region downloading the official Dash wallet, which is partly due to sales of KRIP phones that come preloaded with Dash wallets, Bitrefill app, Uphold app, free Dash, and more.

More than 66,000 KRIP Phones Sold: Kripto Mobile and Dash Core Group announced selling 66,000+ KRIP phones that come pre-loaded with plenty of Dash apps to make the consumer on-boarding process much easier to increase the likelihood of adoption. It was also announced that the K1 feature phone (non-smartphone) will partner with Dash Text to reach the 59% of Venezuelans that do not own smartphones. The partnership also includes some free Dash, redeemed via Dash Text, to 1,500 K1 users. The DiscoverDash.com app was also announced, which is now available from the app store and will be pushed to KRIP phones.

Uphold Data Shows Dash Users Have More Conviction: New Data from Uphold shows that Dash users not only make higher average buys than users of Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, and ‘All Cryptos’, but that the average purchase value (spread between buys and sells) is highest with Dash users. Dash’s average buys are over $600 USD and the average sells were under $200 USD, which is a sharp contrast against Bitcoin’s average buys of under $600 USD and average sells of over $600 USD. This aligns with data showing that Dash masternode counts have remained relatively steady despite the bear market, accounting for dips during upgrades. Overall, it shows individuals’ have high confidence in Dash and desire to accumulate more during exchange price declines.

General News of the Week:

Three Ways to Save on Last-Minute Christmas Shopping with Dash: Christmas is just around the corner and many save shopping until the last minute, but Dash can help make those transactions quick, while also saving money. First, individuals can make purchase through the unique referral links on Rewards.com and elect to receive their rewards in Dash. Second, Bitrefill sells gift cards to numerous merchants and those purchased with Dash receive 10% off. Third, combining both Rewards.com and Bitrefill allow the savings to be stacked on top of each other for even more savings.

Western Union is Open to Incorporating Cryptocurrencies, but Lags Behind: Western Union recently released a video saying that they might be open to incorporating cryptocurrencies if it seems like the right decision. However, the video misses the point that cryptocurrencies were created for peer-to-peer transactions to avoid middlemen, along with the fact that traditional money transmitters will not be able to compete on costs due to their infrastructure requirements. It also draws attention to the fact that while other cryptocurrencies are struggling to scale and achieve adoption, Dash is offering some of the cheapest and fastest transactions while also enabling Dash to be directly spent at merchants.

Dash Media of the Week:

Dash Podcast: Episode 83, Christmas Party Special: This week the guys are join by many members of the Dash community to discuss their amazing progress in Dash development and adoption during 2018. Make sure to tune in to get a fun recap, learn some new things, and see what everyone is looking forward to in 2019.

Dashcember is in full swing and plenty of Dashtastic news emerges as Dashmas approaches! Looking back upon 2018, it is a reminder that Dash continues to build evolutionary services to help individuals whether exchange prices are high or low. We at Dash News hope that this week’s content was extremely informative and enjoyable. Please follow us on all of our social media outlets for the latest news and we cannot wait to see what Dash News awaits us next week and in the new year!