The billion dollar cryptocurrency club recently got a new member: Dash. The anonymous cryptocurrency recently made it past the $1 billion market cap, although at press time Dash’s market cap has dropped to $952 million, from yesterday’s $1.11 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The drop may be justified with traders cashing in on the incredible price surge. Yesterday, one token was initially worth around $97, and got to as much as $150– right now, one coin is worth $130.14

Back in January, one Dash was worth little over $11, and while its price steadily grew throughout the year, in March it skyrocketed and went past the $100 mark. The sharp increase occurred due to a combination of various factors, ranging from partnerships with banks and payment services to increase its accessibility, to the currency being offered in new exchanges such as Bitfinex, as reported by CCN.com.

Earlier this year, Dash released it’s largest software update yet, codenamed Sentinel. The update, according to the cryptocurrency’s team, would even allow it to compete with the likes of PayPal, as it featured several improvements, ranging from improved speed to a more stable and robust governance system.

As a result of its partnership with Coinapult, Dash can be bought in over 20 different fiat currencies, including USD, CAD, GBP, CNY, and EUR, to name a few. Recently, well-known international forex and CFD broker AvaTrade also announced that it would be adding Ethereum Dash, and Ripple to its trading platform.

The Dash network is unique, as it allocates about 10% of its block rewards to fund projects. Among them, we have former The Daily Crypt presenter Amanda B. Johnson’s “Dash: Detailed”, as well as Dashforce, which promotes the currency on social media.

The motive behind Dash’s sudden surge is, yet again, still unknown, even though some factors can help explain the market cap rise. Be that as it may, the milestone was quickly celebrated on social media:

Bitcoin’s Scaling Agreement

If we take a look at most of the top cryptocurrencies, we can see that pretty much every single one of them surged in value yesterday, and dropped today as traders likely decided to cash in on their profit, or decided to shift their attention to bitcoin. The surge may have been triggered by bitcoin’s recent scaling agreement, in which a group of 56 companies representing 83.28% of the hashing power agreed activate SegWit at an 80% threshold, and to activate a 2 MB hard fork within six months.

Last year, Dash also received a lot of attention after doubling its blocksize from 1 MB to 2 MB, a move that both helped the currency grow thanks to instantaneous transactions, and that helped it prepare for the exponential growth it recently faced. The cryptocurrency’s governance system, which includes an instant vote to all node stakeholders, played a role in the scaling decision.

The effects caused by bitcoin’s scaling agreement were clear in the cryptocurrency market, as other major altcoins also saw significant price rises. Ethereum Classic (ETC), for example, saw a 50% increase, leading to a whopping $1,6 billion market cap, while Monero (XMR) witnessed a 33.5% increase to a $643million market cap. One ETC token is currently worth $18.07, while one XMR token is worth $44.53.

The agreement hints at a possible end to the problems currently plaguing Bitcoin, the number one cryptocurrency. Even though bitcoin’s dominance is now below 50%, news of the agreement helped the digital currency market cap surpass $90 billion.

Monero Next?

The digital currency billion dollar club got to 7 members: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, NEM, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, and Dash. Soon Monero, the anonymous cryptocurrency that started surging in value after darknet market AlphaBay decided to accept payments in it might, also join.

Monero’s value has been steadily increasing and even though other altcoins surpassed it, it still looks like the currency might even join the billion dollar club this year, as it yesterday managed to reach a $800 million market cap. Recently, the team behind Monero found a bug in CrptoNote-based currencies that allowed double-spending, and quickly patched and informed other currencies about it.

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