This week continues to illustrates the effectiveness of Dash at becoming everyday digital cash thanks to its developments, integrations, and general news. Continue reading to see why.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

Spend Card Announces Apple Pay Support Facilitating Spending Dash: Spend is a virtual debit card and contactless payment app that supports many different cryptocurrencies, including Dash, but now they also enable Apple Pay by exchanging cryptocurrencies at the point of sale. US-based consumers can now spend Dash at the millions of merchants that support Apply Pay. Dash currently has around 5,000 merchants listed on DiscoverDash, but until mass adoption occurs, work around apps like Spend help facilitate wider exposure and adoption.

Quantfury Adds Dash, Enables Holders to Trade Crypto, Currencies, Stocks, Commodities: Quantfury is a trading platform that now enables Dash users not located in the US or Canada to trade multiple cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, and stocks. The integration helps provide more price discovery and arbitrage opportunities for Dash. Additionally, Dash has previously been claimed to be favored by traders for its speed and inexpensive fees, which are integral to trading.

Bitlish Integrates Dash into Diverse Cryptocurrency Exchange: The cryptocurrency exchange will now enable Dash purchases via MasterCard, VISA, SWIFT, SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area), and other bank transfers, which greatly expand the purchasing opportunities of Dash. The exchange also claims to “sell crypto globally with the lowest VISA and MasterCard commissions in the world” and breaks out all their various rates and fees clearly on their website fee page. Bitlish also offers B2B services including payment processing and consulting. Nevertheless, they do limit some of their services based on country, which can be viewed on their website.

Samsung Experience Stores in Panama and Venezuela Integrate Dash via Cryptobuyer: The popular Latin American exchange and payment processor has gotten the Samsung Experience Stores operated by Grupo Tech in Panama and Venezuela to adopt their platform, including Dash. These stores can then choose to have a portion of the received crypto to be converted into fiat and keep the rest in crypto. Cryptobuyer CEO Jorge Farias explained that it was a long negotiating process, but can easily see the benefits since cryptocurrencies, especially Dash, are rapidly growing throughout Latin America. Cryptobuyer also supports Bitcoin and Litecoin, but had to temporarily remove Bitcoin in early 2018 due to its slow and expensive transactions.

Dash Core Group Product Updates:

Here’s an update from Brian Foster, Front End Product Owner, of what’s going on at Dash Core Group this week:

🔬 DashCore updates for the final v0.14 release candidate

🔧 Updated platform components to accept historical filtered blocks from Core in order to support SPV functionality

👫 Coded outbound contact activity and addressed some UI issues on DashPay

💱 Coded payments to blockchain user contacts on DashWallet iOS

🕐 Optimize DashJ DMN Performance and added special transactions to the bloom filter on DashWallet Android

General News of the Week:

Gemini and Flexa Partnership Provides Retail Crypto Purchases in Custodial Workaround: Flexa will enable Gemini-supported cryptocurrencies, including the Gemini dollar stablecoin, to be deposited to their Flexa account and spent at stores such as Whole Foods and Starbucks. However, the process does require users to turn over their cryptocurrency to Flexa as well as identify themselves. If a users’ identity is not verifiable for any reason, Flexa can limit and/or deny services to these individuals, so Flexa is more like a mobile bank that accepts crypto rather than a decentralized payment solution. Instead, consumers can utilize services like eGifter and Bitrefill to buy numerous gift cards, sometimes in precise amounts, which can then be spent at stores without revealing much, if any, identifying information. Gift cards can even be considered to be faster, especially if purchased with Dash InstantSend.

Bitcoin Cash Network Frozen for Over an Hour in Upgrade Snafu: Bitcoin Cash had its second non-smooth upgrade in a row when invalid transactions were allowed to be sent to the mempool and miners attempted to process these blocks that did not contain transactions. Part of the reason for safu was due to the fact that Bitcoin Cash uses the mean time passed to signal an upgrade, which means that nodes can enforce an upgrade even if a significant number of nodes are not ready for the upgrade. Conversely, Dash uses Dash Improvement Proposal 001, based on Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 009, that requires miners to explicitly signal that they are ready for an upgrade. As an example, Dash version 0.14, the latest upgrade, is on its 5th release candidate and the last upgrade, version 0.13, had 11 release candidates before it was released to the network.

New Venezuelan PetroApp Reportedly Enables Purchases with Cryptocurrency: The Venezuelan national digital currency, the Petro, has reportedly launched the PetroApp to enable purchases via Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dash. However, it is not clear if users can purchase in the reverse direction by selling their Petros. The Petro has been surrounded in controversy since its launch in late 2017, including not even knowing if it had a working wallet or how its code was written until recently. Many remain skeptical of the Petro, however, Venezuelans can easily spend Dash directly at around 2,500 locations through the country.

FinCEN Releases New Guidance: Developers and Mixers Exempt from AML, DApps Unclear: The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is a powerful US regulator and enforcer that recently released new guidance on convertible virtual currencies. While the guidance is not binding, it does signal how the government is thinking about regulation. Some of the highlights include treating developers and users of anonymizing software as simply using a currency rather than as a money transmitter. However, this may not apply to businesses operating these services such as DApps or crypto ATMs.

Facebook Further Rolls Back Cryptocurrency Advertising Ban: Facebook previously banned all cryptocurrency ads back in January 2018 out of fear that some of its users were being scammed. Around June of last year, Facebook slightly lifted the banned pending prior approval for certain parties. Now, they will no longer require pre-approval of ads for blockchain technology, industry news, education or events related to cryptocurrency.

Dash Media of the Week:

Dash continues to speed ahead with plenty of integrations and developments to help achieve everyday monetary and financial independence for individuals around the world. To continuously improve its digital cash performance, Dash has plenty of new integrations and developments in the pipeline. Make sure to follow Dash News to get this breaking news first!