Bitcoin being the pioneer of the cryptocurrency space dominates the trade market charts as well as the exchanges where Bitcoin adoption is over 5o percent on the majority of the exchanges around the globe. One can understand the dominance of Bitcoin from the fact that most of the cryptocurrencies around the globe are listed against the Bitcoin. You can think of Bitcoin as the US Dollar of digital assets, widely recognized, trusted and used.

However, a Nigerian non-profitable group by the name of “DASH Nigeria” is looking to make the impossible and are carefully scripting a different narrative.

Dash Nigeria as the name suggests is a non-profit educational and promotional organization that pushes for the adoption of Dash… in Nigeria and beyond. The vision of the group is to empower the west African country's economy through the use of DASH. The group regularly engages with the community, youth, women, media and the stakeholders of the digital asset to educate the masses about the various opportunities that the digital asset class has to offer.

The Dash Nigeria group are not perturbed by the market fluctuation or hold their crypto in lieu of the next bull run, but the only purpose of the group is to help their community members to come out of their distress and financial burdens.

The group's effort to promote wider use of Dash is showing significant progress with Dash gaining a wider user base in West Africa. The community leaders Luz of Dash Nigeria sat down for an interview with a media house and answered a couple of questions regarding their choice and what progress they have made.



Why Dash And Not Bitcoin?

The member of the Dash Nigeria group said that the obvious choice should have been Bitcoin, given the popularity and wider recognization that the crypto pioneers enjoy. But Luz feels Dash has many unprecedented advantages over Bitcoin as well as other altcoins which made them choose it.

The first advantage that Dash has over Bitcoin and other altcoins is the transaction speed, while Dash only takes a few seconds to complete the transaction, Bitcoin's transaction time is at 10 minutes, making the ton of difference.

These faster transactions make Dash convenient for the mass adoption, retail use and a payment method for day-to-day use. Another major advantage of Dash is a low transaction fee which costs mere cents when compared to Bitcoin, and the low transaction fee has been maintained throughout the life cycle of Dash.

Here is an excerpt from the interview,

“The organization’s efforts have been quite fruitful, Luz told me. The number of businesses accepting Dash in Nigeria has been steadily increasing, even during the bear market. One can enjoy a delicious serving of jollof rice at Tarzan Delicacies; shop for the latest fashion atDorriess Fashion Empire; or grab electronic accessories at Ritech Digital.”

Currently, Nigeria has over 100 stores accepting Dash payments, while the majority of these stores are located in Lagos, while the rest of the cities are slowly incorporating the change including the capital city of Abuja.

There is another startup which is surely helping the cause of Dash in the country called Yellow cards, which offer offline Dash vouchers which can be redeemed online. This comes as a great boost given the nation cannot afford 24*7 internet connection. People can buy $1 worth of yellow cards and redeem it whenever the internet is available.

The Challenges And Opportunities In The Dash Adoption

One of the biggest challenges faced in Nigeria is over the lack of regulations which has kept many major players rich with resources to refrain from entering the market. big players fear that the government can make them pay dearly if they are not suited to their needs and most of them are afraid of being on the wrong side of the law.

The merchants fear that the anti-crypto law may make them loose dearly if it's implemented. luz explains the situation,



“It’s very funny in Africa because there are no regulations in most countries. The government is not saying yes, and neither is it saying no. It’s just like when you go to a bank and see a sign ‘Park your car at your own risk.’ That’s what the government is saying; invest in cryptos at your own risk, everybody.”

The other challenge is to earn the trust of the community, where the majority are not technically oriented. A significant chunk of the population did invest in crypto during the 2017 peak price, and most of them lost half of their investments only a few months later.

And a few other lost all their investment to scams.

This distrust is very hard for the Dash Nigeria to change the community members mindset, where Luz explained that a lot of the times they had to sacrifice their own token to earn the trust of the community members.



“In fact, in many of our events, we have to tell the doubters, ‘You know what, just give us your Dash wallet address, I’ll send you some Dash tokens myself. I’ll then teach you how to spend it on basic tasks like buying airtime.’ And they are very happy to see that Dash works, unlike some fraudulent cryptos they have encountered in the past.”

Another major challenge is the limited internet connection, according to the latest statistics, out of the total of 190 million population only 90 million has access to the internet. and most of these population are concentrated in the major cities.

Luz Is Optimistic About The Crypto Future In Nigeria

Luz is quite hopeful and optimistic about the crypto future of his country, despite the challenges and difficulties faced by his organization. The optimism of Luz is backed by numbers where the stats revealed that Nigeria is now contributing a chunk of its economy through peer to peer crypto use and trade.

Over the year, Nigeria’s crypto trading volume had gone up by over 60 percent. Other exchanges including LocalBitcoins and Luno have also spoken highly of the opportunities that lie in Africa’s biggest economy.

Luz is not just hopeful about the crypto future of Nigeria but the rest of the Western African countries as well. Here is what he had to say,