DASH Goes Up 20% After Lamassu Integration Approved

DASH, the Privacy-centric, ‘instant’ cryptocurrency with the 5th largest market cap, has announced an integration plan with Lamassu, “the largest BTM network” in the world, bringing the price of DASH up by about 20%.

Also read: How Dash Increased its Node Count by 40% in 4 Months

On December 28th, Evan Duffield, Lead Developer of DASH, published January 2016’s budget proposal on the official DASH forums. The budget proposal is part of DASH’s decentralized governance system. Every so often, a budget proposal is submitted to the blockchain, anyone can do this. If enough Master Nodes vote on it, it passes and the proposal gets funded from a portion of the DASH mining rewards. The voting mechanism is secured by proof of stake, since Master Nodes need to lock 1000 DASH to earn the right to vote, among other perks.

The proposal included various big announcements, the most notable of them, the integration with Lamassu BTMs, which in 2014 comprised 40% of all Bitcoin ATMs worldwide. Duffield writes:

“Crypto ATMs will help bring DASH into the everyday life of regular users and increase utility by providing a physical bridge into the network. Dash is partnering with Deginner, a development firm with experience with the Lamassu machines and the awareness of Lamassu to perform the integration.



“Support over a longer time frame is required to ensure the integration will be maintained for any changes in Dash or the Lamassu system, for this, Deginner will include a two year support for the integration. Ira Miller, from Deginner, has been instrumental in opening this opportunity for Dash by leading the conversation with the Lamassu team and making sure they are aware of the project.”

Today, Lamassu holds about 26% of the market share of BTMs around the world, with 141 of them live, according to Coinatmradar, still first in market adoption, followed by Genesis Coin.





He adds that “one key requirement of the integration is for Dash to be able to be presented to the user side-by-side with Bitcoin,” explaining that DASH will be offered to BTM operators as an optional add-on, which they can activate by “selecting an option in the menu.” So it will not be by default on every Lamassu, which means operators need to be sold on why they should activate DASH. It will be interesting to see how Lamassu operators respond.

This represents a critical entry into the cash-to-crypto market for DASH, assuming enough BTMs activate it and the growth rate of BTMs continues as it has. As with this one integration, the option will be available on all future, compatible Lamassu wallets and backends.



This also sets a standard that other altcoins may follow. Zach Hervey, CEO and Co-Founder of Lamassu, Inc. told Bitcoin.com how this deal came to be, saying:



“Ira [Miller] from Deginner approached us regarding using our open source software for developing a Dash Lamassu version and we’re happy he’s doing it. Especially, since he has some experience fiddling with the Lamassu machine in Panama. In general, we’re open to merging well-supported pull requests that meet our standards and have proper demand.” ​

With this, Ira Miller Co-Founder of coinpapult and Deginner, secured a one year contract for 610 DASH per month or about $2,000 USD at current prices, straight out of the DASH blockchain. In response to how fast this developed and was almost certainly approved. Miller tweeted out:



Fascinating to see effective blockchain governance in real time @Dashpay @LamassuBTC integration budget voting https://t.co/wxs3rHulXo — Ira Miller (@iravagecoins) December 28, 2015

Well, it looks like speculators and or investors alike, are bullish about this development, because the price of DASH went up by nearly 25% since the announcement on the 28th. DASH now rests as the 5th largest cryptocurrency, following Ethereum and then Litecoin, and at the time of writing, trading at $3.48 USD.



There are still a few days of voting ahead, but with over 1,500 yes votes to 10 No votes, it is pretty much a done deal.

What do you think about this big activity surrounding Dash? Let us know in the comments below!



Disclaimer: Juan S. Galt holds less than $500 USD in DASH and has done some PR work with DASH through Disruptek.info.

