Proposal “dash-latam-60-txday-2000-active-merchant“ (Closed)Back
Title: | Dash Latam: 60 Tx/Day, 45 Events, 50 Dash Aid NGOs, 2,000 Active Merchants, Remittances + |
Owner: | georgedonnelly |
Monthly amount: | 344 DASH (19377 USD) |
Completed payments: | 1 totaling in 344 DASH (2 month remaining) |
Payment start/end: | 2019-08-16 / 2019-11-13 (added on 2019-08-13) |
Final voting deadline: | in passed |
Votes: | 805 Yes / 395 No / 67 Abstain |
External information: | app.dashnexus.org/proposals/dash-latam-60-txday-2000-active-merchants-remittances-/overview |
Proposal description
Dash Latam’s auto-updating transaction tracker approaches 40 in-merchant Dash transactions per day. Dash Latam pioneers the real use of Dash in the real world with measurable results right now in the most promising region for Dash mass adoption, Latin America. With 64 team members active in 20 cities across 8 nations and 3 continents, Dash Latam is borderless, just like Dash.
gobject vote-many 1c1fdaf0df804d2d65cefa385831a41135a305707ae90560908794af54e5b9af funding yes
[Download PDF]
View at DashNexus
Dash Latam requests your feedback
If you would like to offer the Dash Latam team any public feedback, positive, negative, neutral or otherwise, we would love to receive it. TIA
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/dctvfz/dash_latam_requests_your_feedback/
UPDATES Sept 2019
What Dash Gets
Here is what we aim to accomplish from the period Sep 1 through Nov 30, 2019.
Why Vote Yes
Dash Latam has been active since Mar 2018 and received its first DAO funding in Jun 2018.
We are requesting 344 dash, which is 6% of the Dash treasury and represents an 11% reduction from the 6.7% (386 dash) the DAO granted us in the July cycle. At USD$105/Dash, it represents USD$36,120 in purchasing power. We aim to spend 52% on consumer adoption, 23% on merchant adoption, 5% on ambassadorship and 19% on administration.
Latam is the most promising region for Dash mass adoption due to energy and internet infrastructure, unity of language and disunity of governments. Active Dash Android wallet users in our markets constitute more than 50% of total active Dash Android wallets globally. We are by far the leading team in Venezuela, with vetted former Dash Venezuela, Dash Merchant Venezuela and other Venezuela team members counted among our leadership.
Please view the PDF or DashNexus to see the detailed budget.
[Download PDF]
View at DashNexus
Updates
gobject vote-many 1c1fdaf0df804d2d65cefa385831a41135a305707ae90560908794af54e5b9af funding yes
[Download PDF]
View at DashNexus
Dash Latam requests your feedback
If you would like to offer the Dash Latam team any public feedback, positive, negative, neutral or otherwise, we would love to receive it. TIA
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/dctvfz/dash_latam_requests_your_feedback/
UPDATES Sept 2019
- Dash Aid, Dash-only non-intermediated charitable giving, preview ready at https://www.dashaid.org/
- Strategic Vision for Dash published at http://dash.ist/2019/09/25/a-strategic-vision-for-dash/
- Article debunking CoinDesk FUD with on-the-ground data published at http://dash.ist/2019/09/16/the-truth-about-coindesks-2-dash-merchants/
- First 8 videos published in our Dash liquidity tutorial series, including Uphold, Changelly, AirTM, CoinCola, LocalcoinSwap at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f4BAMAXILLhMuKa-wKdzOYa
- Meet Dash Latam #3 video published demonstrating the work of members of our team at https://youtu.be/bL68nQystEc (full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f7lx855tMif6yYz_LofX7Dm)
- George Donnelly interviewed by Tao about our work achieving Dash adoption in Latin America at https://youtu.be/0V6-yN25gLY
- MNO report with metrics published at https://www.dropbox.com/s/iary4y5cxc868w7/Dash%20Latam%20MNO%20Report%2023%20Sep%202019.pdf?dl=0
- Latam merchant/usability options map nearing completion, preview published at https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1164389714050322432
- 8 simultaneous consumer adoption events in 8 cities and 4 countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Guatemala) were held in one day at the end of August.
- Our development of the cross-border food shopping use-case between Venezuela and Cúcuta Colombia continues and here is a recent video of an event we did on the Venezuela side where we sold Dash: https://youtu.be/b0sgfclK4PY
- Promotional video published for consumer adoption for mall where we affiliated all of the restaurants at https://youtu.be/QXwtFT5B2D4
- Merchant promotion launched in Venezuela to create media that supports our claim to be the top crypto in Venezuela and gathers usable location data for legacy merchants at https://pagacondash.com/cc2019/
- 2 Dash Aid promo videos published at https://youtu.be/NMHGi43OCMo and https://youtu.be/Q9PrkUz59ss
- 20 Dash Aid NGO aid requests filmed and published, 2 available with subtitles on dashaid.org https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f7fKC8rD-6jrGR0D7DUblMw
- Email sequences for new and potential Dash merchants to teach them about Dash created and in production, for example: https://preview.mailerlite.com/g1l1p1
- Dash mentioned as top cryptocurrency of interest to Colombias by P2P exchange Paxful in newspaper interview at https://www.larepublica.co/finanzas/completaremos-20-cajeros-de-bitcoin-en-bogota-y-cucuta-paxful-2911181
What Dash Gets
Here is what we aim to accomplish from the period Sep 1 through Nov 30, 2019.
- Transactions. 60 average in-merchant consumer transactions per day via Dash Retail/Spark point of sale app (POS) or printed QR code (hablador), visible at tracker.pagacondash.com. (Currently: ~41)
- Remittances. 1,500 sales of Dash for remittance purposes via direct Dash sales, our combo remittances or some other new method. (Currently: ~100/mo)
- Merchants. 2,000 active, verified, supported and POS-equipped merchants in Latin America, with ongoing education and marketing assistance; via verificacion of DiscoverDash-listed merchants or new affiliations. (Currently: 914)
- Events. 45 Consumer adoption, remittance, merchant and ambassadorship events.
- Charity. 50 charitable organizations launched on DashAid.org. (Currently: 0)
- Wallets. 30,000 active Dash Android wallets in our markets. (Currently: 20,466)
- A suite of strategies, techniques and tools for comprehensively advancing consumer adoption with analysis of results to be shared with the community.
- Ongoing development of consumer-friendly liquidity options, in-person, P2P and exchanges, such as liquidity points at our merchants, using CoinCola, LocalCoinSwap and others.
- Ongoing Dash buyback program for merchants active in all of our markets.
- Ongoing 5% discounted Dash sales, financed by Colombia’s cheap bitcoin.
Why Vote Yes
- Real Adoption: Dash Latam builds real, borderless Dash adoption from the ground up with transparent, verifiable, Dash-Watch-reported metrics.
- Constant Growth: Dash Latam does the hard work no one else is doing, with 60+ enthusiastic Dash representatives in the field daily onboarding new consumers, new merchants, new remittance senders, new allies and more.
- Professionalism: We are bringing Dash to markets that have concrete use cases for it with a globally stand-out presentation of the Dash brand — including to new allies who have not heard of Bitcoin.
Dash Latam has been active since Mar 2018 and received its first DAO funding in Jun 2018.
- 1st automatic and public transaction tracker at tracker.pagacondash.com (in collaboration with Dash Retail).
- #1 in number of evidenced transactions per day on average for a Dash adoption project (Currently: 41)
- #1 largest Dash team with 64 members (46 full-time + 18 part-time).
- #1 in number of verified active Dash (crypto?) merchants in 1 city (Medellín with 493).
- #1 Dash meetup on meetup.com globally at meetup.com/pro/dashlatam.
- #1 in Dash events with 92 so far in 2019.
- #1 in verified/onboarded active Dash merchants (914 across 7 countries).
- #1 in transparency; Dash Watch concluded that we evidenced how we spent 99% of DAO funds in a recent financial review.
- A supermarket along the Venezuelan border in Colombia added Dash to their weekly circular.
- Colombia #2 (at least) in active Dash merchants with 675. The USA has 661 (source: DiscoverDash.com) and the accurate Venezuela number is something we are working to identify and grow.
- Colombia #3 in active Dash Android wallets with 3,427 (as of Jul 31). Venezuela is #1 with 14,944 and the USA #2 with 5,330.
- 100+ Dash remittance sales.
- Hundreds of private Dash sales to consumers and merchant buybacks of Dash.
- 18,401 total views on 298 YouTube videos with 337 subscribers.
- 25+ team vlogs where team members show off their work for Dash.
- 500+ professional social media posts (see table in PDF or Nexus).
- Dozens of bug reports and feedback events for the Dash Core Group wallets team.
- The birth of the following projects: Dash Retail, Dash Venezuela Remittances, Dash Aid, Dash Ignite.
- Development of Dash combo remittances. In order to resolve logistical and budget challenges, we invented combo remittances, which enable remittance senders to buy Dash, spend it directly online at a merchant in Venezuela, and have the remittance beneficiary receive needed products via home delivery.
We are requesting 344 dash, which is 6% of the Dash treasury and represents an 11% reduction from the 6.7% (386 dash) the DAO granted us in the July cycle. At USD$105/Dash, it represents USD$36,120 in purchasing power. We aim to spend 52% on consumer adoption, 23% on merchant adoption, 5% on ambassadorship and 19% on administration.
Latam is the most promising region for Dash mass adoption due to energy and internet infrastructure, unity of language and disunity of governments. Active Dash Android wallet users in our markets constitute more than 50% of total active Dash Android wallets globally. We are by far the leading team in Venezuela, with vetted former Dash Venezuela, Dash Merchant Venezuela and other Venezuela team members counted among our leadership.
Please view the PDF or DashNexus to see the detailed budget.
[Download PDF]
View at DashNexus
Updates
- Cryptocurrency in Colombia: What You Need to Know (from 05:12)
- July Dash Latam MNO Report with a private look into our Slack (video)
- July Dash Watch Report for Dash Latam (PDF)
- 6 video testimonials of people using Dash for remittances (YouTube playlist)
- 15 purchases with Dash in 5 cities across 3 Latam nations showing real people (vlog playlist)
- 19 new Dash events this last month by Dash Latam across Venezuela, Colombia and Peru
- [i]Dash Growth in Latam Measured by Active Androids Wallets[/i] (real Google Play Store data)
- [i]What Dash Latam Has Achieved in Venezuela[/i] (surprise inside!)
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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I'm looking forward to a new budget proposal emerging from those Latam group members that indicated a willingness to continue supporting Dash.
Sorry about the mess i'm making with my comments, lets blame it on a lack of coffee.
I wish George the best with his future endeavors and hope to see a new proposal emerging at some point, from those Latam group members that want to continue with Dash.
This tweet was posted on Donnelly's twitter feed on 4th November:
https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1191414030172393474
Roger Ver posted: "Bitcoin cash has more physical adoption than any other crypto currency"
Donnelly tweet in reply to this comment: "Starting to look that way, Especially if we decide to teach our 1,150 active merchants across Latam about #BitcoinCash
Still debating it internally"
This tweet from George sounds like a threat for Donnelly's to train our merchants we funded him to sign up to accept Bitcoin cash.
It’s also worthwhile MNOs reading the many other negative undertone tweets about DASH Donnelly posted since the LATAM project was not funded:
https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly
Many other projects have not been funded in the past but those who have the right positive intentions are continuing their work regardless. Why? because they believe in the good they are achieving in the world and that is their motivation. DASH Help Support Centre worked several months keeping their service going with no funds, Dash Mall parking is still bringing in over 30 transactions per day and are still keeping their projects going even without funding. Dash Venezuela continued without funding and held a conference that was not funded by the DAO . Did these projects kick up a fuss on their twitter feeds about DASH and how they have been wronged by not getting funding? No, they did not. But Donnelly does.
The projects that really care about DASH adoption keep going irrespective of the funding. It seems clear to me Donnelly really cares only cares about his ego and getting our money because as soon as his funding stops his work stops. DASH Watch wanted to undertake a report however George declined stating there was "nothing to report". There was nothing to report because Donnelly stopped.
I had written previously in this proposal (see my comments further down the page) the risks of having one person in control of so many projects i.e. centralization. They can misrepresent the work we have done and all the projects they are looking after can be negatively affected - that is what has happened now.
e.g. there are now news reports misrepresenting our work in Latin America stating " DASH Latam closes its doors" e.g. https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/latin-america-dash-community-promoter-dash-latam-closes-down-shop-in-most-of-its-markets/ and similar such reports. This type of misreporting causes unnecessary damage to the work we have done and the work we have paid for.
The conclusion of "closing down" is accurate as community members and projects in Latin America have publicly come out stating they will continue to work on and do not agree with Donnelly's conclusions about the work in LatAm. This also shows who really has the best intentions for projects in Latin America and who is simply in it for other reasons.
I find George Donnelly's tweets nothing short of a disgrace. We funded Donnelly for 1.5 years and yet not a single mention of gratitude for all that money we provided him to run his projects. He is now actually resentful against us even though he received our funding for 1.5 years – that to me does not make any sense whatsoever.
The fact is the way Donnelly was running the projects is not effective at creating sustainable DASH transactions at this time of Dash’s development.
From the transactions counts tracker we can clearly see the result of 1.5 years of Donnelly's work with https://tracker.pagacondash.com 10 transactions in the past month. If it was real world adoption as Donnelly claims wouldn't we expect more than just 10 transactions in one month worth a total of only 107.45 USD in a whole month from Donnelly’s work? Yet, Donnelly wants us to spend 25,000 USD per month more so that we can secure 107.45 USD or 1.4 DASH in real transactions? That does not make sense.
But I’m voting no also because Donnelly is not a suitable DASH leader in my opinion. Donnelly copies others work and then claims it for his own. He then works on discrediting the very people he took the ideas from. Case in point. Dash Merchants - Donnelly copied the idea from Lorenzo and Alejandro for his merchant program. Dash Aid - Donnelly copied the idea from DASH Charity program. Dash remittances he got from me - I had undertaken market research project which I commissioned from an MBA graduate on the Venezuela. It was not just an "idea" as Donnelly stated it was based on a research report that I had spent 3 months work on commissioned from an MBA graduate who undertook market research on Venezuela opportunities. I’ve shared some of those opportunities from the report with the DCG if they think there is potential there or not is up to them to decide. I however did the research work something that very few people that are running projects are doing and is one of the hardest work of all to do – most people don’t do that. Selling DASH at merchants was also came from me. Donnelly gave no recognition for any of this instead he tried to discredit me by linking me with DMV after I had spent hundreds of hours of my own time supporting DMV and sharing my business and marketing experience with the Venezuela teams.
On a DashWatch interview Donnelly showed little interest in Venezuela but when he saw his chance to take over and run the teams DMV work he changed his tune and stated that Venezuela is one of the top destinations to focus on especially with respect to remittances. Donnelly changes his view like a chameleon and when it suits him.
We need real genuine leaders who actually support others and work collaboratively with others. George is not one of these types of people in my opinion. I had positive impression of George Donnelly to start with but after 3 months of calls my view radically changed.
All those teams out there that were working under Donnelly's leadership you should look at Donnelly as being the direct cause for the LATAM project not being funded. George's leadership and his marketing strategy is what cause you to lose your funding.
I feel a quote from George Donnelly himself is appropriate here.
Reference: https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1090261707816034304
"The DAO works. Projects that do not produce results or act inappropriately can go from full support to zero in weeks. New people who produce extraordinary results can go from nothing to big projects rapidly. @Dashpay is blockchain governance that works. Right now. #DashPay 6:53 am - 29 Jan 2019 "
DEFINITE NO!
Walter
If Latam doesnt doesnt get funded this round again, I think Latam needs to rethink its strategy and go after the latam bigboys in terms of integration and usage the way DACH is going after large integrations so u can use Dash and thus create a reason to buy/hold Dash. I think Latam is starting to see competition from the likes of Brazil/Rodrigo in Latam and the integrations and results we can see (ie. large number of views on vids, exchange integrations, etc)
Evidence: Dach has been well-funded per month for quite some time, and our unit price has just hit 62usd this week(!) and is @70usd currently
Ryan and Ernesto demanded nearly a year ago now that I NOT go after integrations. I had high-level contacts at Bitso, Athena and several other leads. They demanded I hand all of it over and I did so out of a sense of team work as much as out of fear of crossing Core.
If you want more hype, more selling out to "partners"*, more integrations where the partners have a conflict of interest with us (their own tokens), more tens of thousands of new merchants where you can't get a list of the merchants, more Armani-suits-with-little-coffees-in-their-hands in comfy offices, then you should definitely continue down this path, and I will "echar la bendición" to you and Dash, as they say around here.
Because all of that is potential use** until you generate actual use.
Dash Latam generates actual use.
Of course some of our actual use is incentivized. Of course it drops off when we stop marketing it.
You guys think we have the best mousetrap on the market (Dash itself). But nobody beats a path to your door just because some guy thinks something is true. You have to go out there and show your target audience. And then you have to have the humility and courage to hear people's reactions and take it into account, and pass it up the chain so we can make the product better. (Even better would be to find a real need first before you develop the mousetrap and design it precisely to meet that need in constant consultation with your target market.)
Marketing must happen.
That is what Dash Latam does. We do it with transparency and honesty, we do it without hype, without a smokescreen, bullshit-free.
No offense to DACH, I have some respect for what they do, but let's be frank, DACH, Turkey, Thailand, Mexico, all of your high-class, jet-setting, corporate-office embassies do not produce anywhere near the real stuff we do.
- no transaction trackers
- active Android wallet numbers are unimpressive at best
- painfully few videos
- painfully few demonstrated spends of Dash at merchants
- much less feedback to the wallet teams
- few evidenced actual real working merchants
The top-down strategy is the constant painting of pretty pictures to keep MNOs happy and hold back sell pressure. It is Dash's corporate investor relations PR.
You think the bottom-up strategy is wrong because the top-down people produce hype, and they do it in coordination with the insider clique who control DashNews, DashTalk and DCG. Said insider clique spends its time ignoring the work of Dash Latam when it is not inventing lies to talk it down.
I do not produce hype, I produce real results, which are sometimes quite pretty and sometimes a little uncomfortable. But you can't build a top-5 coin on hype, so I choose reality.
We are the people on the ground actually building your business, the workforce.
It's curious that you think we need to rethink our strategy. I have spent every moment since I began in June of 2018 questioning and rethinking. As a result, we have made key pivots practically weekly. Most were minor course corrections, others involved major retooling.
You, sir, with all due respect, are not here on the ground. You don't know what Dash needs to achieve adoption in Latin America. All you know is what is cool or hip or popular or politically acceptable right now in the DAO.
You confirm this by talking about going after the "bigboys". This right here tells me you don't understand the Latam market.
But let's imagine I get, say, the largest supermarket chain of Colombia to accept Dash. I invest months getting them comfortable, I write software to integrate Dash into their existing system... and then no one shows up to spend Dash because you guys decided consumer adoption was a waste of time and released your experts to work elsewhere.
Now we just spent a ton of money and man-hours to burn bridges instead of building them. Because that supermarket chain is not only going to stop accepting Dash, it is going to badmouth us to everyone they can. Because they spent their resources just so we could publish a nice investor relations piece on DashNews to pump our price.
Which is the same thing you guys are doing by defunding Dash Latam. We were talking to more than 5,000 people across 8 nations, 20 cities and 3 continents on a regular basis. These are the people who were open to Dash in the first place, the curious, the forward-thinkers, the early adopters (cf Crossing the Chasm). But you guys have decided mid-stream that this is all wrong, these people are useless, these relationships are garbage.
So not only have you quit on me mid-stream, sabotaging your own investments with a quitter mentality, but you are burning the same bridges you will need if you ever want to come back into Latin America in any meaningful sense.
Of course! I could have done a lot of things to be more popular in the DAO. But I wouldn't have moved the ball down the field. I would have been a court insider, an ass-kisser, a schmoozer, a parasite. Not a producer.
Some people here think this is about me. This is about the 80+ people I trained to work for you, many of them future POs. This is about the 60 I had in training in Brazil. This is about the dozens more in training outside of Brazil. This is about the thousands of people we got excited about Dash and the thousands they spoke to. This is about the relationships I was building in new Latam markets.
You are burning down 16 months of ground work because it turns out this is harder than you first thought. You guys are quitters.
I am not going to come back with a proposal dictated to me by what first-world MNOs think is needed in Latam because that would constitute me joining the ranks of the fawning parasites of the DAO. I produce. I do not leech.
I will simply go produce somewhere else with people who want to produce.
*What do I mean by selling out to partners. I mean an external company with no loyalty to Dash comes in, says we want to integrate you and now we put treasury funds and man hours to work promoting them. Them being multi-coin solutions with often conflicts of interest with us. This as opposed to where we develop our own solutions in-house (like our wallets, like Spark, like Rates, like Dash Retail and other things that are/were in the works) and use our treasury to slingshot ourselves ahead of the competition, competition which is almost always crazy overpriced, works poorly if at all, corporatized and more in it for the money than the vision.
** Potential use is where you open a door and say, hey now people can go through here. Isn't that wonderful? But you don't know if anybody wants to go through. You don't know if there was any market testing. Integration Fever is characteristic of the ass-backwards approach of a lot of things in Dash: let's build it first and then maybe people will magically start using it, fingers crossed! Hopes and prayers! Everything in Dash is done that way. If you think this is a smart way to do anything, I don't know what to say to you. Additionally, where work is expended to open these doors, and no one walks through them, it hurts us doubly because we just confirmed to "partners" that no one wants to use Dash, so they start closing these doors and getting them to re-open is doubly hard now.
We put everything into you, because this is about you.
The treasury is not a VC fund for amateurs. Correction, it didn't use to be.
You guys are gutting Dash in a centralized money grab for insiders.
The DIF is a centralized money grab to benefit Dash insiders.
"shove Dash down peoples throat" WTF are you even talking about?
Why would I work somewhere else only to put value in Dash? You guys are not building here, you are seizing value for the insider clique.
You guys burned your bridge with me. The rest is only consequence.
We need to focus instead on merchants and businesses that have a real world pressing problem that can be solved by DASH but not with fiat currency and, at the same time, the solution solves the problem to such an extent that even with volatility or price decreases in DASH the solution is still worth having. Hyperinflation alone is not enough. It is too general. It only forms the backdrop for the basis of a good project. We need specific use cases to be solved, not general mom and pop merchants like Donnelly was signing up. It looks rather obvious to me that he has kicked up a fuss on social media to hide the fact that his marketing failed. It failed in the respect that the Merchants that Donnelly was signing up are not receiving any real benefits from accepting DASH at this moment in time except it looks "cool" to have. As soon as the promotions ended, the transactions ended. We should not be promoting DASH with promotions. We should be promoting DASH as solutions to real world pressing problems that cannot be solved with normal fiat currency.
Notice I stated previously that Donnelly works on discrediting projects if they do not conform to what he wants. That is now exactly what Donnelly is doing with the DASH project as a whole. Look at his twitter feed and the articles where he is making quotes such as "Dash is going nowhere" . Instead of moving on with his own project in a professional manner he's bad mouthing DASH and giving misleading information to the press, this is after we have supported him financially for 1.5 years. He is actually resentful after we have funded his project for 1.5 years. What type of character thinks and acts like that?
https://www.criptonoticias.com/comunidad/adopcion/comerciantes-narran-experiencias-aceptar-dash-criptomonedas-venezuela/
English: https://bit.ly/2N2N6jc
Very favorable article on real Dash use in Venezuela from @CriptoNoticias tx to significant contributions from Dash Latam @PagaConDash
After 16 months at the coalface and with on-the-ground experience in 8 nations on 3 continents, we at Dash Latam have learned firsthand what it takes to get crypto mass adoption off the ground in X or Y place
http://dash.ist/2019/10/15/the-future-of-mass-adoption-is-an-app/
https://www.criptonoticias.com/comunidad/detras-expansion-dash-venezuela-caracas-maracaibo/
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/dctvfz/dash_latam_requests_your_feedback/
- Dash Aid, Dash-only non-intermediated charitable giving, preview ready at https://www.dashaid.org/
- Strategic Vision for Dash published at http://dash.ist/2019/09/25/a-strategic-vision-for-dash/
- Article debunking CoinDesk FUD with on-the-ground data published at http://dash.ist/2019/09/16/the-truth-about-coindesks-2-dash-merchants/
- First 8 videos published in our Dash liquidity tutorial series, including Uphold, Changelly, AirTM, CoinCola, LocalcoinSwap at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f4BAMAXILLhMuKa-wKdzOYa
- Meet Dash Latam #3 video published showing the work of members of our team at https://youtu.be/bL68nQystEc (full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f7lx855tMif6yYz_LofX7Dm )
- Tao interviewed George Donnelly about our work achieving Dash adoption in Latin America at https://youtu.be/0V6-yN25gLY
- MNO report with metrics published at https://www.dropbox.com/s/iary4y5cxc868w7/Dash%20Latam%20MNO%20Report%2023%20Sep%202019.pdf?dl=0
- Latam merchant/usability options map nearing completion, preview published at https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1164389714050322432
- 8 simultaneous consumer adoption events in 8 cities and 4 countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Guatemala) were held in one day at the end of August.
- Our development of the cross-border food shopping use-case between Venezuela and Cúcuta Colombia continues and here is a recent video of an event we did on the Venezuela side where we sold Dash: https://youtu.be/b0sgfclK4PY
- Promotional video published for consumer adoption for mall where we affiliated all of the restaurants at https://youtu.be/QXwtFT5B2D4
- Merchant promotion launched in Venezuela to create media that supports our claim to be the top crypto in Venezuela and gathers usable location data for legacy merchants at https://pagacondash.com/cc2019/
- 2 Dash Aid promo videos published https://youtu.be/NMHGi43OCMo and https://youtu.be/Q9PrkUz59ss
- 20 Dash Aid NGO aid requests filmed and published, 2 available with subtitles on dashaid.org https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f7fKC8rD-6jrGR0D7DUblMw
- Email sequences for new and potential Dash merchants to teach them about Dash created and in production, for example: https://preview.mailerlite.com/g1l1p1
- Dash mentioned as top cryptocurrency of interest to Colombias by P2P exchange Paxful in newspaper interview at https://www.larepublica.co/finanzas/completaremos-20-cajeros-de-bitcoin-en-bogota-y-cucuta-paxful-2911181
Dash Aid is a free market in charitable giving that only uses Dash. Anyone, anywhere can give or request aid. Give only what you want to who you want.
There is no intermediation, all payments are direct. We are encouraging donors to buy Dash using the existing liquidity options (Coinbase, Uphold, etc) and recipients to spend the Dash at Dash merchants.
We expect to eventually take this mainstream and use it to produce demand for Dash at exchanges, wonderful global PR for Dash and for it to serve as another way to demonstrate Dash's cross-border payments (remittances etc) use case.
Please take a look and give us your feedback:
https://www.dashaid.org/
Dash Aid is a Dash Latam project developed in collaboration with Dash Hive and Dash Retail. Thanks to solarguy and JohnSnow for their help along the way. Keep in mind this is just the MVP and an early preview at that.
This is direct un-intermediated giving. You decide where to donate and how much. Follow recipients, see your impact
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMHGi43OCMo&cc_load_policy=1
https://youtu.be/5VszTe3uZOM
8 total videos in the series so far covering Uphold, CoinCola, AirTM, LocalCoinSwap. More on the way. Coinbase is in the queue now.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f4BAMAXILLhMuKa-wKdzOYa
Colombia is both a top sender and recipient of remittances in Latin America. Perhaps 10% of the economy is manufacturing for export.
And when value comes in via Dash, spending Dash directly will enable users to save money and time.
His team is running an iPhone giveaway to merchants on his PagaConDash platform (They are also giving away trips, home appliances and events to 30 stores) -I think, this activity by itself is not unethical (Bad ROI, but the results is a separate topic)
The real damaging issue on this activiti, is that it is being targeted to ALREADY ONBOARDED DASH STORES, in order to get them to switch into his platform. So literally, George is spending the funds he gets from the DAO in order to ensure he remains the only team in Venezuela.
The Dash LatAm team sent this message to my friend’s business Instagram account:
Original message link: https://imgur.com/Ps4KDvh
--------
-Translated
Do you want new users?
Did you think Dash quit Venezuela?
We are the new Dash Venezuela Team and we want to bring new customers!
We are Dash LatAm and operate in Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, San Cristóbal and Barquisimeto.
We want to help you grow and connect to new users. But you must fill inn this form:
In order to participate you must register, and you can win an iPhone or Samsung cel, for merchants like you https://pagacondash.com/cc2019/
But first you must register here ------ http://pagacondash.com/dd880contacto
-----------
This was sent to several Dash merchants during the first two week of this month, including my best friend’s business in Caracas (Who then wrote to me).
This is an unethical and unfair business practice where the larger team uses their large funds in order to destroy all competitors, and this is why I feel I must share with the DAO the unethical way in which this team operates.
This is @Dashlosteques https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1176525204702584832
Are we going to continue funding an individual whose sole goal is to destroy every other team?
In order to sell remittances reliably to Venezuelan expats, we need to conclusively demonstrate that there are ample usability options for Dash in Venezuela. Given the low quality of the street addresses of the remaining 847 DMV/DV-affiliated merchants on DiscoverDash.com, we can not integrate them into the remittances network we are building as they are. Consumers will not be able to find them.
Thus, we are running a promotion that can inexpensively:
a. Get the merchants to come to us (instead of dispatching 20 sales reps to hunt down the bad street addresses);
b. Incentivize the merchants to actively welcome Dash-paying consumers into their stores and attend to them properly;
c. Get the word out far and wide that Dash has NOT left Venezuela (we have a couple other things in the works for this too);
d. Get the merchants to use a reliable, AWS-hosted Dash-exclusive point of sale software that we know is using the same pricing source as the Dash Core Group mobile wallets (pricing parity);
e. Produce user-generated photos of Dash purchases that can help promote Dash in Venezuela as well as debunk future CoinDesk FUD; and
f. Provide access to the ongoing self-study training and other resources Dash Latam provides to Dash merchants in order to strengthen Dash’s brand and the acceptance level of the merchants.
This is not just an attempt to undo the DMV team’s damage to Dash (see below), rescue Dash’s million-dollar investment into Venezuela and do our part in demonstrating the hyper-inflationary use case for Dash. We are building a Dash remittances network using existing liquidity points (General Bytes ATMs, Uphold, Coinbase, Bitnovo, Daexs, etc) in South Florida, Spain and Colombia to sell Dash for remittances into Venezuela and other Latam markets.
In order to do so effectively, we need to show the buyers of the Dash (remittance senders) with confidence and complete data the full array of usability options for Dash in Venezuela. We have a beta map of those options here (almost ready for release). Here is a preview:
https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1164389714050322432
I am releasing on http://dash.ist this week a strategic vision for Dash that lays out this project in greater detail.
Thus, we are running this promotion in order to gain accurate data on Dash usability options in Venezuela, so we can add them to the hundreds of merchants we have onboarded and enable remittance beneficiaries to use them. We hope to also inexpensively continue reactivating old merchants who stopped accepting Dash or who may have formed a negative impression of Dash or who may not have received support for some time and in fact may not be able to currently accept Dash.
Further, we are making plans to pair this merchant promotion with a series of consumer promotions in order to move both sides of the equation and generate even more photos and videos of successful Dash spends in Venezuela so that we can provide even more evidence to support Ryan Taylor’s claim that Dash is the most used cryptocurrency in Venezuela.
Gianpaolo’s story is an outrageous, self-serving fairy tale that includes a false translation.
- There is no such thing as a “PagaConDash platform”. We are selling Dash itself, directly. We are recommending the Core wallets and we are teaching people to use existing liquidity providers such as Uphold, CoinCola, LocalCoinSwap, CryptoBuyer, etc. When we ourselves sell Dash, we sell it at or slightly below market.
- There is no other team to compete with in Venezuela at least with respect to this promotion. Dash Help does not do this. Dash Cabimas (parking) is in a city where previously there were few or no merchants. Any remaining teams that were “communities” of Dash Venezuela are either inactive, working with Dash Latam already or we are in talks.
- The prizes include one (1) phone, one (1) small trip and the home appliance is part of a business promotion (the real prize) we can do for a winning merchant, where one of his clients can win the home appliance as part of a Dash consumer adoption strategy.
- The prizes are only available to merchants who meet certain minimum limits in terms of producing photos that meet our requirements and will serve Dash marketing efforts.
- We encourage merchants to install our Dash-Retail-provided POS (https://pos.pagacondash.com), but at no point is it actually required. You can pay wallet-to-wallet or wallet-to-other-POS if you want.
It is advantageous to the DAO that we have Dash-exclusive and DAO-created POS software and that we promote it heavily. Here’s why:
- It enables Core’s pricing parity initiative to work. It enables wallets and the POS to show exactly the same or extremely similar fiat amounts when people make payments. This builds confidence in the Dash ecosystem.
- It makes it dead easy for merchants to accept Dash. They enter the amount, hit the button, customer scans the QR code, fingerprint or PIN, merchant gets green checkmark. Done. See this video demonstration at an active Dash merchant in Caracas: https://youtu.be/txmz-ZspJWE
- It enables businesses to accept even when the owner is not present (because it requires no private keys), which resolves a consistent pain point for Dash consumers in Venezuela.
- It gives the DAO decision-making data via our tracker at http://tracker.pagacondash.com. No other Dash adoption project provides this.
Dash Latam has worked overtime for months to overcome a lot of obstacles. We have built relationships with allies and other teams in the Dash ecosystem in order to professionalize Dash acceptance and provide superior systems, service and results to the DAO.
Other teams' faiings, faults or difficulties are not our responsibility. Nor is our globally-outstanding work a badge of shame. We are proud of the good work we do for Dash and aim to improve it every single day.
*Supplementary Data*
This is the message I authorized to be sent to the Dash merchants we are verifying: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8grxhsq2zonm4pm/Screenshot%202019-09-25%2008.49.31.png?dl=0
This is the Google Translation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xsvkyjf9snqwybg/Screenshot%202019-09-25%2008.51.42.png?dl=0
In case someone is not aware, Gianpaolo Comparetto’s (OP’s) Dash Merchant Venezuela (DMV) team claimed to have nearly 2,600 merchants in Venezuela alone 6 months ago. This turned out to be an act of fraud, which was exposed and now DiscoverDash/Dash News has done their own verification which confirmed it. Today DiscoverDash.com reflects only 847 active merchants in Venezuela and some of those were likely affiliated by Dash Latam.
Backstory: https://reports.dashwatch.org/MAR19/DASH-MERCHANT-VENEZUELA-STAGE-2.pdf
Further, after the DMV leadership abandoned their project, the person they left in charge either issued or permitted to be issued a message to merchants stating that Dash had left Venezuela and would no longer be providing service to those remaining active merchants. When I asked the person to retract this message, he wanted to know what was in it for him.
The country has hundreds of thousands of places that could be onboarded to Dash, so your constant hit jobs and going after the places that are already working with other teams means that you are just working “overtime” to oust all other teams.
You have not any partner teams on the ground to prove you work as an allies, that is why you give your employees the choose to work for you or work to destroy their reputations.
Stop repeating lies about teams abandoning Venezuela, as the Dash Watch report shows, after the accusations in the report your team did in Caracas, other teams kept working and submitted videos of your false claims proving that those places exist and still work with Dash. There are multiple teams working in Venezuela, and a few of them funded through the DAO this year, so understand: YOU- ARE- NOT-THE-ONLY-TEAM-WORKING-IN-VENEZUELA.
You know that the Venezuelan teams reached out to you in order to cooperate and you ignored or asked for atrocious requests to all of them (Reread your conversations before lying).
Respond: Why are you focused to remain the only team on LatAm?
I'm not.
https://www.reddit.com/user/henrygeorgist
I wrote a thread on r/dashpay 8 months ago about this:
The Final and Strongest Weapon Against us will be the Hardest to Beat! - Conflict of Interest
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/ahasrv/the_final_and_strongest_weapon_against_us_will_be/
We have teams and individuals working against our best interests in the DAO. They are trying to waste as much money as possible while doing the least amount of work possible. They appear to want to erase our considerable lead in adoption ahead of coins like Bitcoin Cash and Monero. Dash has EMBARASSED the rest of the cryptocurrency community by being so rapid in its adoption. Vote NO! on this proposal in order to vote against bad actors, liars and manipulative people who wish to slow down our growth.
I literally work 16 hours per day 6 sometimes 7 days per week for Dash. I recruited and trained my full team. Together with them, we have introduced Dash directly - hands-on - to more than 5,000 people across Latin America, many more indirectly.
Right now we have more than 50 Brazilians in an automated training program I designed and created so we can expand our results to Brazil, Latam's largest nation/economy in the most cost-effective manner.
I have no conflict of interest with Dash. I was a Bitcoin user from early on and big-blocker, and held no particular interest in any other coin until I identified the unique benefits of Dash in late 2017.
I don't know henrygeorgist except from his comments here, or if I know the person behind the username, I do not know him as henrygeorgist. I have no association with any other coin and have been dogmatic in producing, supporting and promoting Dash-only solutions such as pos.pagacondash.com, dashaid.org and more.
I did not lead any charge to torpedo anyone. They did it to themselves. On the contrary, I am leading the charge to pick up the pieces. I have built working relationships with many people who were instrumental in progress made in Venezuela, such as Richard Jerez, Edgar Caballero, Talia Zimmerman, Jose Araujo and others. With my leadership, we are taking Dash in Venezuela far beyond the previous results, and for less money.
I am one of the most committed and effective leaders Dash has today, and that is the full story. Happy to answer questions.
See the previous 2 installments here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92ognmkx-f7lx855tMif6yYz_LofX7Dm
#DashAlwaysBuilding
https://youtu.be/0V6-yN25gLY
I'm interested to hear what's going on that has some MNOs spooked. Is there more to this statement George released last week - out of the blue - than we are being lead to believe? I dismissed it as tittle-tattle, maybe I'm missing something?
Walter
a single person owning nearly 120mn used his right to vote, that´s what happened
you can see how this proposal got voted down, and the DIF proposal got voted up
now, how many people own 115+ ? go figure
Or maybe we lost some people's support? Either way, the team would appreciate the courtesy of knowing so we can plan accordingly.
http://dash.ist/2019/09/16/the-truth-about-coindesks-2-dash-merchants/
And no, you're not being censored or held back from speaking out by voting MNOs. It just gets tiring and old to hear the same "it's me against the world" narrative ad nauseam.
Eventually the hard work you and your 50+ team are doing is going to be offset by what is mentioned above.
If you are willing to provide specific examples to support your "unnecessary hit jobs and shrapnel" narrative, I'd be happy to consider them by one by one.
I don't know what this "it's me against the world" narrative is at all.
I will say that I make my best effort to practice radical transparency in the DAO, as evidenced by my levels of communication through Twitter, through Dash Watch, through Discord, personal communications and more. Internally, this is present through the hundreds of messages members of the Dash Latam team exchange with each other every week in our Slack in order to facilitate coordination.
I am very alert to people who want to tear down Dash Latam's concrete results through lies, misrepresentations, rumor mill attacks, etc. We have been under attack in this way for months and there is ample evidence of it on this very page.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with offsetting the results Dash Latam produces, which are exemplary and outstanding. On a personal level, I have rendered great fidelity to the Dash DAO.
I am very interested in concrete suggestions for how Dash Latam can do better. My email is george@pagacondash.com and my phone number is +573218423668. On discord I'm George Donnelly#6938.
Buying Dash in Venezuela and shopping with it in Colombia is a strong use case because crossing the border with VES or USD is theft-prone and exchanging VES/USD on the other side of the border presents multiple serious challenges. Dash solves these problems.
https://youtu.be/b0sgfclK4PY
The one in Medellín is at Mercados del Tranvía in the center of the city where a whole food court mall of 16 restaurants all now accept Dash thanks to our work. Here is a video of the lovely Camila giving you a tour of the place:
https://youtu.be/QXwtFT5B2D4
I am a Master Node Owner ii.e a major investor in DASH. I make decisions that are the best for growing my investment *not* for decreasing my investment. Therefore your conclusions about my motives below are inaccurate and misplaced.
I had voted for your proposal until now. However I have now realised merchant sign up at this stage is definitely * not* the way to go now in my opinion. I stand by what I said and any reasonable person would have listened to what I have to say instead of jumping to conclusions about my motives.
It is true personally I do not like you. I also do not like how you manipulate people's opinions by focusing subtly on only the negatives of people you want to bring down so that you can take their work and their place. Something you did consistently with DMV.
Let me remind you. The DMV team started the merchant program. They designed it and built it even before you started your merchant program. Basically you copied their concept later on. The DMV team also created DASH Help support centre which is still operating and supporting the network and DASH Text which is still operating and expanding. I notice that in your reply you only highlight the negative of side of DMV team. I might also point out that even after clearing out the closed businesses and low quality merchants the DMV team still signed up more than double your number of merchants. So I would appreciate it if you and Edward Stover could ease of the bad mouthing the DMV team.
I would also like the community to know that the Remittances concept was first proposed by myself in the original Dash Help proposal. I also expanded on that concept to George Donnelly in Signal calls that I had with George over a 3 month period. At that time George was simply signing up merchants and had no other ideas to build that business.
In addition I put forward the concept of shops selling DASH in the form of Bitnovo cards a concept that George also had not though about and I'm sure led to his idea of merchant selling points for DASH.
I stated below that we need to promote projects were people are obliged to buy DASH and you response is "you cannot oblige people to buy DASH". I am saying however you can oblige them to buy DASH and these are the business ideas that I want to see promoted not the merchant sign ups at this stage. The reason you say you can't oblige people to buy DASH is the same reason that you did not think of the merchant program, you did not think of the remittance program - you have very few original ideas yourself.
Here is one area where people can be obliged to buy DASH: The parking project. If the people that build a solution for parking in Venezuela then that parking can be made into a parking product e.g. an NFC programmable card. This solves major problems for the car park owners since at the moment there is no reasonable solution in Venezuela for accepting car park fees. This leads to large queues and a poor service. If a DASH product can be developed the car park owners can make it DASH exclusive to solve their problems. People would then be obliged to buy DASH to park their car. That is one way were people can be obliged to buy DASH. These are the types of marketing ideas I want to spend our money promoting. Signing up merchants has proven, by actual figures not to be working. $7,000 / month in transaction for 500 merchants is not working at this stage of DASH's development. I don't want us to spend more money flogging a dead horse. Merchant signup would work later down the line. Right now it is too early and the figures are absolutely proving that.
I do not think you should get involved with the parking project however I am giving this as an example of where people can be obliged to buy DASH.
I also do not like several other things about your project. First you have grouped together all the promotional from many different regions into one proposal. This means if we want to vote on the remittances we also have to vote on the merchant program. I don't want to give more funds to the merchant program at this stage however I would vote positively on the remittance program - even if you were running it George.
I do not believe in the Merchant sign up program as being the way to promote DASH at this stage other than the exception of signing up strategic merchants e.g. large supermarket chains or large department stores. I think projects like the parking program would be able to sign up merchants but that would be through proving the success of the parking program with DASH and not by going directly to the merchants.
I see Dash Latam as a developing problem because it is becoming centralised through your management. There are dangers to this that MNOs need to carefully think about and become aware of. One person in control of the flow of money to all these different projects in South America posses a risk that the person can control those projects. That is too much power for one person to have.
The different programs need to be *independently funded* and NOT funded through one central proposal like yours were you control the money flow through one central leader to these other projects. The different teams should work collaboratively but should be funded separately.
I am advising you to think about projects where DASH needs to solve a pressing problem that normal cash cannot solve. Where millions of people need that product and normal cash cannot solve it and particularly in Venezuela. Hyperinflation is too general. Merchant sign ups is too general (at this stage).
I have identified 3 such products that will oblige people to use DASH. However I will not be sharing them with you. I wanted to share these with DCG however Fernando did not reply to my email offer other than saying "Ill get back to you".
One of the ideas was a parking solution in Venezuela and I'm pleased to see a project has finally come forward with that idea although I had no involvement in starting that project and I do not know who the team are. I think it will be a great success if it is managed correctly.
As for you comments on "turning my back" by voting no that is a ridiculous statement. Quite the opposite. I am trying to point projects in the right direction of where they should be focusing their energy and money. If you feel irritated George by an MNO not agreeing with your program the way it is and suggesting improvement then that you issue to deal with. Right now I'm voing no for the following reasons;
1. I don't believe in merchant sign ups program bringing much value to DASH at this stage other than strategic sign ups like supermarkets. My reason for this is we only have only $7000 / month of transactions to show for 1.5 years work and 500 merchants signed up. That is telling us that it is simply not working at this stage that we are at.
2. I want to see the Latam project broken up so the different LATAM teams are funded separately and not all going through GeorgeDonnelly which is a centralized form of control of a major part of our Latin American development.
3. I want to see the Latam proposal working to promote products / services that *oblige* people to have to buy DASH i.e. there is no option but to buy DASH or it much better to use DASH than use fiat. One example is the remittances (as a service) but more effort to be given on developing products and services where fiat simply does not work.
You say it is too early for merchant signups while simultaneously saying the parking proposal is the next best thing. But the parking proposal only works by signing up merchants. You can not build any kind of meaningful or enduring adoption without merchants and the parking proposal is further validation of this.
You say you support our remittances work but are voting to kill it. Our remittance project is nothing without merchants. After a year of exhaustive research, we know with 100% certainty that we only sell Dash for remittance purposes when we show Venezuelans there are a large selection of merchants where the Dash can be spent. This is common sense backed by firsthand field research.
You say we should only sign up “strategic merchants” but you can’t get such deals quickly or without investing a lot of time and money. Further, such deals can sour overnight based on the whims of 1 decision-maker you can't even talk to.
By having a base of many small merchants, adoption becomes resilient. Small merchants build buzz and become a laboratory for many things, including for executives of larger chains to try Dash out in real life. It becomes a point in favor of adopting Dash in all of the steps to come.
We are seeing larger merchants seeking us out now based on the buzz we have created with small merchants.
You say you want to break up Dash Latam. Tough luck. We built this. Not you. We recruited these people. We trained them. We support them. I ensure their salaries/incentives are adequate and paid on time every time. We ensure they have materials to work with, tools and uniforms. I send medical aid when they get sick and I loan them money to buy new phones when theirs are stolen. I ensure focus and quality control.
You do not like that we have grouped together all our projects in 1 proposal. Bottom line, it is a package deal. When we do the DAO the courtesy of putting in multiple proposals it is expensive, exhausting and causes unacceptable variations in our funding. Further, it distracts us from actually producing new results for the DAO.
Your personal dislikes are clear based on 4 hours of audio messages you sent me, where you literally screamed at me blaming me for the pending demise of DMV. Your personal dislike is highly evident in your comments and you even admit it. This only matters when you misrepresent our work in order to serve your irrational personal dislike and damage the honest, true work of 64+ people, not to mention a key asset for Dash itself.
What you represent as manipulation has been me discharging my fiduciary duty of loyalty to the Dash DAO (MNOs like you) to share pertinent facts that are being hidden. I will not cover up fraud when I discover it.
You say we copied DMV’s merchant program. This is false. DMV leaders flew to Medellín in May 2018 and demanded I do a proposal with them in which they would get paid by the DAO solely for the act of sharing knowledge of their merchant program with me. I refused and your guys refused to share anything with me.
Dash Latam’s adoption strategy is notably different in many factors, including basic effectiveness, since we have lost relatively few merchants during this bear market while the Venezuela count has fallen by at least 65%. We are also not just a "merchant program." We also do consumer adoption, remittances and ambassadorship.
“DMV team still signed up more than double your number of merchants” This is false.
I know that I have gotten ideas from other people and I know that I have given ideas to other people. You have value to contribute to Dash, DeepBlue. Many people do. Who came up with which idea first is not a game I am going to play with you today. Everybody has ideas. Few execute. Dash Latam is focused on execution.
DeepBlue, I have read and respect your analysis on several projects. You have thoughtful, insightful things to say, and I often agree and resonate with many of them.
GeorgeDonnelly, I respect the work you are doing. It looks like you are actually getting results. Some people are able to manage/organize "ideas" into "reality" and George appears to have special talent here.
I wish DeepBlue would share his ideas, so anyone that is able to "incarnate" them into reality would be able to try. If it happens to be George, more power to him. If it's someone(s) else, fantastic! Either way, the whole DASH ecosystem would benefit. Withholding good ideas from someone whom you believe has few original ideas of his own seems harmful for everyone, yeah?
I agree centralization is something to beware of. But it is still early days, and so far George has "stepped up" to take on responsibility and "proven" he can lead/organize teams. If another person or group of people are able to lead and manage too, I'm sure MNO's would be very happy to take chances on them as well. And if it looks like George is starting to abuse his power, it's a simple matter of defunding him, no?
I agree with DeepBlue that promoting projects where people are obliged (incentivized?) to buy (use?) DASH are preferred. The parking proposal is a great example.
If remittances was first proposed by DeepBlue, kudos! I too agree this is an area that could/should be emphasized. Also kudos to anyone that actually turns the idea into reality!
I hope more kind words and support is shown more often around here. Many people are doing great work, whether it's contributing ideas, organizational ability, or physical labor. Kumbaya y'all :)
https://www.reddit.com/user/henrygeorgist
He recently said this:
"I've enjoyed this wannabe-spinfluencer e-celeb's videos in the past but this cringe-inducing garbage is worse than sponsored content.
Naomi Shillwell needs to improve her understanding of the issues she distorts using snarky strawman arguments. Doing her job better requires her to steel-man the 'anti-Dash' POV, not weaken it to an easily dismissed cutesy name-check.
For example, the "Dash community" never held any sort of legitimate vote not to relaunch after the instamine disaster. Evan obvously pre-determined the result and framed a fake poll to support his no-relaunch preference. Duh Naomi. Duh. Primary sources are a reporter's friends; secondhand hearsay gossip from your paidshill galpal Scamanda and Jojo the clown is not. A reporter's job is to investigate the facts, not provide a platform for her buddy to broadcast fake narratives about Dash's immaculate conception and the wisdom of its self-enriching DARKCOIN FOUNDATION INC."
George Donnelly should not be trying to take over and force out teams in LaTAm. That is not his role at all. He should stay in Columbia and manage work there, he should not be overriding and working to defund other teams. That is malicious behavior and grounds for defunding.
Please present evidence or retract your false claims.
Donnelly was asking me for investmane money to implement my remittance concept and I still have those voice records Donnelly so feel free to say it is not true and I can make those recordings public.
I would like to clarify I did not provide just an "idea" as Donnelly states - once again he downplaying someone's conbribtion and putting a negative spin on it as he consistently does when he wants to put someone down.
The reality is I spent 1 year researching the situation in Venezuela before I came up with my concepts. I spoke with the DMV team many times each week for over a year asking questions, testing ideas and learning about the situation in Venezuela. I watched many hours of Venezuela youtube videos to educated myself and read articles and research resumes on the situation. Once I had the basic information I commissioned a research report from an MBA finance graduate to understanding the Venezuelan remittance market. It took 3 months work working evenings to create the report about the Venezuela remittance market and the other concepts I had worked out. This report cost me several thousand euros of my own money.
I identified the need for a remittance market for migrant Venezuelan's before anyone had thought about this. Donnelly knew the amount of work I had done so for him to brush it off as a random "idea" is one of the reasons I would not contribute to Donnely's work again going forward. He took the idea and gave no credit to me for my contributions.
Every time Donnelly puts a negative spin on people and their contributions I am going to call him out. Again and again, until the community and MNOs start to realise what type of character we are dealing.
I have my own business and work on average 70 to 80 hour weeks so to find the time to do that additional research work was a challenge. I spent my weekends, late evenings and early mornings working to gain an understanding of the situation in Venezuela. My motivation was primarily wanting to make a difference to find a way to eleviate the suffering through using my business knowledge and experience.
@GeorgeDonnelly if you put a negative slur or downplay me or my contributions to your project again I will make our signal messages and recordings public. I've had enough of your bullshit negative spins.
As for me being angry on my final calls with Donnelly after he had is part in bringing down the DMV project work that is true I was angry with Donnelly and his part in doing that. People have a tendency to get angry when a project they have worked on and are passionable about get destroyed. Donnelly had it out for the DMV team from the start. The DMV team told me early on that he wanted to take over their work. There were other things too but I'm not going to discuss those here. I did not pay much credance to the comments for 3 months but slowly I came to realise what I was being told by DMV team was true.
I have to say I was also totally gutted by the DMV team doing what they did. When they lost their projects the work I had done felt wasted. They should have simply stated the amount they were paying themselves. The total salary amount they reported were accurate collectively, it was just the distribution of the money that was not accurate.
The reason Im not sharing my other concepts with Donnelly is because he is not the right person to run them. My reason for not voting for this proposal is because it is not working in terms of merchant sign ups the way Donnelly is currently doing it.
We need selected big brand names signed up not small mum and pop outfits. Big brands are not influenced by smaller corner shops as Donnelly says. It is the other way around smaller shops are influenced by big brands. As far as I am aware Donnelly has not signed any big brand names yet. Unlike the DMV team that had signed up and provided video evidence of those sign ups.
Until Donnelly changes his marketing approach I'm not voting for his proposals.
You completely rewrote the Active Agents proposal based on my feedback and I frankly don't care that you gave me no credit for it because I gave you all of that in a spirit of friendship and solidarity as I thought we were working toward similar ends.
My type of character is the type that calls out FRAUD when he sees it. You were hand in glove for a year with The MHelTTY Guys (Merchant, Help, Text, Trip, Youth) and have yet to recognize the terrible fraud they perpetrated on us.
I had no part in "bringing down" DMV. DMV took themselves down repeatedly and with great malice of incompetence.
You have been silent about their fraud this whole time. You were their advisor but you have yet to repudiate their merchant fraud or take note note of the fact that the Venezuela merchant count has declined from 2,500+, a number repeatedly and embarrassingly trumpeted by DashNews and even DCG CEO, to today 861, as seen at the bottom of the page at https://discoverdash.com/.
Why should anyone take you seriously when you allowed that to happen, giving these fraudsters your personal endorsement the whole time, assuring everyone that you were on the case as their advisor?
Your opposition to me is not my marketing approach, your opposition to me is personal, because I refused to go along with acts of fraud committed against the Dash DAO.
If you want to release our private Signal conversations from last year in full and unedited, go for it. I have nothing to hide.
I am a major investor in DASH. Currently each MN is worth 85,000 USD.
I don't know anyone in their right mind that would purposely want to damage that investment just to spite someone. You have much to high opinion of yourself. You really are not that important.
If your project work was successful I would continue to vote for it. However, I do not class $7000 USD / month in total transaction volume per month for 500 signed up merchants after 1.5 years work successful. There is no debate on that point. The numbers speak for themselves. Your strategy as it is right now is not worth the investment in my opinion.
Your repeated comments of me voting against your project just to spite you is an absurd statement and shows you really do have an over inflated idea of your self George. If you were a MNO with a major investment you would understand. Since you aren't a MNO you don't seem to understand this concept.
If you're project was run by someone else I would vote the same way. If it was run by DMV in the way you are running it, I would vote the same way.
Signing up small mom and pop corner shops is not the way to go at this stage of Dash’s development George. If you have to do the merchant sign up at this stage working on big brand names is the way to go. I suspect you don't want to do this because it is more work and you will sign up significantly less so it doesn't look as good on the monthly figures. Or perhaps your team members may not have experience in signing up big brands? I don't know what your reason is.
$7000 USD / Month transactions after 1.5 years work speaks for itself.
It is not the small shops that will give those migrants confidence in using DASH for remittances. It is the big brand names that give them confidence.
How many big brands have your team actually signed up since you stated 1.5 years ago?
Regarding your comments on DMV and making a statement.
I will need to again refer you back to the first paragraph of this post. I make decisions that are best for increasing my investment in DASH not decreasing it. I would not back any project which I thought was not delivering for the network or was doing something that was deliberately fraudulent. This is not just for a financial reason, it is also on a personal level. I would never support a project where the owners were acting dishonestly.
From my Signal calls with you George you stated several times to me that you had something on the DMV team that I did not know “the half of it”. I asked you several times what did you mean by that and to tell me what you knew. But you did not tell me anything. I told you I need to know because I don't want to be backing a project if there is a problem with it. But all I got from you was silence. So, if anything George you knew something was not right and you did not share that information with me or with the community.
If I find any project at any stage is not providing value to the network and there is no valid reason I withdraw my support for it and I make a public announcement for my reasons for doing so.
A case in point is the Dash Active Agents program where the project lead was not making our arranged call appointments on the project. I posted formally in their proposal I was withdrawing my support for that project even though I put a lot of work into designing that program.
You can see my formal withdrawal of support of the Dash Active Agents (DAA) program here:
https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Dash-Active-Agents
I would have made exactly the same public statement if the DMV team were unreliable or if I suspected there was something wrong with their work.
I'm not based in Venezuela George so, how could I know how many merchants are signed up or not?
What I can say is that the DMV team were genuinely passionate about establishing DASH in Venezuela. I could hear it in the way they responded, in the tones of their voice, in their eagerness to speak about their work and sharing their successes, their willingness to respond to my messages and requests for information - over an extended period of time. They also shared inside information about Venezuela, the infrastructure, the challenges and the problems. I found this information very helpful. We also discussed different marketing strategies and plans. Providing this feedback from DMV took their time but they took that time to do it.
DMV are not just team leaders they are entrepreneurs and business people who are highly qualified to do what they do. If they had been unreliable, or if I sensed anything was not true in what they said, I would have reported it to the network just as I did with DAA program.
I share the same view as Ryan Taylor on the DMV team which you can see Ryan's comments in his recent interview with Julian Hosp. I recommend everyone watch that video stating at time codes 41:15 where Ryan Taylor shares his view on DMV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F9oXntVfNc
As far as I am concerned DMV mistake was to alter their salary paperwork to show their leadership salaries where lower than they actually were. According to DashWatch the entire salaries budget for their project was the same as was declared. However the distribution of those funds was different so that the team leaders had paid themselves more money compare to other members. We are not talking a lot of money either. Their salaries were $1500 USD equivalent / month.
If you want to to keeping shouting fraud (ALL CAPS) that is up to you. As I say you only focus on the negatives of people you want to bring down. That is what I don’t like about you George. You have a limited view of the world that if others gain you lose. You don’t believe in co-operation. You believe in domination and take overs. That is my impression of you based on 3 months of calls with you. It took me some time to realise this however.
You also don't live in Venezuela George and you don't know the risks. The DMV leaders have been mugged several times but they did not talk about this to the community. It is highly risky to announce how much money anyone is making in Venezuela. How many times have you been mugged George in Colombia doing your job?
I will not defend DMV however on their submitting altered paperwork. That is unacceptable for any project owner and I feel they got fair treatment from the network for this.
In terms of how many of the DMV merchants are now not active now. I recommend you see Ryan Taylor's response to this point in the video above because it is the same as my views. Dash has a strong footing in Venezuela because of the work of DMV. There is no question on this point. This was backed up with video evidence both by Rodrigo when he visited Venezuela to create his documentary and core team member Ernesto Contreras when he visited Venezuela.
See these two videos:
Rodrigo's documentary on Venezuela where everything was paid in DASH on his visit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PbciVl3nYU
Core team business development manager Ernesto when he visited DMV in Venezuela:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3_TDGWJ7Og
The way you speak about DMV it is as if they contributed little value and that they were scam merchants. If that is the case explain the feedback from the two videos above George are you also calling Rodrigo and Ernesto giving false information?
What big brands have you signed up George in the last 1.5 years? Can you list them here because I am not aware of any.
I am going to keep on calling you out every time you unfairly put negative spin on people and their contributions so that you can bring them down for your benefit.
As for your remaining comments. They do not warrant my time answering them.
I recommend you sell whatever you have and get a Masternode George become a become a real investor in DASH. If you can't do that then you are not in a position to question my reasons for not voting on your project that is not bringing in the results we need for the money we are giving you.
Voting no.
You don't like our results but there is no one doing any better, no one even close. Within a few months, barring any further acts of sabotage, we will even have Dash back up to 2,000 active merchants in Latam - for real this time.
Signing up big brands is considerably more expensive and time-consuming than signing up smaller ones. Relationships with big brands are at least as fragile as those with smaller ones, if not more so. Look at how Papa John's and Subway melted away in Venezuela.
At sub-$180 Dash, any significant bizdev efforts are questionable at best. It makes no sense to start processes I may not be able to adequately sustain. That would only poison the well.
"You don’t believe in co-operation."
I believe in RESULTS.
"You believe in domination and take overs"
I believe that when the emperor has no clothes, the good person speaks up.
"Dash has a strong footing in Venezuela because of the work of DMV. There is no question on this point. "
Lots of questions are obvious to anyone willing and able to read: http://fot.database-expert.com/Survey_of_Dash-Accepting_Businesses_in_Caracas_Venezuela.pdf
You conflate DMV with DV, who affiliated a number of merchants. And no one is arguing they affiliated zero. This is a strawman argument you are making.
It is a simply a fact that they massively inflated their numbers and made suckers out of all of us.
You will never change the fact that you stood by quietly while DMV and company were making liars of us all and lining their pockets with Dash at our expense.... and gave us the thumbs-up.
And have yet to repudiate their fraud. Shame on you. I should wear your NO votes with pride!
Here again are my key points you did not respond to in your reply:
1. On our signal calls over an approx 3 month period did you or did you not tell me on several occasions that you had "something" on the DMV team that I did not even know the "half of it" implying they were doing something wrong?
2. In all of these cases did I or did I not ask you specifically what information you had on them?
3. In all those cases did you or did you not give me no information about what you knew about what information you had on the team?
You need to answer these questions George because now you're putting a negative spin on my integrity and I will not accept that.
Answer the questions above. If you don't I will simply keep posting these until you do.
1a. Further, why have you never spoken up about their fraud and your part in it as at the very least someone who abetted it and continues to pretend like it never happened?
2. I do not remember conversations from a year ago and I don't even know if I have the records.
3. Ditto.
In any case, Edward Stoever's report covers just about all the important points. http://fot.database-expert.com/Response_23-MAR-2019.pdf
I am going to wear your campaign of sabotage and your pair of NO votes as a badge of honor from here on out because you aided and abetted the DMV campaign of merchant fraud which has arguably done great and concrete harm to Dash and its standing in the marketplace.
I will continue to do so until you repudiate your previous support of them, including the Echeverrias, Lorenzo Rey, Andrade and others who played a role.
You and DMV are the problem. Dash Latam is solving it every day through sheer hard honest work.
An important part to keep in mind about this prima donna attitude, is that he did not bother to develop and bring new people OR BUSINESSES into the ecosystem, so him and Edward he just went and took pictures with all that was already accomplished, for example:
-Dash Venezuelas team https://twitter.com/Dash_Venezuela/status/1079168944202633219
-George’s Venezuela team https://twitter.com/JoseIgAraujo/status/1163905586054012935
-DashVenezuela work with NGOs ( Regalar una sonrisa) https://www.facebook.com/RegalaUnJajaja/photos/a.1431931243770605/1885446581752400/?type=3&theater
-Link of Georges NGO (Regalar una sonrisa) https://twitter.com/TaliaNotas/status/1158506058605899776
-Link to Venezuelan onboarded Merchant https://twitter.com/Dash_Venezuela/status/1109492583737319425
-Link to George’s “new” merchant
https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1162124512613294080
So the real question for this proposal is not whether we believe in the goals George and Edward keep claiming to achieve, but if the DAO will continue to provide funds to a pair of individuals that are only focused on destroying other teams and taking their efforts and ideas for George’s self-personality praise, by operating under an already clear formula: Edward attacks and makes speculative doubts with reports of mistakes, and then George repeats what was done by the teams and claims to be the first and only and best in class.
This pair is destructive and is the sole reason we had such as big slowdown in adoption and merchant count in the Venezuela, despite George operating with large funds in Venezuela during all of 2019, squandering thousands of Dash. Will we continue to fund this?
If you want to know why Dash lost 1,650+ merchants in Venezuela, maybe it was your DMV team’s message to those merchants saying Dash had left Venezuela after you were not funded in a cycle earlier this year. Or your fraudulent work, submitting merchants to DiscoverDash that had never accepted Dash in the first place.
So what if some of Dash Latam's team members formerly worked for DMV and Dash Venezuela? I do not discriminate. I welcome everyone who cares about Dash and is willing to do good work. This is about forward progress for Dash, and nothing else.
We have more than 90 Venezuelan NGOs in process now. So what if one of them was also associated with Dash Venezuela? I’m not going to reject them. That is not the Dash way.
The merchant Sociedad del Café stopped accepting Dash. This was confirmed by a crypto journalist in a public tweet in the same twitter thread you linked to. The tweet of mine that you cite explains this very point and represents the merchant as verified and restored, not new.
https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1162124512613294080
Dash Latam does things very differently than DMV ever did. First off, we act with integrity and transparency, producing real and enduring results. Second, our work is not just about slapping stickers on walls but about building consumer adoption and remittances. We also support our merchants, including with marketing and a buyback program.
Dash Latam has brought lots of new businesses into Dash, hundreds so far and in multiple nations. Dash Latam has brought dozens of new people into our organization to work productively adding value to Dash.
“only focused on destroying other teams” I have had successful collaborations with multiple other teams.
Edward Stoever is not my business partner. This claim is false. He simply gives Dash Latam valuable advice and encouragement. The role is unpaid.
I know you remain upset that I won a proposal in a cycle where you lost, and I know that I refused to give in to your repeated demands to give you my superblock payout, but to turn your personal enmity for me into this baseless act of sabotage is just wrong.
The report that I commissioned which disclosed the nature of the accomplishments of Dash Merchant Venezuela and Dash Venezuela to affiliate merchants in Venezuela has been proven true by the number of merchants visible in Venezuela on DiscoverDash.com. January 2019 DiscoverDash.com showed over 2,500 listings in Venezuela. Today, discoverdash.com shows only 887 listings in Venezuela. This is absolute confirmation that my report was factual.
The DMV team claimed many times that they were responsible for over 2,500 merchants, and their final proposal titled "DASH-MERCHANT-VENEZUELA-5000-MERCHANTS" promised a total of 5,000 merchants. None of their goals or achievements were either possible or true.
Furthermore, it was shared by a whistleblower that the “survey” you commissioned was done by George’s team on the ground, and neither of you ever explained why, so it is important to let the Dash community understand the implications.
https://www.reddit.com/user/henrygeorgist
And he supports george's efforts to take over Venezuela, which means they're working together to stop Dash. This is an act of war gentlemen.
We started work on remittances at the very latest prior to September 2018: https://www.meetup.com/DashColombia/events/254421212/
Our first treasury proposal was put in in early February 2019, at least 6 weeks prior to Edward's report. https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dash-venezuela-remittances-201902
Your whistleblower is a fantasy you just made up. During the time of Edward's survey Dash Latam was not operational in Venezuela.
You are attempting to muddle fact you don't want people to know about your DMV team with meritless conspiracy theories that are of no relevance anyway.
At the end of the day, DMV was a FRAUD no matter how we found out, and thank God we found out first and from someone who cares about Dash, otherwise, can you imagine the Coindesk articles?
George's first Venezuela Remittances proposal came out on February 15, a full month before my report was released, and I don't think it was funded in its first month. So what? As an MNO, I support proposals that I think are effective. I no longer support proposals from DMV or anyone who was involved in the fraud committed by DMV including Dash Text, Dash Help, Dash Youth, Dash Trip. The people in charge were caught falsifying financial documents provided to Dashwatch. My report went on to prove that they provided false results regarding the number of merchants affiliated and the quality control of their own operation. Please review for yourself their false claims here: https://youtu.be/p-dlo1pC0Ho
I made 2 videos that were only available to MNOs and POs by link only available on Discord. The first video was of me calling a few merchants and asking them if they actually accepted Dash to prove the accuracy of the results. The video was unedited. In the video, I simply call a number of merchants that were selected by a random number generator. The second video was of me demanding that DMV respond to specific cases of merchants not accepting Dash or having difficulties accepting Dash. My request to DMV to respond to those cases was completely ignored, even though I demanded a response to it in a publicly available conversation on Discord.
At the time that the report was commissioned, as far as I know, George had no "team on the ground". Who completed the survey would only be relevant matter if the report were proven false. The report has been proven true by discoverdash.com.
I have looked at the transaction amounts and numbers of transactions. I have to say that they are quite disappointing considering that you have been working on the merchant program for 1.5 years (I believe you started in March 2018). There are only around 7K USD in one month transactions - to put this in perspective that is about an average annual holiday expenditure for a couple. Considering that there are more than 500 merchants in Colombia I would expect the monthly transaction amount to be considerably higher than that if the program was something that was working.
I now believe that the merchant program as it is may not the way to go to getting DASH established in South America - both in Venezuela or Colombia. I think that merchants that are signing up because they want additional ways to make revenue however the amount of revenue they are making is low due to low customer participation. I also think they are signing up for speculation purposes. Yes, there are transactions going through but the volume is very low for 500 merchants.
What is the advantage for a customer purchasing DASH to make a purchase? It doesn’t make much sense to me. It is too much hassle, even with hundreds of DASH purchase points, people still have to buy cash to spend it.
When MNOs are assessing a project I think it is important we don't just look at activity listed by a proposal owner but we also consider the actual results of that activity. For me the results of the activity for the Latam project are not that impressive considering the time and money that has been invested into the Latam and Venezuela merchant programs.
I would prefer to see programs for DASH which solve a real specific problem that normal currency cannot solve – this then obliges people to use DASH. I don't think signing up merchants is enough of incentive for people to start using DASH. I feel the projects must be solving a real world tangible problem. Hyperinflation is clearly not enough for people to move to using DASH. We need DASH solutions for specific problems where people are obliged to use DASH as the solution because normal cash or credit simply is not an option. Preferably where thousands of people need that Dash solution.
I appreciate George and his team are working hard to do the best you can. That is not the issue. The issue for me is that the merchant program and the other activities mentioned in the list in this proposal are simply not succeeding to any real level. The results in terms of transaction numbers and transaction amount clearly demonstrate that.
I am voting no on this project, not due to the efforts from George and his team - which gets a good score but I do not believe that what is being promoted will lead to DASH adoption at this stage of Dash's adoption life cycle. Later on however I feel it could work.
- You mention "real world tangible problem". That is what we are doing with remittances. No one else invented combo remittances, we did. No one else is consistently selling Dash remittances. We are. No one else has been holding weekly events in Madrid Spain to sell Dash to Venezuelan expats. We are.
- There is absolutely no activity in the world where people are "obliged to use DASH" except for setting up a masternode and submitting a treasury proposal. That is it. Everything else is where the marketing happens, which is what we do.
- You say we are "simply not succeeding to any real level". This is simply false. We are #1 in evidenced consumer in-merchant transactions. We are #1 in events. We are #1 in merchants globally. We took a market from zero Dash adoption to thousands of active wallets. We are doing useful things in the adoption space at a pace no one else approaches.
- We are the only adoption team with a public transaction tracker. We all would like more but these are the best results anyone has gotten. And many transactions still happen wallet-to-wallet, which is not trackable. Given the resources available to us, which have been minimal and irregular, we have created extraordinary and never-before-seen results.
- You say our results are not impressive considering the money "that has been invested into the Latam and Venezuela merchant programs". My team has had no benefit from the well-funded Dash Merchant Venezuela or Dash Venezuela merchant programs for which you were the #1 cheerleader and it now turns out were mostly fake and hype, as evidenced by DiscoverDash reporting a fall from 2,500+ Venezuelan merchants to now 887 (and falling). Dash Colombia/Dash Latam has produced exemplary results on a shoestring budget. Further, we have had irregular funding for the last 6 months, not to mention the fall in the price of Dash.
- "What is the advantage for a customer purchasing DASH to make a purchase?" Colombia’s cheap bitcoin means we can sell BTC for Dash and pass the savings along for a 5% discount across the board. Other advantages include discounts, financial independence, philosophical validation and just plain fun. Soon, Dash Retail will enable us to offer Dash Back, too.
- I do not believe the merchants are only in it for speculation, and since I deal with them direct and you are only speculating from outside Latam, I am taking my data more seriously. But so what if they were? Most of the value of crypto right now is built on speculation. It is a natural part of any market, especially a nascent one. Using speculative value to build real value is where the meat is.
- It is a miracle all on its own that we have not only kept the project going but managed to grow it in this crypto nuclear winter. The self-sustainability plan is on hold. And you will not get the fruits of this work for free anytime soon as we are working to directly support the business models of Dash stakeholders and partners such as miners, MNs and partners.
We are #1 in merchant adoption, so if you shut us down you are also shutting down merchant adoption for Dash. No one else is getting merchants systematically or in meaningful numbers.
You would be shutting down Dash’s most successful and most evidenced consumer adoption efforts.
You would be leaving anywhere from 25% to 90% of Dash’s actively-accepting non-ATM merchants (I am talking globally) without support.
You would also be shutting down DashAid, a charity Dash remittance project just getting off the ground sure to produce wonderful global PR for Dash not to mention sell Dash to new users and move our merchants in Venezuela, thus putting the lie to CoinDesk’s recent article.
It would be the end of the mountain of high quality, high energy video and photos we produce that demonstrates real Dash use in the real world, which supports Dash’s valuation and enables us to debunk those who would FUD us.
You would be closing the door on a dozen alliances in progress with malls and chains of retail businesses in Colombia and Venezuela.
You would be turning your back on 64+ enthusiastic Dash representatives in Latin America (Dash’s primary focus for adoption) I have spent months finding, recruiting and training, a resource you have never before seen.
You would be hamstringing the DashTaxi project, as it needs us to do its pilot. You would be putting into great doubt DashRetail, which will be deploying to our 980 active merchants, enabling them to become points of sale for Dash as well as to sell Dash remittances.
It is not possible to push an off switch for Dash Latam and then come back in a month or 6 months and say, oh, you guys can come back now. Instead of approaching a virgin marketplace for merchants, partners, employees and customers, we would be encountering a hostile one full of questions as to why we abandoned them.
If you want to do that kind of damage to Dash, if you want Dash to be perceived in Latin America as wishy-washy, self-destructive and as an organization that does not keep its commitments, that is your privilege, but I’m not going to keep silent while you destroy a pillar of Dash’s market valuation.
We are building something here in Dash, all of us who are builders, who care about Dash, who care about doing things right, who care about not generating so much fake hype that we provoke negative backlash via CoinDesk articles debunking the hype.
Your personal enmity towards me is not just irrational but misplaced. I did not end DMV, DMV ended themselves. The work of Dash Latam is the solution. It was never the problem.
We have earned your support and request your reconsideration.
You mean Eugenia, Lorenzo, Alejandro and other former Dash Venezuela team members are working with your team?
Happy to answer any other questions you might have.
Serious yet approachable. Hitting the streets, closing deals, expanding his team.
This proposal embodies what attracted me to the Dash DAO-the ability to expand adoption through regional leads.
Keep going George you pump so many of us up!
As for being a team player, I have built the largest team in the DAO. I have worked with other teams, including Dash Core Group. I am interested in working as a team with anyone who treats me as a partner, is civil, has not demonstrated a consistent lack of integrity, does not seek to muzzle my right to free expression, etc.
Standing by and ready for business!
My best wishes to you, Gerhard.