Bitcoin Vs. Dash: Which is a Better Investment?

Anyone following bitcoin is well aware of the recent downturn in bitcoin price, wherein more than $6,000 in coin value was lost in the span of a month. In light of this unsettling fluctuation, investors are wondering if there are alternatives to bitcoin investment that may make more sense in the long run.  In the last year, many of bitcoin's would-be competitors have stolen market share from bitcoin, with the trend unlikely to change in 2018.

As part of a continuing series, we will compare bitcoin with the coins that are seeking to displace bitcoin as king of the hill. In this article, we will be looking at Dash.

A fork of Litecoin (making it a fork of bitcoin), Dash, formerly known as XCoin and Darkcoin, adds to Litecoin by:

• Pre-mining 1.9 million coins, which were used to fuel early exchange trading and build interest.
• Differentiating tiers of the node network between the miner tier and the Masternode tier (which, in exchange for holding 1,000 DASH in collateral, performs governance functions such as InstantSend/PrivateSend vetting on behalf of the rest of the network)
• Allowing for near-instant transactions (InstantSend) that are verified via Masternode network consensus and not block confirmations.
• Allowing for private transactions (PrivateSend), where the mixing of coin denominations from multiple nodes make transactions nearly impossible to trace in the blockchain record.
• Diverting ten percent of the block reward to a "treasury system", which pays for Dash-related projects and improvements, and pays contractors and employees.

While trailing behind Monero - another privacy-minded altcoin - and other bitcoin-clones like Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, Dash's self-funding and governance structure are giving off the appearances of a mature, sustainable altcoin. 

Tales of the Tape (as of January 28, 2018)

	Bitcoin	Dash
Purpose of   coin	Proof-of-concept   for altcoin model; digital currency	Digital   currency
Governance	Decentralized; overseen by not-for-profit foundation; decisions determined by a democratic vote among nodes and miners	Decentralized; the right to vote on proposals vested to "Masternodes".
Number of   coins	21 million; 16.83 million mined	Approximately   21.3 million currently, although the top limit can be lowered if the hashrate of the Dash network lowers the mining reward; 7,846,414 mined
Market   capitalization (as of January 28, 2018)	$198.37   billion	$6.26 billion
Obstacles to success	Changes notoriously difficult to achieve; slow transaction times; high transaction fees	Crowded market for bitcoin-clones
Transaction time (average)	1,570 minutes (one day, two hours, and ten minutes); seven-days high: 11,453 minutes (seven   days, 22 hours, 53 minutes); current transaction fee: $9.82; transactions expedited by paying miners	About two seconds using InstantSend; average Dash transaction fee: $1.24
Reason for success	As the first altcoin, there is a sense that bitcoin must succeed for the industry to succeed. With many of bitcoin's "imitators" coins being tied to bitcoin in an irrevocable way, there is a "we all succeed or we all fail" mentality currently in place.	The governance and funding structure makes improvements and capital development a   simple matter.

Understanding DASH

Dash is a young platform. As such, it is difficult to say how it would honestly compare to bitcoin. However, considering that Dash is faster, cheaper, more secure, and better managed than bitcoin, it is worth considering as an investment.

This investment appears even more reasonable if you consider that, in 2017, Dash's price grew 12,199 percent - more than Ethereum, bitcoin, or Litecoin. This has led some to predict that Dash may see $1,750 in 2018 and over $5,000 by 2023.

While Dash is still a young gun in the altcoin world, its predecessor coins have actually been around for a while. This has given the team an understanding of what to avoid and the pitfalls that may exist. With a staff of 30 full-time employees and 20 part-time employees, Dash's built-in self-funding allows it to avoid conflicts-of-interest other altcoins might walk into due to donations, for example. In the long run, it may be these small distinctions that help Dash to stand out and pull ahead of at least some of the pack.

Want to learn how to diversify your altcoin portfolio wisely? Read Bitcoin Market Journal and learn to invest like a pro!