The Novelty of DASH (over $200 now!)

For those new to crypto, let me just tell you that Dash is the cryptocurrency that everyone has dreamed of. For you OG crypto dawgs, Dash was the infamous "Darkcoin" with its anonymous transaction feature "Private Send".

Many people ask me what are my top 3 cryptocurrencies, and lately my response is consistently, "DASH! and then Steem and BitShares." I used to also be a huge fan of Gridcoin, and I still am.

What makes DASH awesome...

1. INSTANTLY SETTLED, GUARANTEED. Let that sink in for a second: Instantly Settled. GUARANTEED. Dash is the only currency on the planet with this trait. There's also PIVX, and that is more-or-less a rebranded clone of Dash.
2. Instant Send - this is the feature which makes your payments guaranteed to settle. Basically, the payment is guaranteed to get into the next 15 blocks. The current price for Instant Send transactions is 0.001 DASH for each "input script" of the transaction. This equates to about 20¢ (USD) today. I once had @CharlieShrem pay me with a Bitcoin fee of 0.01 (over $10 at the time) and not even that high of a fee guaranteed that the transaction would make it into a block. The transaction sat on the block chain and was forgotten after nearly 72 hours.
3. Private Send - this mixing ensures that the origination of the coins you will later spend is impossible to determine. This is excellent privacy for those who think people are out to get them.
4. Master Nodes - the leader(s) of Dash (Evan Duffield) made the observation that the network "Miners" should not have a say in everything that happens with the network. Master Nodes do not secure the block chain, per se, rather they perform different work than the Miners such as voting for treasury budgets, instant send verification, private send mixing, etc.
5. Treasury Budget Proposals - normal people can post to the blockchain stating how they propose to make Dash better. Master Node Owners then vote for which proposals they approve, and upon approval, the proposal author gets paid in Dash. Isn't that freaking cool?? Imagine: we humans have become contractors, and our employee is the Dash blockchain!
6. The network currently has an $18 MILLION budget for the year!!! What cryptocurrency developers, marketers, etc. have a budget of even $1 million? Basically, DASH's ecosystem can spend $18 MILLION on adoption for the next 12 months. Let that sink in... that's huge...

What about the instant pre-mine?

People who are smart enough to known about an instant pre-mine are also smart enough to realize that even Bitcoin had this problem: Satoshi Nakamoto potentially holds an insane amount of Bitcoin. However, that never stopped Bitcoin from having the largest market cap. The "pre-mine" is no different, as the currency ultimately becomes more and more distributed to individuals.

Basic Calculations on Price -- Why Dash is undervalued today

Here is a breakdown of my estimate for the future Dash price. All $ amounts are US Dollar.

1. Let's start at $200 per DASH, with a circulating monetary unit supply of about 7,300,000 units.
2. Considering that there are nearly 4500 Master Nodes today (1000 DASH per Master Node), this means that 4,500,000 DASH units are actually NOT in circulation at the moment. Master Node owners must put up 1000 DASH to show that they're serious about being master node operators.
3. Using Bitcoin as a comparison, let's determine the ratio of how many Bitcoin units are available per Dash unit in circulation. Bitcoin's current circulation is about 16,000,000 ... this is assuming that about 400,000 bitcoin have been lost or burned. This is accounted for--instead of it being accounted for with DASH--simply because bitcoin has been around for many more years where people likely did not take wallet backups seriously.
4. So the "supply ratio" of bitcoin-to-dash is 16,000,000 / 4,500,000 = 3.55 (roughly).
5. Using this "supply ratio", you can determine what the price of Dash should be given that it has an ecosystem as strong as the Bitcoin ecosystem. To figure this out, take the price of bitcoin and multiply it by the supply ratio, and you get the adjusted price of dash--given that they have a comparable significance in the cryptocurrency community. This yields $2618 * 3.55 = $9,300 per DASH, approximately.

$9,300 / DASH. Nice. So this is the price when Dash has been "normalized" to Bitcoin. I stand to be corrected on my methods; however, I'd like to admit that I have used this type of simple math with great success in picking successful cryptocurrencies. Of course, it's also a gamble as to whether the developers will stick around. For example: Coinye Coin. Kanye West was pretty pissed off about that :)

Edit: a friend has brought it to my attention that I am missing a crucial factor in this calculation. Doh! I was wondering why $9,300 / DASH looked awkward. I'll have to update this as soon as I have more time. Basically, you must include both currencies' market cap. I love math, and I want to work this out because now I realize the formula can be simplified. Stay tuned!

Summary

Should Dash surpass bitcoin today for its actual ecosystem use--rather than speculative trading--you can expect the price to be over $9,300 / DASH. You can also use the market cap numbers to model the future price depending on the performance of the crypto's ecosystem. THE ECOSYSTEM IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT, and we all know that Dash has the marketing funds to make this happen. As a currency, Dash is the product that the industry is screaming for. Now, Dash's treasury budget of $18 million per year will need to outperform the first-to-market advantage of Bitcoin and the all-hype-no-product-first-to-market of Ethereum.

I write this to inspire you all to give Dash your consideration as a currency--as a store of value and a tool to use in business.

References:

Dash Vote Tracker
https://dashvotetracker.com/

Coin Market Cap
http://coinmarketcap.com/

Wall of Coins example treasury budget proposal:
https://www.dashcentral.org/p/bsdev-wocoins-201611

Coin Telegraph - Always has the best illustrations :)
https://cointelegraph.com