Crypto Academy Week 16 - Homework Post for @levycore – Exploring The DASH Privacy Coin

Hello everyone! This is me @attiyasghar going to share my home work post that was given by the respected professor @levycore. I hope you will like it, Let's start with the introduction.

Cryptocurrency was introduced to us long ago and Bitcoin served as a replacement of the government dominated monetary system like physical money and currencies. But people with proper knowledge of these assets and blockchain method still are afraid of the fact that these digital currencies still require a lot of privacy features to protect the users who are using it from a place where the use of cryptocurrencies is not allowed or prohibited and a public blockchain like Bitcoin itself offers less privacy than any other currency because anyone capable of doing chained analysis can discover the identity from a usual address.

An Introduction to Privacy Coins

Privacy Coins are a type of digital currency that runs on a more secure and private blockchain, it becomes unknown or anonymous by hiding its source and its destination. Private coins hide the information of transactions or conceal the real wallet balance of a user to skip the usual “chain analysis” whereas cryptocurrencies like bitcoin follow chain analysis which can reveal the transaction information and wallet balance and through that uncovering someone’s personal identity will be really easy.

Merits and Demerits of Privacy Coins

1. Merits

▪ Privacy Coins offer a very high level of protection.
▪ Privacy Coins serves as a protector for every user.
▪ People connected to Privacy coins or using them enjoy full rights on every transaction carried out by them.
▪ Both the parties involved in the transaction receive each and every information throughout.
▪ Exchange of Privacy Coins is really easy nowadays because there are a lot of popular Privacy Coins with huge market
capitalization.

2. Demerits

▪ Privacy Coins doesn’t offer transparency, the transactions are secure but cannot be tracked because of which
people think twice before making transactions.
▪ Privacy Coins because of its anonymity and untraceable characteristic, is not recommended by various
cryptocurrency platforms and government.
▪ It is difficult for the government to calculate various tax amounts and identify them.
▪ Privacy Coins may be hacked and used by hackers to utilize and manipulate cryptocurrency.

Q1. Choose a Privacy Coin and perform a fundamental analysis of the coin in detail?

DASH COIN
For this assignment, I chose a Privacy Coin which is commonly known as DASH Coin, let’s talk about DASH Coins briefly.

Dash was first created in 2014 by using and making similar Bitcoin code. At that time, it was called Xcoin. It was later changed to Dark Coin because of its connection to the dark web. After some time, it finally landed on a name called DASH coin.
Dash Coins serves as a decentralized autonomous organization which offers a coin consisting very unique features like privacy, speed and security which any other cryptocurrency like Bitcoin lacks. Where Digital currencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin which offers trading mediums or acts as a platform launcher, Dash directly acts as an actual payment method.

Dash Coin offers various features like:
● It can handle a lot of transactions in a very short period of time.
● You can privately send with Dash Coin which removes the chance of someone tracking your identity through public address.
● Dash Coin is not only living in the present but also preparing itself for the future by raising funds for itself in order to have development in the future.

Let us now learn how to acquire Dash Coins:

There are two ways through which we can acquire Dash Coins, let us talk about them briefly.

1. Buying: The simplest way to acquire Dash Coins is to buy them. You can purchase Dash Coins from various exchange sites, wallets and platforms, some of them are BITFINEX, BINANCE, HITBTC, BITIFINEX and many other.

2. Mining: You can also acquire Dash Coins by Mining them using a strong computer. You can provide security to the network and also perform other jobs like writing the transactions of the blockchain for which you will earn Dash Coins at a fair value, having a strong computer with good hardware is important for better performance.

Performing a fundamental analysis of Dash Coin

What is fundamental analysis?
Fundamental analysis can be defined as the method to calculate the value of an asset by examining its financial as well as its economic factors. The final objective of performing fundamental analysis is to see the current value of a security. Performing fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies helps us to know whether an asset is undervalued or overvalued at that particular time. Now, I will be doing a fundamental analysis of Dash Coin as of June 4, 2021.

The picture above shows the following information:

1. Ranking: As of now Dash Coin is at Rank 53 which tells us that it has become famous and is in great demand.
2. Price: The current price of Dash Coin is at $187.70 USD which is very good and better than any of the other Privacy Coins in the market.
3. Market Cap: Despite being a Private Coin, Dash Coin has a very high Market Cap which is the total market value of the cryptocurrency's circulating supply. Current Market Cap of Dash Coin is $1,918,222,771 USD.
4. Diluted Market Cap: Diluted Market Cap shows us the full market cap if the supply in circulation was at its maximum. Dash Coin has a diluted market cap of $3,573,040,361 USD.
5. Volume: The current Volume of Dash Coin is $585,270,066 USD which is also pretty high compared to other cryptocurrencies.
6. Circulating Supply: The supply in circulation means the number of coins that are being circulated in the market plus the number of coins the general public has. Dash Coin has a circulating supply of 10,166,168.90 DASH in the market.

Some other important factors:

We just performed a fundamental analysis on Dash Coin which showed us its various capacities and position, now let us move on to some other features of Dash Coin which are:

● Having a website is very important nowadays to compete with all other forces present in the market. Dash Coin is way ahead in this by having not one but two of their own websites. The first one is for the wallet source and other given explanations while the second one provides updates about Dash Coin.
● Dash Coin also provides a messenger service where we can chat and clear out all the doubts and queries. Discord is one of its famous Chatting Platform through which we can connect with other people on the server.
● You can also find Dash Coin on various community sites like Twitter, Reddit and Bitcoin Talk where it directly aims at increasing its followers and therefore its worth.

Q2. Describe the steps in creating a wallet for the Privacy Coin of your choice?

I have chosen Dash Coin as my Privacy Coin and now I will show you the steps to create a Dash Wallet through mobile application:

To create a Dash Wallet from the mobile app, I first have to visit the website of Dash Coin. As I enter the site of Dash Coin, I see a very attractive welcome page, I scroll down to find the link to download the mobile application of Dash Coin.

I now see an option called “Get the app”. I click on that and I am redirected to the download page.

As you can see, I have two options available for Download. I click on “For Android” as I use an android phone but you can click on the type of phone you use. I then click on “Google Play Download” and I am redirected to Google Play Store.

On Play Store I see the Dash Wallet mobile application, I click on “Install” to install the application right away.

After the app gets downloaded, I see the “Open” option, I click on it to open the mobile application.

On opening the application, I see a welcome page. I swipe left to continue.

Now I can see the “Create a New Wallet” option which is why I downloaded the app; I click on that option now.

Security is one of the most important factors of Dash Coin and before creating my wallet, I have to set up a 4-digit pin in order to secure my wallet and continue.

After setting up my pin I have to secure my wallet, to do that I click on “Secure Now”

Clicking on “Secure Now” will take me to another important page, after reading it I click on “Show Recovery Phrase” to move ahead.

After clicking on “Show Recovery Phrase” some words in a particular pattern will appear on my screen, I have to note them down and in case of emergency or in case if I am somehow logged out of my wallet or if I forget the pin of my wallet, I have to enter these words in the same order to get back into my account. A very smart way to secure the wallet. After writing it down I click on “I wrote it down” to continue.

Now I have successfully created my own Dash Coin Wallet. Here I can see different options like Scan to Pay, Send to Address, Buy/Sell Dash and Receive. All these options are very easy to understand and very useful in order to perform various activities related to Dash.

Those were the steps that are required to create a Dash Coin Wallet through mobile application.

Q3. Explain the reason you chose the Privacy Coin. (State the advantages and disadvantages)

The reason why I chose Dash Coin as my Privacy Coin:

It is because Dash Coin offers a privacy that no other cryptocurrency in the market does. Dash Coin is better than any other privacy coin available in the market because of its various offered features like instant transfer and private transfer and only because of that Dash Coin is at Rank 53 in the market which is a very big thing for a privacy coin. Dash Coin also serves a position of being under the top 10 privacy coins in the world. Because of its tolerance to high transaction volumes, it is currently in great demand and it is constructing a strong position in the market. Dash Coin has two of their own websites for customer satisfaction and it provides various other services like online chatting, community services and is also socially active. All these features of Dash Coin only tell us one thing which is that Dash Coin is not something which can be taken lightly but something which is going to acquire a big portion of the market in the coming future.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Dash coin are:

Advantages:
● One of the biggest advantages of Dash Coin is the feature called Instant send which allows the user to have very fast and quick transfer.
● Having the strongest privacy feature which allows you to perform all the transactions without leaving a trace on the blockchain.
● Having a Market Cap of over 1 billion USD.
● Raising Funds for future development through Decentralized Governance (DGBB) feature.

Disadvantages:

● Dash coin because of its anonymous transaction system, is not used by many users because they get afraid of being manipulated or hacked.
● Dash Coin has an untraceable feature, because of which many hackers make money through illegal ways without getting caught.
● Criminals get attracted to Dash Coin because transactions are not recorded into the blockchain system.

CONCLUSION

In the end, I would like to conclude my assignment by saying that Dash Coin is one of the biggest names you can find in the list of Privacy Coins. The structure of the coin is built up with untraceable and works anonymously meaning that the transactions that are happening cannot be traced by other users except for the sender and receiver. This feature of Dash Coin makes the transactions completely anonymous and unlike bitcoin no one can track your real identity from your public address. It has a number of features which can send money very quickly and can also perform transactions that will not be included in the blockchain system. It is raising funds for itself for future projects and development through Decentralized Governance system. It is a bit dangerous because hackers get attracted to Dash Coin because of its anonymity feature and untraceable records. Despite all this, Dash Coin is still a very safe and secure platform providing privacy to people who don’t want others to find out about their transactions. I am glad that I was a part of this lecture and for sure I thank my professor for introducing me to Privacy Coin.