As far as I have seen, Dash isn’t actually “used” anywhere. there are exchanges. and there is volume.
but at places where you can check what people want to trade for personal use, when they can never get KYC, or do not want AML/KYC, you can see real demand:
https://bisq.network is the biggest decentralized exchange – meaning it does not and does not have to collect data from users for US agencies, never has access to your keys – thus can’t censor you or steal your money, which all KYC/AML enabled exchanges could (all other exchanges basically) [“DEX” is now a buzz word that means nothing any more. there are tons of "dex"es that can censor you or own your keys].
Bisq has over 95% of the volume of all decentralized exchanges.
a Venezuelan citizen would, due to US sanctions, never be allowed at Kraken, Gemini or coinbase[avoid coinbase like the plague!]. thus they need an exchange like bisq
bisq offers Dash, zcash, bitcoin and a ton of currency pairs. Dash volume is usually low 100$ or simply 0$ per day. same goes for zcash.
Monero <-> bitcoin has hundreds of thousands per day sometimes. overall millions per month.
that trading pair is 99% of all trading on bisq
why monero? because transactions aren’t public.
Dash is wholly accessible, like bitcoin. it may mix transactions, but how much is on what address, and transaction amount is visible. also Dash runs on masternodes. these masternodes are simply bought by owning a large amount of Dash.
any US (or Chinese/ British /…) agency could simply buy half or more of those nodes by simply buying enough Dash to completely untangle any mixing that is done.
even if they, for whatever reason, were too incompetent, the metadata of who is online with what IP, what address sends money when, and how much money is owned by which address, would be enough to get a good overview of users and maybe even connect them to IPs
nobody I know trusts Dash. at all. same with zcash – which was a straight up deep state / Israeli scam coin from the start.
I do not think Dash is a straight up scam. I had followed it from before it got renamed to Dash. I liked the project. it just completely underestimated the chain analysis tools available nowadays and the seriousness of the threat level some people face.
think about owning crypto in some third world or middle eastern nation that has a ban on its use, or sanctions. these governments may think like the stone age, but they buy surveillance tools from Western governments and brutally spy on every citizen – just like a Western government
Dash is de facto a fork of bitcoin – on an operational level. it does almost all relevant things very much like bitcoin, and adds some privacy.
Monero is a completely new foundation that runs on 2 private keys per address, and never even shows any transaction amount OR address on a public blockchain.
you can’t even see what address holds what amount. since it is all encrypted.
Dash has also consistently lost value over the years, while Monero gained.
just my 2 cents. I still own some Dash. I think it is a fun project. it’s just not used any more by people who actually need privacy, since arguably, if state actors should actually own most masternodes, its privacy is inferior to bitcoin’s, especially with lightning on the way – which is far more private than Dash ever was.
Monero still beats Lightning and bitcoin, though. and I can’t see this change in the coming years. eventually bitcoin may incorporate enough privacy to make Monero something only for businesses and governments to send and receive money anonymously while the normie is fine with btc.
who knows…
in case you’re really into Dash, I didn’t want to start an argument, or piss you off. I genuinely just tried to info dump what I know.
Dash is still worth a lot. if you aren’t fully sold on it, I seriously recommend selling it. especially since alt coins in general – including Monero – will not boom as long as bitcoin is in the “normal” uptrend phase. when it goes totally crazy again – likely if we should hit 60k in November, or 150k next Summer, then Alts may go up.
if I had money and if I could afford putting it into crypto, I’d buy straight bitcoin – as an investment – rather than the (imho more practical) Monero since alts are pretty down now.
but I could be completely wrong. I’m not trading or an expert there. I’m more a fundamentals guy.
there seems to be a conversion of bitcoin maximalists and Monero though… Monero shared bulletproofs with bitcoin afaik, and both teams – at least on the blockstream side – seem to cooperate.
there is also a monthly video podcast that has the main figurehead of Monero AND the CTO of Blockstream on he same show.
Monero will – within a 2 year time span – implement a trustless version of zsnarks (i.e. one that does not require a trusted setup.
just as a tidbit: Monero has had zero knowledge proofs for quite a while: range proofs. (zcash touts that they’re the only big privacy coin with zero knowledge proofs…)