A recent tweet from Dash’s official Twitter account has sparked criticism that the cryptocurrency, which once touted its privacy features, is withering in the face of possible government scrutiny.
On January 1, the US-based Bittrex exchange announced in a tweet that it would delist Monero, Zcash and Dash:
#Bittrex customers:
The $ XMR, $ ZEC, and $ DASH markets will be removed on Friday, January 15th at 23:00 UTC.
Details: https://t.co/8qAdjuwryJ
– Bittrex (@BittrexExchange) January 1, 2021
The delistings follow a similar announcement made December 29 last week that Bittrex would delist XRP following an SEC lawsuit against Ripple, leading to speculation that the exchange was preemptively delisting the privacy tokens in anticipation of broader government action.
In response, Dash tweeted that they “reached out to @BittrexExchange to request a meeting” and that it is a misnomer to refer to DASH as a “privacy coin”:
From a technical point of view, Dash’s data protection functionality is no greater than Bitcoin’s, which is why the term “data protection coin” for Dash is a misnomer. We reached out to @BittrexExchange to request a meeting with the compliance team. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. https://t.co/QA66OoshPn
– Dash (@Dashpay) January 1, 2021
It was not until 2017 that archived screenshots from the Dash Foundation website advertise DASH as “the world’s first data protection-oriented cryptocurrency”. The current Dash Foundation website now states that DASH is “the leading cryptocurrency for payments”.
In a recent tweet about DashPay CEO’s delisting, Ryan Taylor also minimized the currency’s privacy features:
10 / Dash’s PrivateSend feature is simply a branded implementation of CoinJoin with no depot. Don’t take my word for it … industry leading experts like Chainalysis and Perkins Coie agree.
– Ryan Taylor (@ RTaylor05) Jan. 2, 2021
While the apparent U-turn on Twitter has sparked ridicule and criticism, proponents have noted that Dash released guidelines on cryptocurrency’s privacy features in August. On a blog on the Dash official website, Taylor wrote that “regulators are concerned that exchanges may not be able to comply with KYC / AML regulations when handling coins with privacy features” because DASH “is often on lists of coins with privacy improvements. ”
However, Taylor wrote that Dash largely managed to convince exchanges and regulators that Dash is not a privacy coin.
“Through an educational process, we effectively explained the technology and convinced regulators that adopting Dash was not an additional risk compared to Bitcoin.”
The explanation of the main focus of Dash follows an announced upgrade from Dash to the testnet phase, an upgrade that includes DashPay, a “Social Crypto Payment Wallet”. DASH is down 3% on the day to $ 87.71.
