I've been reading the
Evolution docs docs (in the park). Just started.
Having lived and worked through the eightees computer revolution I think I can save people a lot of time and effort in dissimilating Dash and Bitcoin.
Dash is Apple and Bitcoin is Microsoft. That will be the story from now on and the playout will be the same.
Apple had control of the software and hardware which meant that they could move faster than anyone else. They used this "total control" to build an ideal computing environment.
Meanwhile, IBM and microsoft played the "bitcoin game": Everyone was allowed to participate in the economy. Motherboards by X. IBM received a royalty on "X" while allowing everyone else to make them. Microsoft changed "PC-DOS" to "MS-DOS" and became the biggest tech company ever. cryptowas contracted out. Technology accounted for nothing. Adoption counted for everything..
Apple did not allow anyone to make anything Apple compatible. Just as Dash does not contract out its anonymisation technology. Dash masternodes only work on the Dash network. They don't work on any other network.
NOTE: Commercial priorities - Adoption vs Development. Dash think’s it’s garnering adoption through development but which may be true to some extent. But Bitcoin is garnering far more adoption through marketing, just as Microsoft did. Meanwhile Dash is setting the precedent for the industry. Just as Apple did.
That is the challenge for Dash. People do not buy technology, they buy need.
Right now, bitcoin is at the front door of "need" as far as crypto currencies go.
Apple Computer had a GUI operating system a full 10 years ahead of Microsoft. Think about that - it's a massive lead. They also had desktop publishing, native networking (Appletalk) and Fonts.
But Microsoft and IBM between them created an economy, because everyone could get a "piece of the action" - hardware manufacturers, software builders, alternate OS's like Linux, Mick Jagger, you name it. So the PC economy grew far larger despite the fact that Apple was leading the way the whole time. It was a kind of uneasy, competitive come co-operative relationship between the two technologies that ultimately was to prove very productive for both.
Now lets turn to Dash and bitcoin.
Dash has created a second tier. It is not a literal tier - only a logic tier which is important to emphasise. However this tier is not a third party commercial tier as far as protocol goes. It is totally integrated with the Dash network protocol in the same way that Apple hardware was integrated with Apple software. This is going to give Dash a huge advantage technologically because it controls both tiers. The bitcoin economy will require all the same features that Dash has - and will get them. It's just that the secondary tier will be supported by third parties and technologies such as Etherium blockchain apps, stock market ETF's, Coinbase, Sidechains etc. The resulting bitcoin economy will be huge for the same reason that the IBM/Microsoft economy was huge - i.e. loads of people can have a piece of the pie.
But it will also be ugly.
And thats the catch for investors. Both options are attractive for different reasons. When I read the Dash Evolution docs I suddenly encountered myself from 30 years ago: using an advanced technology that was about to not do justice to itself commercially.
Why ?...because it retained control of its own ecosystem, thereby leaving the field bare for others. Dash is showing the way. But only symbolically and on a prototype basis. The industrial equivalent of masternodes will have the entire crypto world running a commercially diverse second tier against a commercially diverse tier of
store of value assets. How that economic model plays out is as yet ambiguous. Whats for sure is that all crypto assets will find a role - no one will dominate that business model.
Where Apple was back then is where Dash is now: in control of a symbolic equivalent of what the world-wide market is about to become.
The bitcoin economy will acquire the equivalent of masternodes, decentralised voting, anonymity, scaleability and everything that Dash has. It just won't develop it as a single technological unit. If you want privacy you'll buy through an ETF who will keep your contracts private for you. If you want scaleability you'll use payment channels which will end up being owned by Visa. If you want decentralised voting - forget it. There's no way an economy that size is going to leave policy to "the people".
Regarding the Apple/Microsoft legacy, the question for Dash investors is:
How does this technological precedent apply to money ?
There are two answers to that: [1] a technological one. [2] - a financial one
A. TechnologyTo answer the technological one is easy. Bitcoin has already thrown in the towel on protocol development. Technologically it is parked and all future services will be taken up by third party support services such as Etherium apps, stock market ETF's (Winklevoss twins), banks using bitcoin as capital assets and proprietary payment channels that use the bitcion blockchain as simply a 'clearing' layer. In other words, Bitcoin is not going to fulfill Satoshi's vision - a store of value that could also function as a currency. Monetarily, the banks will turn it into what CDO's are: a capital asset that backs other capital assets that ultimately back fiat currency.
B. CapitalThe question of Dash as a capital investment is far more open. Lets calculate Dash's marketcap as a proportion of bitcoin's.
Ask yourself this. If you really think Satoshi's vision of a fully integrated, self contained monetary medium is worth preserving, which approach does more justice to it ?
[1] - SIDECHAINS: a coder's Frankensteinian boilerplate that has no historical precedence in monetary history which requires you to "bake" your bitcoin for a day or two to in order to "hide" it, thereby turning the "ghost" bitcoin market into a premium version of the original and thus destroying all pretences to fungibility that bitcoin ever had.
[2] - ETF's: the paper gold version of bitcoin
[3] - PAYMENT CHANNELS: Do you really think that the last 30 years of research into cryptography a la
David Chaum were busting their a'ss's just so that their discovery could be proxied ?
No. They weren't. What those people were looking for was an electronic asset that could be traded DIRECTLY.
The only two people I've ever seen in this entire field who've understood that principle implicitly and that don't appear to be scared of censorship are Evan Duffield and Andreas Antonopolis. Notably, they are also two people who have never aligned themselves with any particular approach. That tells you all you need to know.
In all the time I've been observing this industry, I've never seen Evan make one single adverse remark towards an industry peer. The same with Antonopolis. He is tireless in his ability to articulate the philosophy of monetary integrity as Evan is tireless in his pursuit of monetary fidelity.
The test is whether it gets adopted.
Dash's precedent is Apple. Bitcoin's is Microsoft. Take your pick. I've already seen how this plays out got the T-Shirt, picked my side except this time I suspect it's going to be played out a lot faster , if for no other reason than it has the space to itself.
Sources:
Dash Paper:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IZYs5C6CmJyC4MqY_2P_WnPcxaea6yy6cFkorkStDBM/editMS Cap:
https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/market_capApple CAP:
https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/market_capHistory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.
History:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/history#T1=era0
LOL. Anyway, love the new wallet layout and utilities, this is going to be truly awesome! 
