The Truth about CoinDesk’s 2 Dash Merchants

In an August 14th article, CoinDesk alleged that Dash isn’t really that popular in Venezuela, and built its (rather flimsy) case on 2 merchants who reported less than positive experiences with Dash.

Since Dash Latam is the leader in merchant adoption in Venezuela for Dash at this time, we decided to look into this.

Chiringuitos

For example, Fabiana Arreaza, owner of the startup Chiringuitos, told CoinDesk that customers rarely use the crypto payments option. “We’ve been accepting dash for two years. We currently haven’t received any clients using dash to pay for their events. They’d rather use bolivares or dollars,” she said. (source: Coindesk)

Chiringuitos is a mobile business which sells smoothies, cocktails and snacks at private and corporate events. Chiringuitos was present at many of Dash Venezuela’s events from January of 2018 onwards and presumably benefitted from them. Chiringuitos announced its temporary closing on Sep 3 2018, more than a year ago.

For Chiringuitos to say they have never received any payments with Dash would appear to contradict the known facts. Further, given that they stopped operations 1 year ago, one wonders how they could be receiving payments of any kind, much less Dash payments.

Is it really an accurate representation of Dash in Venezuela today to use as one of your two examples a merchant that has been inactive for a year and whose words today contradict evidence that is publicly available?

Peruse Chiringuitos’ Instagram for primary sources.

Los Costilla

Los Costilla, a popular, dash-friendly restaurant, is one example. A representative told CoinDesk they haven’t accepted any type of cryptocurrency for over a year. “The photo was taken over a year ago, when we did accept the payments with the cryptocurrency. Since then we haven’t accepted dash. We don’t accept any kind of bitcoin,” said the restaurant. (source: Coindesk)

First off, I am unable to find any search results for site:discoverdash.com Los Costilla. Further, I have a copy of discoverdash.com from March or April of 2019 when the number of Venezuela merchants was represented as around 2,200, and there is no listing for “Los Costilla”. Therefore, I see no evidence that we were claiming that Los Costilla accepted Dash anywhere near the time of publication of the CoinDesk article, which was Aug 14 2019.

A member of the Dash Latam visited Los Costilla after publication of the CoinDesk article and found no indication of Dash acceptance besides an old sticker. When asked if they could pay with Dash, the staff was not receptive. In the Los Costilla Instagram, there are 600 publications, but none of them mention Dash.

There is no evidence that we in Dash have ever represented it as accepting Dash. If they did once accept Dash, there is no evidence they made any attempt to announce this fact to the public. For CoinDesk to represent Los Costilla as “dash-friendly” strains credulity. Where did CoinDesk even find this restaurant? Is it fair in any sense of the word to judge us based on a merchant even we do not claim as accepting Dash? How can anyone expect for a business to get Dash-paying customers if they never tell anyone about it?

Conclusion

CoinDesk picked what may be the two most ridiculous examples of Dash-accepting merchants. The first, Chiringuitos, is documented as accepting Dash but having gone out of business more than a year ago. Los Costilla we have not represented as a Dash-accepting merchant for some time, if ever.

If CoinDesk would like to do a real investigation or just spend some Dash for fun, there are at least 282 recently-verified Dash-accepting merchants in Venezuela and we would be glad to provide the detailed list at any time. Write me at [email protected].

Particular thanks to Richard Jerez, Dash Latam’s Caracas coordinator, for his assistance with the research and writing of this report. This report made possible by the Dash Latam proposal.