Some things you need to know...

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If you are about to explore Bitcoin, there are a few things you should know. Bitcoin lets you exchange money in a different way than with usual banks. As such, you should take time to inform yourself before using Bitcoin for any serious transaction. Bitcoin should be treated with the same care as your regular wallet, or even more in some cases!

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Securing your wallet

Like in real life, your wallet must be secured. Bitcoin makes it possible to transfer value anywhere in a very easy way and it allows you to be in control of your money. Such great features also come with great security concerns. At the same time, Bitcoin can provide very high levels of security if used correctly. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your money. Read more about securing your wallet.

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Bitcoin price is volatile

The price of a bitcoin can unpredictably increase or decrease over a short period of time due to its young economy, novel nature, and sometimes illiquid markets. Consequently, keeping your savings with Bitcoin is not recommended at this point. Bitcoin should be seen like a high risk asset, and you should never store money that you cannot afford to lose with Bitcoin. If you receive payments with Bitcoin, many service providers can convert them to your local currency.

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Bitcoin payments are irreversible

Any transaction issued with Bitcoin cannot be reversed, they can only be refunded by the person receiving the funds. That means you should take care to do business with people and organizations you know and trust, or who have an established reputation. For their part, businesses need to keep control of the payment requests they are displaying to their customers. Bitcoin can detect typos and usually won't let you send money to an invalid address by mistake. Additional services might exist in the future to provide more choice and protection for the consumer.

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Bitcoin is not anonymous

Some effort is required to protect your privacy with Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the network, which means anyone can see the balance and transactions of any Bitcoin address. However, the identity of the user behind an address remains unknown until information is revealed during a purchase or in other circumstances. This is one reason why Bitcoin addresses should only be used once. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your privacy. Read more about protecting your privacy.

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Unconfirmed transactions aren't secure

Transactions don't start out as irreversible. Instead, they get a confirmation score that indicates how hard it is to reverse them (see table). Each confirmation takes between a few seconds and 90 minutes, with 10 minutes being the average. If the transaction pays too low a fee or is otherwise atypical, getting the first confirmation can take much longer.

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Bitcoin is still experimental

Bitcoin is an experimental new currency that is in active development. Each improvement makes Bitcoin more appealing but also reveals new challenges as Bitcoin adoption grows. During these growing pains you might encounter increased fees, slower confirmations, or even more severe issues. Be prepared for problems and consult a technical expert before making any major investments, but keep in mind that nobody can predict Bitcoin's future.

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Government taxes and regulations

Bitcoin is not an official currency. That said, most jurisdictions still require you to pay income, sales, payroll, and capital gains taxes on anything that has value, including bitcoins. It is your responsibility to ensure that you adhere to tax and other legal or regulatory mandates issued by your government and/or local municipalities.

Some things you need to know...

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Dash (DASH) is an open sourced, privacy-centric digital currency with instant transactions.

It allows you to keep your finances private as you make transactions without waits, similar to cash.

It was previously called Darkcoin (DRK).

Low Fees

With Dash fees are much lower than banks or credit cards; often even there is no fee – you don’t get charged a lot to use your own money and you can send micro-payments anywhere in the world.

Instant Payments

While fast relative to bank transfers, Bitcoin and most other digital currencies take a significant amount of time to confirm transactions on their network. In the case of Bitcoin, it takes an average of 10 minutes to confirm a transaction and many merchants require 5-6 confirmations before considering the transaction complete. While this 50-60 minute transaction time may be acceptable for making payments online (where goods may not be shipped for hours), this makes nearly all digital currencies impractical for things like face-to-face or in-store purchases and could limit their potential. The developers of Dash created a unique, decentralized technology called InstantX that guarantees and confirms payments in around four seconds. That’s right—you can send money to any place in the world in only a few seconds!

Extended Privacy

Crypto-currencies use a public ledger where anyone can verify transactions as they happen. The public ledger concept is really important – the confidence, people have in the system, comes from the fact that everybody on the network acts as an auditor to verify that the system is working correctly..

Digital currencies like Bitcoin, people send and receive money using “public keys” or “addresses”. These addresses consist of a string of characters and look like this:

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XrEgRgW6JkrsY38QGV65rZmKBRZ7KSRktv

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While users don’t use their name (this is called a pseudonymous system), over time many vendors, exchanges, services, and individuals that users transact with can attach your personal information to your address. Once your identity has been associated with your address, that valuable information can be used to track your income, spending, and other transaction activities, or even sold to others such as marketers, criminals, tax authorities, law enforcement, or even snooping relatives. If you send money to anyone, that person or entity can associate you with your entire transaction history.

Dash views financial privacy as a fundamental right. Therefore, Dash created an option for users to make transactions with true privacy, so that nobody could ever associate a person’s identity with a particular address or transaction. With Dash, users have the ability to keep all their transactions private.

Two-Tier Network

Dash is the first crypto-currency to introduce the concept of “masternodes.” These are servers connected to the Dash network that are “always on,” secure, and capable of delivering numerous services to the network. Today, these servers are used to enable the privacy features and instant transactions we’ve already discussed. In the future, they can be used to introduce new services to the network that other crypto-currencies are unable to deliver. This two-tier network also ensures that Dash remains a very robust system with that provides a high level of service to its users.