Digital Currency Exchange Kraken Adds Support for Dash Trading

Cryptocurrency exchange platform Kraken has announced support for Dash, the fifth most valuable digital currency with a market capitalization of US$479 million. Dash, one of the fastest growing peer-to-peer networks, is now available on the Kraken platform for trading against USD, BTC and EUR, with margin trading “possibly coming soon.”

The price of Dash and trading volume has experienced a huge surge in recent months, rising from 15 USD/DASH in early February to reach an all-time-high of around 114 USD/DASH on March 18 – a 660% increase. DASH is trading at around 66 USD at the time of writing.

Introduced in 2014 as Darkcoin, Dash is an open source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that offers both private and instant payments. The Dash protocol is self-funded and self-governed, meaning that the Dash network funds its own development and anyone can present their idea to the network. Dash’s coin supply is limited to 22 million, with the current available supply at around 7.22 million.

“We have high expectations for the partnership going forward,” said Daniel Diaz, Dash’s VP of business development. “This is a significant achievement for Dash because our ecosystem needs high quality and trustworthy exchanges like Kraken to thrive, and we know they will play an important role as a fiat gateway.”

Kraken, a prominent digital currency exchange launched in 2011, operates in Canada, Japan, the US and the EU, and is the world’s largest bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity.

In early 2016, Kraken began acquiring other bitcoin businesses which has allowed the company to expand rapidly. These acquisitions include North American bitcoin exchanges Coinsetter and Cavirtex, Dutch exchange CleverCoin, as well as American award-winning wallet funding service Glidera. In March, Kraken acquired popular charting and trading platform Cryptowatch and announced the imminent release of an upgraded trading interface.

“Kraken is an incredibly well established and well structured organization, and amongst the best in the exchange business. In terms of reputation, they represent the highest standard for client satisfaction,” Diaz said.

The announcement comes as Dash is working to release a major software upgrade called Evolution, which promises greater speed and convenience. Intended to compete against the likes of PayPal and Venmo, Evolution will offer near-free merchant fees, instant transactions, a rich online banking-like interface, and will come with interest bearing accounts as well as an integrated marketplace.

Consumers will be able to connect directly with merchants to make purchases and will be able to rate their purchases. Every merchant that integrates Dash will be searchable on the blockchain.

An alpha version of Evolution will be released toward the end of the year.