Visiting DIMCOIN in South Africa (#Go2DIM Roundup)

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not provide financial or investment advice. The reader is aware that there are special risks involved in dealing with blockchain and cryptocurrency assets.
Additional disclaimer: I am involved with DIMCOIN as a promoter. The following is my personal view and not an official communication by DIMCOIN.

As a participant in the cryptosphere you rarely get the opportunity to visit a projects headquarters and get a thorough, personal introduction to the progress of the project. DIMCOIN invited four of their investors/promoters/ambassadors over to their back offices in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the following article I will summarize the experience and give you some insights into the current developments that happen within the DIMCOIN ecosystem.

How I Got the Chance to Visit DIMCOIN

DIMCOIN held a contest under the title #Go2DIM and offered the chance to ambassadors, promoters and investors to visit their back-site office in Johannesburg, South Africa. As a promoter I handed in my application via a video I filmed and the community voted. I got the most upvotes on Telegram so trust and expectations from the community were both high. Alongside myself, CryptoMatt, ClintonCrypto and Garrett were also chosen to visit DIM.

In the end, I was chosen by the team to be one of the lucky few who got the chance to visit them. Everything from there was very smooth. The people assigned with organization of the visit certainly know what they are doing! They got me a ticket and sent me a very promising timetable of what we were going to experience during our days in Johannesburg. I tried to form no expectations as I wanted to be as neutral as possible but of course, I was incredibly curious! They certainly had a good reason for bringing us in at this specific time — and they certainly had nothing to hide. I boarded my flight and I was off to South Africa.

The Visit — Day One

Meeting the Invitees

The African hospitality could be felt from the very first moment I arrived at the airport. Myself and Clinton were picked up by Uros, the lovely community manager I knew from hundreds of messages exchanged and their super friendly driver Jo. They took me to a lodge that left nothing to wish for where we met the other two invitees. Three of us had already chatted quite a bit in the last few months. Discussions of the most recent communication (DIM Mid Year Update and DIM-E whitepaper) started right off the bat as well as DIM in general. DIM-E, DIM X and HYBSE left us with many questions we wanted to ask to the team. We were all excited to finally meet the team in person and in the middle of our discussion the first team members walked in to come pick us up. With discussions going and the mood up we met Kim, Vivien and Hannah, who came to pick us up and bring us to the office.

On a side note: it was funny how we all felt like we knew each other for a long time because we exchanged so many thoughts on telegram — private and professional. I also feel that the DIM-team made a great selection of community representatives for the cause.

Arriving at the Office

After a short drive, we arrived at the office complex. We were guided to the large meeting room and instructed on the rules of behavior around the office. It is reassuring to see that DIM takes security very very seriously. After that we jumped right into the program for the first day.

The first visit to the office consisted of an introduction to the team members, and a short series of presentations on organizational structure of the DIM ecosystem including the ambassadors and the promoters, the security on the DIM premises and a first round of discussion on the recently released updates from the DIM team.

Insights: Operations and Security

The founders have set up a very dedicated and diverse team of specialists in their respective domain. The office is set up well and the infrastructure is of high quality.
The Operations Manager gave us an introduction of how their vision of global outreach by ambassadors, promoters and investors is shaped. The general idea is that DIM will spread “like a virus” and quickly and deeply penetrate local financial ecosystems. We very much agreed on that vision and got a better understanding of how the DIM Foundation handles their decentral employees.

Thereafter, there was a presentation on security at DIM. Security is taken very seriously from the physical protection of the office to the IT security they have in place. They have all reasons protecting their raw diamond and take that to length I have not seen at any other project I visited.

The first day concluded with a nice dinner at a steakhouse and some time to chat with the team members that came along.

The Visit — Day Two

The second day was packed with presentations about the different aspects of the DIM-E. We got insights into DIM X, the brand new DIM Wallet, a test presentation of the HYBSE and the exclusive opportunity to pick the team’s brains on their future plans for the DIM-E, the regulatory environment and the mechanics of DIM X. Let me tell you — they blew our brains!

Whilst dissecting the latest releases and talking to the other visitors between the presentations we all had similar questions. To be perfectly honest (I can only speak for myself in that context) lots of the bits and pieces in the DIM-E whitepaper didn’t make sense to me. I felt like the new additions are mostly unnecessarily complicating things. I could not have been more wrong. I will try to show you how every piece of the puzzle comes together and ends up in a complete picture. We are not talking about your average picture: this team is putting together the “Mona Lisa” of decentralized economy.

DIM X

The DIM X platform was showcased to us and even running on testnets it worked very smoothly. The exchanging of Bitcoin into DIM BTC was quick, seamless and intuitive. It very much reminded us of a very known quick crypto exchange, just leaner and faster.

DIM Wallet

The presentation on the DIM wallet showed an intuitive and well designed wallet for all DIM (and NEM) purposes. The ambassadors already had the chance to download and test the DIM Wallet, by now the developers are implementing suggested changes from their hands-on feedback. Next step will be testing of the app by the promoters and then the public release will happen.

At first I did not understand the need for three wallets as it was outlined in the DIM-E whitepaper. While discussing the new wallet it became clear (even more so after asking the team more specifically) that there is a reason d’être for the three wallets after all. The Depot Wallet is meant to keep your funds, DIM currencies, HYBSE assets and all your longer-term savings safe and secure. Think of it as a savings account.
The DIM Wallet is made for daily use. The users keep a small amount of DIM currencies, DIMCOIN or other cryptocurrency on it. By that they do not reveal the total of their assets to merchants and also they do not risk to lose as much in case being stolen from. Think of it as the wallet you carry with your daily use cash in it.
The third wallet in development is for merchants. They do not have the same needs as the users buying at the merchants. They maybe need more options on invoicing or other displaying options. Think of it as the card terminal (POS) at your local store.

HYBSE

We got in touch with the developers working on the HYBSE. They showed us how a company lists a blockshare on the HYBSE (on the technical and practical side without the back office and administrative work). The issued demo blockshares were traded by two demo users.
The impression we got from the demo was that HYBSE is indeed very close to being release ready. Even on the test network it worked without any felt delay — performance was really good, the whole user interface looks very clean and simple and functionalities presented to the issuers and users fulfill everything you would expect from a trading software.

We had the exclusive chance to have a sneak peek at the new HYBSE whitepaper. It is still in the making. The content is convincing.

Miscellaneous

The DIM team is very much aware of the legal challenges that come along with what they are about to achieve. They also understand that those matters are not solved easily. They have a very broad perspective in that domain and are anticipating pretty much anything that could be thrown their way. The people that are in charge to solve these situations are very much capable and experienced to find good solutions. Due to the delicacy of the subject no details whatsoever can be passed on in this subject. I hope you understand that — it is in all our best interest.

Conclusion

I followed DIMCOIN from the very beginning. There is no project out there I am involved in as deep as DIMCOIN (aside from those I work on myself). The team, the spirit, the presentations we got — I have never been so convinced that they are about to change the financial world as we know it.

A special thank you goes to all members of the upper management, Hannah, Kim, Uros and everyone else involved in making our stay as good as it was!

The Aftermath

The DIM team put together a series of feedbacks from the visitors, including a video with general impressions, individual feedback videos by Clinton, CryptoMatt, Garret and me and a series of questions answered in writing for their blog.

The community is curious and I think besides reaching the goal of making four investors really happy, a huge amount of trust in the project was gained. We (I think I can speak for all four invitees) cannot stress enough how intense the experience was.

Before you ask: Of course we had to sign up to no giving up any details about the ongoing preparations and operations at the DIM office and the employees of the project, but the general impression that we are allowed to communicate can be summed up as the following: great things are coming!

Now let’s go break things.

Update July 28: The DACH community asked some questions before my trip to Johannesburg. Here are the answers to them.

Thank you for reading — if you liked what you read, feel free to share, like and comment. Also feel free to suggest any improvements and corrections to the article in the comments below!

For extra “thank yous” here are my donation addresses:

BTC: 1H7p8QFU5mLWLJGwjxjK3mErrWkgGgvb34
DIM/XEM: NDYKAE-YR3YCV-NOO36B-KSH5OC-N6KFV2-CLABPX-LBS6
ETH: 0x762bd7dcd23aec62d1a5bd3e3b2b57bb1b64026d

This article can be changed at any time without notice.