Joël Valenzuela on the workarounds people still need to spend crypto, and why privacy belongs in an everyday payment app.

In Joël Valenzuela’s ideal version of a crypto payment, a customer walks into a coffee shop and pays. There’s no search through a wallet for whichever service happens to support that merchant.

During XT Exchange’s X Space, “What’s New in Digital Cash? Payments, privacy & real-world adoption,” Valenzuela kept returning to the details of using crypto as money. Getting funds to a business can require several steps, and the customer may also have to consider who gets to see the transaction.

Valenzuela works in business development and marketing for Dash. During the Space, he described his own experience:

“I’ve been using cryptocurrency as my daily money with no bank account for the last 10 years and Dash has been most of that.”

That experience gave the discussion a perspective that a feature list can miss: even when the technology works, spending the money can take extra effort.

Privacy starts with choosing an audience

To explain payment privacy, Valenzuela used a private message. Making plans to meet a friend at a restaurant requires sharing information with that friend. It doesn’t require broadcasting those plans to everyone else.

“So if you send someone a private message, you aren’t hiding the information entirely. You’re just deciding who gets to see it,” he said.

The same reasoning applies to a payment. The sender and recipient need certain details, and the user may have reasons or obligations to share records with someone else. Valenzuela argued that this should leave room to control what an unrelated observer can see.

Dash’s privacy options illustrate the difference. A public, pseudonymous transaction can leave its details visible even when the address doesn’t identify its owner by name. He described shielded payments as a way to limit that visibility.

Dash had announced in August that shielded transactions were live on its Evolution mainnet, using Orchard technology. In the Space, Valenzuela focused on what that capability means for someone making ordinary payments: having a choice about how much information a transfer exposes.

The extra steps between sending and spending

Sending DASH to another person can begin with an address, a QR code, or a username in a supporting wallet. Valenzuela described usernames and contact lists as ways to make that process more familiar. The recipient is easier to find, and the sender has less to handle manually.

A purchase can involve a longer route.

He described payment cards that users can fund with DASH, third-party services that pay bills on their behalf, and applications that connect DASH to merchant QR-payment systems. These services can make crypto useful at businesses that don’t receive DASH directly. They also require the customer to know which route will work.

His bill-payment example made the distinction clear. A user might pay DASH to a service that settles a utility bill, instead of sending DASH through the utility company’s own payment page. Similarly, an app may accept DASH and arrange a payment through a merchant’s existing QR system. In each case, an intermediary completes part of the job.

He described these as practical ways to spend, with availability depending on the service and market. They also explain why a successful transfer alone doesn’t settle the usability question. The customer still has to find the right service and understand what happens after sending funds.

Valenzuela’s coffee-shop example described the experience he wants to make more widely available: paying a merchant as directly as paying another person. He presented it as a goal, while acknowledging the workarounds people use today.

Getting privacy into the tools people use

Asked what he was looking forward to, Valenzuela returned to shielded payments. He wanted broader support across wallets and services, so the capability could reach more people through the tools they use to send and spend.

That work connects the two concerns running through his answers. A payment can be private at the network level, yet still depend on the right wallet or service to make that option accessible. An easy checkout can solve a spending problem while leaving questions about the information it reveals. The experience depends on both.

He also discussed additional applications and assets as future plans. His more immediate priority was to expand the ways people could use DASH and make privacy available within those payment experiences.

For XT’s audience, the coffee shop offered a straightforward test of that progress. How much does the customer have to figure out before the merchant gets paid, and how much information do they have to give up along the way?

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This article draws on Joël Valenzuela’s remarks during XT Exchange’s English-language X Space. It is not financial advice.

Listen to the full X Space.

About XT Exchange

Founded in 2018, XT Exchange is a global digital asset trading platform serving more than 12 million registered users across over 200 countries and regions. Its services span spot, margin and futures trading, TradFi market exposure, a real-world asset marketplace, and everyday payments through XT Pay. Guided by Xplore Crypto Trade with Trust, XT Exchange enters its ninth year with Build the NeXT, reflecting its focus on trust, broader market access, and practical uses for digital assets.

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