Brief comparison between Dash and PVIX:

Market Cap

Dash currently has a market cap of $740 million, almost 24x the market cap of PIVX. ($30 million) It is important to note that Dash started almost two years earlier than PIVX, so a huge disparity in market cap would be reasonable.

Besides this, Dash’s price soared almost 4x within the past 30 days, due to uncertainty within the Bitcoin market. Without this surge, the disparity would only be around 8-10x. This unpredictability would also work for PIVX, allowing to catch up to Dash at a faster rate, if there is huge adoption.

Developers

Dash has a substantially larger development team as compared to PIVX, with more diversified roles. There are specific positions for finance management, cross country co-ordination, and business/marketing strategists which PIVX simply does not have.

Features

At the current moment, PIVX clearly has the upper hand with a few notable features that differentiate it from Dash. Proof of Stake over Proof of Work means that PIVX would be more energy efficient, and thus better for the environment. Although Dash has plans for Proof of Work 2.0, it will not be available within the near future.

A key upgrade for PIVX, that is in progress is the untraceable zerocoin protocol, which would significantly boost its privacy settings as compared to Dash. Other feature upgrades include variable masternode and staking rewards, IPv6 support and in-wallet private key encryption.

Governance

Both coins are governed in decentralised manner, using masternode voting to determine the direction of development. Dash has received criticism over the rewards given to the masternodes, especially in the wake of high coin prices. PIVX is also liable to such criticisms. Notably, the criticisms for PIVX might be lesser, because of the unique Proof-of-Stake See Saw rewards mechanism, which is used in conjunction with the masternode rewards payout.

Summary

The road-maps of both Dash and PIVX are clear indicators of their future. Dash Evolution seeks to be the future of payments, where it aggressively increases its user base through consumer-friendly and merchant-friendly initiatives. PIVX, on the other hand, is focused on adding more features such as elastic block sizes and encrypted chat system.

At the moment, PIVX is a great short-term investment because of its room for growth. The current price of $0.55 is definitely a steal, and one should look to buy in now. (I don’t think the price would get any lower than this.)

In the long run, Dash would likely outshine PIVX in terms of user adoption and thus, market cap. The features included in PIVX are outstanding for developers and crypto-enthusiasts, but it would be daunting for early adopters.

Early adopters would be drawn to the stability of the large user base and convenience as a payment medium, to merchants. The trade-off in privacy and governance would be instant, as they opt for something more understandable and relatable.

With this in mind, I choose Dash as my choice for investment.

I back this claim by having a significant stake of my portfolio in Dash, and I can only hope that it succeeds. I am currently considering the option of investing in PIVX in the short run, for the reasons outlined above. With the current stalemate in the Bitcoin hard fork, PIVX is an increasingly tempting hedge against this volatility and uncertainty. Any impending victory for Bitcoin Unlimited would prompt me to liquid my Bitcoin assets and buy into PIVX.