Yes, they did, but I specifically remember DASH, LTC and ETH doing their first 7x-10x pumps from Feb-Apr 2017.
That's cos Ryan did a tok in South America where he sed Dash woz gonna be the new moneh.
Nah its cos Roger Ver sed Dash was like how bitcoin woz supposed to be wif cheap transactions and stuff
Nah it was cos Otoh liked DASH than ...
In 2017 Dash rose from $20 to $150 (DASH/BTC 0.1+) when Bitcoin was having a discussion (understatement) on what the correct way forward was to scale Bitcoin. Proponents to raise the block size limit, as originally intended by Satoshi, clashed with those who did not want to raise the block size limit. All the details about the debate are well described on the Internet, for those who do not know and are interested.
Roger Ver (aka Bitcoin Jesus), a celebrity in the crypto world, was a proponent of raising the block size limit. He was probably disappointed with the direction Bitcoin was taking, which effectively changed the narrative from peer to peer cash to "something else", contrary to the white paper of Satoshi which literally states "P2P cash". Probably there was a significant group of Bitcoiners like him, who suddenly had doubts about Bitcoin's future. They were probably mostly looking for a hedge against Bitcoin.
Bitcoiners were and are aware of Dash, they just disregard it as if it does not exist or they just call it the big S word. While prominent Bitcoiners were (in)fighting, Dash swiftly raised its block size limit to 2 MB through its decentralized governance system, not because it was needed, but to make a point. That surely must have gotten some attention from Bitcoiners who were disappointed with what was happening with Bitcoin. Suddenly there was a bit of a spotlight on Dash.
Dash was rising from $20ish to $50ish and suddenly Roger Ver tweeted that he had bought Dash. Dash continued to pump to a new ATH, around $150, while Bitcoin's price was stagnating around $1000ish. Dash afterwards started to correct, but other crypto coins started pumping as well. Finally Bitcoin also started pumping and while Dash should have been correcting, it sort of had a pump on a pump in terms of USD price, reaching $1500ish.
At some point, Roger Ver announced the launch of Bitcoin Cash. Roger Ver still has Dash and according to him, he still runs masternodes, but he has not ever been active in our community as far as I know. It's quite understandable that he wanted his own project, where he had more control. Probably he also still wanted to exploit the brand name 'Bitcoin'. The correction on Dash's meteoric rise was inevitable, but the creation of Bitcoin Cash probably moved a lot of the recently invested money in Dash towards Bitcoin Cash. Dash does not have a celebrity, nor the Bitcoin name and is unfortunately inadequate in promoting itself, so it's understandable.
Aside from the launch of BCH, it had also become apparent that the release of Evolution was not around the corner. Combined with a lack of communication from the Core Dev team, Dash lost a significant amount of support. Dash had a 98%ish correction and a serious drop in the CMC rankings, despite its unmatched innovations in the crypto space.
Meanwhile Bitcoiners have settled for extra layer technology and SegWit as an answer to the scaling challenge. The narrative was changed to 'digital gold', 'store of value', 'settlement layer' and apparently that is good enough for Bitcoiners. Confidence was restored.
I do not believe Otoh was still around during Dash's megapump. If I remember correctly, he had already liquidated a large share of his holdings before the megapump. Otoh did indeed accumulate a staggering amount of Dash in 2015, which had corrected back to $1.5ish after its first pump in early 2014. He effectively defended the price and pushed it higher, but he did not initiate the 2017 pump, as far as I know. Whatever happened to Otoh and when exactly he left is not clear to me. Not that I really care, but maybe someone else has more insight into it.
It doesn't matter anymore. It's end of 2020. DCG devs are super productive. Dashpay wallet looks great and is already functional on evonet. I'm very excited to see the end result.
