Happy to hear that Genesis Mining is rolling out XMR mining contracts. I just got an email from them.  It just proved the acceptance that Monero is getting. Obviously the price hike is due to the demand and we can't rule out a correction coming in. MAybe, it may keep gaining. But XMR seems like  a good candidate to diversify your crypto portfolio into.

Is there a major difference between DASH and MONERO?

It is not because they ask the question that they can know the answer.  Of course you are supposed to declare everything a state can potentially steal, that's why they exist.  There's no way for them to know that you have a private key.  You don't even have to keep it on a computer.  You just have the seed of the wallet somewhere.  Knowing some words is hard to find out.

What is funny, though, is that if they have to give two examples of crypto currencies, bitcoin and monero come to their mind !
That's quite bullish for monero !

I hear Barclays took a look at XMR a while back... is this true? - sources?

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/monero-opens-were-about-private-you-can-get-1580481

Says somewhere in this article...

I've never shilled for Monero or Ripple, and never even heard of Applebytes until your post.