I've just become a DOLPHIN, NOW what should my strategy be?

Hello everybody on HIVE! My name is Jasper and I’m writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa!

WHO AM I?
Some background as to who I am:

I started my HIVE journey by signing up in mid-April 2022. It took me a while to get going, but I found my two major niches to post about were:

•Music – I write songs, sing and play guitar and harmonica and whatever other instruments I can find or even make really. I can either perform on my own, or as a duo with fellow Hiver @clairemobey. This means that I can get constant inspiration to post regularly by taking part in the Hive Open Mic, Hive Music Festival and Three Tunes Tuesday challenges.

Recording interesting sounds into a loop pedal device...

•Surfing – Some fellow surfers/bodyboarders, mainly absolute chargers from Brazil, have started the “SurfHive” Community, and so I like to take an action camera when I go surfing and write about that. Cape Town has a myriad of beautiful surf spots, as does the rest of South Africa’s coastline.

My Point-of-View (camera held in my mouth) of a secluded wave I found in South Africa's Garden Route - first thing on New Years Day (1 January 2023)!

In addition to this, I tend to post about my career as a renewable energy developer, South Africa’s energy challenges, my beautiful pet cats and whatever else comes to mind.

BECOMING A DOLPHIN

On Thursday 1 June 2023 I squeaked past 10 000 000 VESTs (or about 5631HP) and levelled up to a dolphin status.

(Image sourced from https://hivebuzz.me/@jasperdick)

Becoming a dolphin by the end of June 2023 has been my singular HIVE goal since the beginning of this year. With that said, I didn’t invest any money into it, only time and effort…

•According to https://hivebuzz.me/@jasperdick, I have earned 4997HP from Author rewards (I almost always took my rewards in 100% HP to reach dolphin status faster). I have earned about 202HP from curation so far, although that share is getting better each week as I gain HP. Where did the rest of the 5631HP come from?

•@clairemobey made me the beneficiary of her posts that contained music we made together, although I have also made her a beneficiary in turn if I have done the same. (I also did a challenge where I asked for cover song requests and then gave 50-70% of the post rewards to the accounts that requested the songs I chose to tackle. This was a lovely, but incredibly challenging, way to give back to people who were supporting me before my vote was worth much at all! I hope to get back to this when I have the time again!)

•Honestly, I think a lot of the remaining HP must have come from prizes that I won for doing well at the Hive Music Festival, and the newer Retro Music Challenge, which I really appreciate and has made me feel really supported in my music!

Why did I want to become a dolphin so badly? Well, for me it feels a bit bad getting rewarded for posts, and then not being able to give a decent-sized vote to other posters in return… my vote is still relatively small, but at least I am getting somewhere and giving something back now. My curation rewards are about 10HP a week now, and so I am probably rewarding other posters with about the same each week on average…

SO, WHAT NOW?

Before I continue, I must explain that I am not a financial advisor, and this is not financial advice. I am merely explaining my adjusted strategy and my thinking behind it.

Basically, my new strategy on HIVE will be to diversify:

•A reason to feel happy when the HIVE price goes up: I will still take 50% of my rewards in HP and continue to grow my staked HP, as well as increasing what I can give to other posters as my vote grows...

•A reason to not feel TOO sad if the HIVE price stays low: Of the 50% of my rewards that I start taking in HBD, I plan to save about half. This will grow at 20% interest per year, and as the price of HBD doesn’t fluctuate too much, it should be fairly safe there even if the HIVE price doesn’t recover that much, or even drops significantly.

•A reason to enjoy the minor fluctuations in HIVE price. With the other half of the HBD, I aim to buy HIVE when there is a little dip and the HIVE price is low, and then buy the HBD back for a slight profit when the HIVE price recovers slightly, and continue that pattern as per the little picture I drew below. I am quite interested to see if I can beat the 20% interest rate that I would have earned if I had just saved the HBD in the first place… theoretically it should be possible as long as I am patient and honest about what is happening?

BUY LOW, SELL HIGH and repeat?...

So that’s it. If I get really good at trading back and forth from HBD to HIVE, perhaps it will make more sense to do more of that and less of the conventional savings approach. I hope to write a post about which turns out to be better one day!

THE END