Powering Up - An Honest Analysis of Hive that Once was Steem
Title image made using GIMP and a pic by Colin Behrens from Pixabay
Powering up hive at the moment tests your metal in the arena of fomo driven paranoia 😂 With bitcoin on such a tear, and the BTC/Hive chart looking far from enticing...
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anyone could be forgiven for thinking that it makes more financial sense to DCA out to bitcoin and ride that wave up. Every penny counts right?
To be honest, all BS aside, all hype and fanboy nonsense out of the window, it is probably true that the above dollar cost average option may turn out to make more money in the long run. It entirely depends on if/when hive takes off, and if/when we see a real alt season.
Let me explain.
It is very likely that this bull run will be different from the last one. Alt season this time around will most probably see only a handful of projects from the last bull market cycle taking off - just look at what happened in the dot.com bubble. This round of BTC price action is more influenced by institutional buying, and they see bitcoin as an alternative against depreciating fiat currency and an alternative to gold. I personally don't think they're interested in any alt coins apart from maybe Ethereum and a few others may catch their interest as this market cycle matures.
So if hive is such a risky prospect why am I powering up?
Image by It is simple, I like a gamble. And from a more rational approach, we who are buying and earning without selling are the ones keeping hive afloat at this time. The hive hodlers are literally keeping the dollar price at a stable level buying this blockchain the time it needs to maybe be noticed by speculative interest when the retail parabola really hits.
I'm invested in this platform for over three years now. Invested in time, energy and a huge amount of my my creative drive. I have published well over a million words here and have launched and ran a successful creative writing community. Just like many others I've stayed through the good times and bad. I've spent many hours of my life criticizing stinc about the way they conducted business and the centralized nature of their operations. I've argued about how bidbots were destroying the platform when no one wanted to listen.
Now we have a true community fork of steem. A public blockchain that has less influence from the early players who mined, or were upvoted $1000, crazy amounts of steem boosting their influence to a point that didn't really reflect what they'd put in financially or content-wise.
A good amount of the problems around culture/centralization that plagued steem have been addressed with hive and the patterns are written in the sand for anyone who was around for more than a year that should serve as a lesson for us to never allow large stake to rape the rewards pool with vote selling again. And much of the emerging orcas and half-orcas were smaller accounts during those times and understand how that behavior destroyed steem's value proposition.
Hive is a product of everyone's work, content and the input of the community that stayed strong during the Justin Sun Tronit fiasco.
If anything is worth gambling on it is the thing that you have helped to build!
A few days ago I bought just over 800 hive and powered it up with some spare hive I had lying around for a total of 1,049 HP.
This brought me up to 13000 HP total, and one step closer to that orca status 🐋
Thanks for reading.
All images used in this post are either screenshots or creative commons license, credited beneath the image.
Nothing in the this post constitutes financial advice. These are my opinions and all investments should be researched and entered into at your own risk.
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I think it's a good move, well I did the same recently, so obviously I'd say that!
We have to appreciate the fact that this place at least works now with no centralised control!
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 23/48) Liquid rewards.
Yeah, I agree that this is the thing that should make hive a winner in the long term. Still, it is only realistic to look at things honestly and without the bias of 3+ years writing on steem/hive (which does tend to make me a believer). I see so many people on twitter, and writing posts in leo, that are doing nothing other than hyping without any sane analysis.
You're not one of them by the way. Your finance posts are pretty level headed.
But I have to be honest, as I've tried to be in this post, the hype/fanboy fervor does not really help draw anyone from the mainstream toward hive. If you look at what I was doing at the ink well, and what @shanibeer is now doing (more successfully than I did lol) there, these are the types of communities (and initiatives) that we need on hive. Communities that address some type of content, or subject, that has an established mainstream market to appeal to.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts. I really hope that hive survives the bitcoin bull to the point where some of the more focused projects can start onboarding mainstream people. Once the mainstream flood gates open things could get very wild (both price wise and engagement) very quickly :)
P.s. thanks for the tipu curation M8
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Thank you for the shout-out and good to see the power-up 😁.
Insanely, SPI (second-layer token based on Hive) is now worth over a dollar each, original stake 1 steem/hive each. I'm still trying to take that in 😂.
My own view is that communities are the way and they need to have a business proposition or use case as I've learned to say here. The thing that is exercising me now is whether Hive has the people infrastructure to manage a large influx of people. If we achieved my targets of bringing 1,000 (active) people to The Ink Well over the next year, I wonder whether we would be overwhelmed. We're so used to cruising on not very much.
😂 no worries about the shout out
Bringing 1000 creative writers to hive/TheInkWell we would 100% be overwhelmed with the amount of people left here who can effectively assess creative writing. But, I know a tone of people who have left from the old writing communites who would probably return if the hive price went up above $1 simply because they would be able to earn what is proportionate to that level of work. lol, it is a catch 22 as we need 1000's of people joining and buying a small amount of hive at least to boost the price, but the people who were historically very active and qualified (in regards to creative writing) aren't gonna return without that price boost.
I think the trick is exactly what we've chatted about, bringing writing students onboard with hive marketed as a learning/career development experience where there is also potential for earning spare cash to help them through uni.
😒 I missed out on that one... but bought 40 LBI (leo backed investment) tokens off the back of your story about the SPI @shanibeer 🤞🤞🤞
Indeed 🤞🤞🤞 - enough for a pint or an iced coffee would be very nice!
It is good to hear some positive words for once. HIVE seems to be taking a bashing even from it's own users. It doesn't look good to outsiders at all.
Thanks @slobberchops
I do think that this article was positive overall. Positive while being honest is what I was shooting for 😂
I think that the lessons learned during the steem days hold us in good stead. Certainly all of the lessons around abuse and false economy have been well and truly played out for all to see. I think when full on retail fomo kicks in we will be in a strong position to fulfill the value proposition steem always claimed but rarely fulfilled (at least to a huge percentage of the users anyway) - a platform rewarding content on a consensus vote based system.
That is why I'll never stop harping on about vote selling/bidbots. Because it is important to remember what destroyed the value proposition on steem.
Hive is much healthier in this regard, I think that Ned and Justin Sun have a lot to answer for in destroying not only steem's reputation but seriously damaging hive through the whole fiasco.
I'm 50/50 that hive becomes a mega success (financially) like zuckerbook. And if it doesn't, it will be a shame because the community now is doing mainly the right things. 50/50 isn't too bad odds in the world of tech start-ups to my mind 😉
Cracking 13c is something.. can we manage 14 I wonder.
🤞 I often take my hive earnings out to bittrex and put them on the hive/usdt market at between 14-16 cents as that market seems to get spike wicks up to the 14 cent mark often.
It has worked out a few times to make some extra hive through selling the spikes and then buying back in when it returns to 11-12 cent level.
What I want to see is hive overtake steem on both BTC and dollar value. I'm sure that JS scam artist is propping up the price of steem somehow using tron.
,,This brought me up to 13000 HP total, and one step closer to that orca status''
Your power level is very impressive. Congrats on getting closer to your new legendary form.
Can you please remind me what level is dolphin and what level is orca?
Powering up right now seems very tempting. What scares me the most is that I still don't understand how taxes and crypto mix together. For example if I buy x amount of hive right now in 5-10 years I will hopefully have much bigger amount of hive. So if I will decide to sell it how am I supposed to prove that I got that hive legally?
Thanks @fieryfootprints that clip is awesome. I love the bit where he says... "His power level is over 8000. No way, that can't be right." 😂
Believe 😂
I have absolutely no idea to be honest. I suspect that basically once you cash out to fiat you have to pay similar tax as you would on profits from any investment. But I don't know this to be fact. In regards to proving that you earned the hive through posting etc... well that can be shown by querying the blockchain. the stats can be pulled to show that quite easily for those who know how.
As far as I know the levels are thus in HP:
Dolphin:5,000
Orca: 50,000
Whale: 500,000
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Thank you very much.
I just saw this post from @nickyhavey that goes into crypto taxes @fieryfootprints. Might be worth a read - https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@nickyhavey/koinly-handy-tool-to-calculate-crypto-taxes
thanks again.
Thanks for spreading the word mate!
You're welcome. It was a great post and info for a crypto resource that I think many are going to have to think about over the next 6-18 months. Especially if BTC keeps shooting those massive green candles up everyone's noses 🤣
Get ready for the incoming lambo memes... personally I'll make do with a BTC Skoda baby! WHEN MOON... and other associated nonsense.
Haha yeah man, those green candles are insane! Give me a Corsa mate, that's where I'm at 🤣
Thanks, some good points here.
It's sad that somebody can buy their way to Orca with just a few bucks. It means almost nothing anymore.
I worked 3+ years full time (and put in 0.2 BTC) to amass my 10,000 HIVE, which is now worth just more than $1000. I could have saved 3 years of work (and my wife's work is included in that total too), and still had that 0.2 BTC ($8000 USD) in my pocket. Instead, I did what you are doing now - I tried to catch the falling knife.
"we who are buying and earning without selling are the ones keeping hive afloat"
That is correct. Most are selling their HIVE for BTC. Those who are holding the bag are keeping this blockchain alive. I have never sold any HIVE (or STEEM), or even spent it on anything. I have ever fraction of a token I have ever earned. Also, I have never bought any (except with the 0.2 BTC 3 years ago, which got me a few hundred STEEM at the time), it's almost ALL earned through my content-creation. I poured my life (and savings) into this blockchain and lost it all. Now the last $1000 appears headed toward $0.
The strange reality is that after all that money and years poured in.... somebody else who doesn't like my message (for example, somebody who hates cannabis users?) could come along with $20, buy HIVE, power it up, and downvote everything I do until it is hidden. I can be cancelled out for a few dollars, because my stake is so worthless. Somebody can waltz along and decide to ruin everything I have ever done on this blockchain, with almost no time or investment. It's a vulnerable feeling, and as the price continues to fall, just gets worse and worse.
It's the best time to buy HIVE, ever. So yes, maybe you should buy and power up.
But the same was true 3 years ago, when I went all in. I heard EXACTLY the same arguments you are making here in this post. Just saying! You seem to enjoy risk so what I'm saying probably sounds great to you :)
Mate, I can hear the bitterness in this comment and I'm not criticizing that at all. I feel some of the same pain to be honest. The depreciation in steem/hive token value has been massive. I also haven't taken much out of steem/hive (just enough to pay $150 for a ryanair coach class flight to steemfest 3) over the 3 and a half years I've been writing on here. I've earned 99.9% of my hive and the rest was bought using sales of some steem. I'm a writer by trade and I value my craft far more than the $1500/3year that my hive holdings are currently worth.
I did sell a large portion of my steem into Bitcoin after the justin sun fork and I'm glad I did to be honest.
This simply isn't true. $20 of hive right now is about 155 hive which would equate to less than $0.01 downvote. You could more than cancel that out with a self-upvote on your content.
But I understand the point. It is far easier for someone now to drop a thousand dollars into hive to reach 8000 HP and downvote attack someone who has spent a massive amount of time and energy building on this platform.
Not really. 800 hive cost me almost exactly $100. Not a huge amount of a gamble if I'm honest. Still a gamble though.
Honestly I do feel for you and anyone else who bought near the peak though drutter. I had similar gut wrenchingly bad moves during the whole 2017 ICO craze buying into con projects, probably all told if I'd just held the bitcoin I spent on ICO's until now, I'd have over $20000 instead of the sum total of about $15 value that those bags of alts are now worth.
Anyway, I appreciate your comment and perspective. 🤞 things do start moving up for hive.
Well yeah, $20 was an underestimation to make a point. I could have just said somebody with $1100 could come along and buy an equal stake to mine, and cancel me out.Not that it's likely to happen, but I still do feel vulnerable. I am heavily censored almost everywhere else, and even people in the alternative world sometimes don't appreciate my content (I am a cannabis activist). Anyhow, you understood my point. One thing I think I could emphasize more is that I can't buy, and can't (or won't) sell, and I'm not an investor. I'm just trying not to have my crytpo-life-savings go any further toward $0! I'm in the minority there (most people here consider themselves investors, trying to make more currency from their currency). I just want to find a way to not keep losing 90% every year, over and over and over without end. Yes, I am still hopeful, but after this many years I will have to see it to believe it, and I hope you can sort of see why. I have had this conversation over and over, and each time the price drops, more buyers come in with "it has to bottom sometime", and I would feel wrong if I didn't make sure they heard the voice of reality, which is that there's no guaranteed bottom for HIVE. It can drop 90% every year for the next 5 years, and still have just as much room to fall as it did before, because we can always add more decimal places to a digital currency. I really hope you catch the knife, I really do! Both for your sake and mine.
Yeah it's a bit of skirt on the side this HIVE thing isn't it haha! Nice one powering up, at least that's another thousand not going into bad players hey? I do agree that the institutions probably won't give a shit about anything else other than BTC, maybe ETH as it's close or is $100 billion but after that, no way. HIVE is a long way down the list I'd imagine.
You know I share the same sentiment re bidbots and early miners, they're still around in terms of large stake now but hope more accounts are also powering up to dilute their influence - although with the stats I see from arcange and penguinpablo seems most are going the other way...
Yeah, there is that 😂 I'm kinda overplaying the gamble angle in this post as 800 hive only cost $100... but the logic follows if your spending $100 or $1000 I guess.
Yes, the names we all dare not mention. I know exactly who they are and a few of them shamelessly swagger around making proposals and jumping on (legitimately decent) anti-abuse downvote chains like they weren't the ones who created the problem in the first place. But I guess that was my point in that their is an emerging upper middle class, for want of a better term, who if they pooled their VP could hold these people to account if they push the on button on their bidbots.
Oh what a voting war we would see,
if the bidbot boats put out to sea 😂
Or maybe no one would give a sht and just pucker up for another round of arse kissing.
Not sure what you mean here @nickyhavey? D'you mean that the evil whales are all powering up as well to wage a new war with the good whales?
I've not gone near any hive politics posts, or stat type posts for nearly 6 months. Looked at a few today for the first time and it made me laugh to see the same old drama over stuff that anyone outside of this ecosystem wouldn't know wtf any of it meant.
Ughhhhhh dude that gif 😭😭😭 haha
Hmmm well, it takes 10 Orcas (at 50k HP) to outweigh "a whale" and 100 dolphins (at 5k HP). We have 30 ish whale accounts at 500k HP so you'd need either 600 Orcas or 6,000 dolphins for 30 Million HP to be actively involved in governance and all that jazz (6,600 accounts) - are there even enough individual people (not including the many alts) to get anywhere near this?
No I mean the number of active users has gradually declined on Hive and folks seem to be selling up rather than new users coming in and buying HIVE. This is a graph from arcange's latest post
Probably this scenario 😂
Ha ha, yeah that gif is doozy.
I see your point. There isn't enough dolphins and orcas to make a dent governance wise. But I do think that some whales might jump on a campaign to stop any reassurance of the abuses of the past.
But, those stats and that graph do tell a rather damning picture. Maybe the gamble won't pay off but I guess a lot of people (myself included) have a bit of a poker mentality now... stony faced, strong hands win and all that jazz. Trying to bluff the market might not be the best strategy tho 🤣
Time will tell.
I think you're right about there being more large accounts that will jump on the bad behaviour reoccurring.
Haha, I don't mind a bit of a gamble either, wouldn't have bought BTC and certainly wouldn't have bought steem/hive either if I didn't have a "that streak" in me but think I'm at my limit invested into crypto now, time to diversify a bit 😁
in a way, hive is 1 year old, and in that one year, many things happen. Many communities were created as well as tokens and some of them skyrocketed like leo.
Regarding Hive from my understanding, there is a lot of tech/programming work that's happening in the background that would make things easier and faster. I think they built a strong base to avoid problems when the mass production will come
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This is true... but the word 'when' should be replaced with 'if' in my opinion. This is the only reason I see it as a gamble. Hive, and steem for that matter, have massive hurdles to get over to bring massive amounts of people onboard from the mainstream. I hope that it happens tho 🙂
As to leo, yes it has seen great gains in price. And it is also a fine example of how to build a community that has a strong value proposition.
🤞 for hive to only move up from now on. I think that if/when we see some upward momentum on the hive/bitcoin charts will signal big things in regards to price.
totally agree with this!
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That’s a very fair way to look at HIVE.
We’ve come this far three years in, put in more time and energy, we know more about it than anyone else... it does seem the most logical place to place our bets!
Cheers for giving that perspective.
Hi AshTv
Yeah, I try and look on hive realistically. Keep a balanced perspective and all that lol
Buying hive and powering up right at a current bottom may be a bit of a gamble... but everyone I've ever seen who has become rich off the back of alt coin investments have one thing in common. They bought near to bottom prices and then laddered out after 100 or even 1000 X gains.
If I had bigger cojones I might consider putting 4-5k into hive but BTC feels like a safer bet to be honest. But that won't stop me buying more hive if I see real strong indicators of momentum that hive is on its way up. The increasing censorship on mainstream social media might just tip the scales in out favor ;)
Thanks for reading and commenting on my post :)
No worries, thanks for the write up.
I think I found you because if someone’s re-share.
It struck a note because I’m potentially thinking of buying some up again... it just seems like a right time.
I’ve either got a pal who is selling his HIVE and I’ll just buy that, or maybe it’s better for the platform if I buy in ‘new’ coins... (although I’m not entirely sure how to do that)
Also my big block for buying more is also HOW when the time comes do I quickly and easily cash out my liquid HIVE.
I’ve never used my Binance/Bittrex account to deposit or withdraw yet.
Anyway, your post gave me good food for thought on my investment. Cheers!!
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
I think the alt coin rally will be EXACTlY like last time....so much like last time that it won’t feel like last time....what I mean is it isn’t going to be at a whole new scale like bitcoin. Many coins will make it back to all time highs, a few will 2 or 3x from there, many will not, and then the projects with institutional backing will 10-20x. We won’t see that 10-20x will most of the market.
I doubt hive will be one with institutional backing so I’m not betting on $10 hive but I think we will see more slow and steady growth than a lot of other coins and you have to remember that a lot of money from bitcoin will flow elsewhere and we are a community of investors
😂 alright dude... no need for the CAPS
To answer this I would say, why? What historical data leads you to that conclusion? I'm not saying your right or wrong, but this game is all about probabilities of outcomes. Belief has nothing to do with it. The only hints at what is more or less probable an outcome is historical indicators. 90% of alt coins didn't even exist before the last bull run. Most were created just prior to or during the 2016/17 bull.
For me, one market cycle isn't enough to judge them all by.
I appreciate your viewpoint tho whatamidoing, and you may well turn out right. I hope that a decent alt season does kick in to be honest as I want to make a reasonable return for all the years of work I've put into steem/hive 🙂
Nice
Raj, my man, great post! I have a lot of catching up to do, but good posts like this are helping!
Nice to see you @dbooster
Glad the post was interesting and helpful for you. I must stop by your profile for some poetic food for the soul 🙂