Hive FAQs: Very Basic Hive Economics

• Hive FAQs the basics, part 1: What is Hive, What can I do on Hive, how do I sign up and account security?

• The Basics Part 2 (this post): How do I earn tokens, whats the difference between them, how do I buy them and who are the major stakeholders?

• The Basics Part 3: What's the difference between hive and other social media platforms?

• The Basics Part 4: Useful links for exploring the hive ecosystem

How do I earn digital tokens on Hive?

In order to earn Hive, Hive Power or HBD you can…

• Create and post content to Hive (typically blog posts or videos) and get rewarded through upvotes or tips from other users, depending on their vested Hive Power.
• Power Up Hive and vote on other people’s content and earn ‘curation rewards’ – pay-outs for content are shared 50-50 between authors and curators.
• Power up or stake Hive and earn 1.5% interest (paid in Hive) annually.
• power up Hive and lease or delegate it to certain projects on Hive, some of which will return you an almost 10% APR
• put together a project proposal and apply for funding through the Decentralised Hive Fund, to receive a daily pay-out in HBD
• set up a witness server and compete with other witnesses to produce blocks.

What’s the difference between ‘HIVE’ ‘HBD’ and ‘HIVE POWER (easy version)

• Hive is the main token of the Hive Blockchain. Hive are liquid tokens that can be transferred to other Hive accounts or exchanges almost immediately.
• Hive Power (HP) is staked Hive with 1 Hive = 1 HP. Hive Power is what determines how much influence a user has on the blockchain as all voting is stake weighted. Hive Power is 'locked' for a period of 13 weeks. If you wish to 'Power Down' your Hive Power, it takes 13 weeks to do so, with 1/13th of your Hive Power being released every week.
• The Hive Backed Dollar is a stable coin, nominally pegged to $1, its print rate fluctuates in order to keep it valued as close to $1 as possible.

How do I buy and sell Hive tokens?

You can buy or sell Hive tokens from several cryptocurrency exchanges. For a list of all the exchanges please see the relevant section of HiveProjects.io.

Most of these exchanges will require you to purchase Bitcoin first, and then use that to purchase Hive, but some allow you to purchase Hive directly with Fiat currency.

BlockTrades is probably the easiest place to use.

Who are the major HIVE stake holders?

A good starting point to find out who the major stake holders are is to visit Hive.Buzz and look at users ranked in order of how much Hive Power they have.

Hive Power shows you which accounts have the most active influence, but you would have to calculate Hive Power plus liquid Hive and liquid HBDs to find out the overall stake of any one account.

NB that some accounts with large amounts of liquid Hive and HBD are 'exchange accounts' and the liquid funds may well not be theirs!

The Steem.dao account is a unique account which holds the Decentralised Hive Fund money, so this isn't technically controlled by any one individual, but by users who vote for how it should be allocated.

These rankings only give you an indication of who the main hive stakeholders are. It is impossible to know for certain who has precisely how much power on hive because

• Some accounts are anonymous
• One person can own several accounts. For all we know one person may control half of the top 50 accounts.
• They don't tell us how much Hive and HBD are being stored on the exchanges.

What are some useful sources of info to help me find out more about Hive?

The best starting point is HiveProjects.io

Is there someone I can chat to get help with Hive?

Yes - visit the Hive Discord channel - there's usually someone kicking about who can answer any or all of your Hive related questions!