What Lebanon’s Currency Crisis Reveals About Hive

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What Lebanon’s Currency Crisis Tells Us About Hive.png

I’m a huge fan of the idea that crypto can be used as a way to hedge against local governments and central banks. There are currency crises happening on a global scale — especially with the fallout of the coronavirus.

The people of Lebanon have been battling an ongoing currency crisis with their incompetent central bank infighting with their government. The current figures estimate losses of $49 Billion on behalf of the Banque du Liban.

To make matters worse, Lebanon has also been facing an ongoing food shortage.

"Lebanon imports up to 80% percent of its food, and a UN study has found that, at the end of April, half the country was struggling to find basic food staples because food prices had risen by 56% since October.” Decrypt

"The country is suffering from a severe shortage of foreign currency—dollars, which are needed to pay for imports. As cash runs out, a barter economy has sprung up. Decrypt

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of the most famous modern philosophical thought leaders in the finance space. I’ve personally enjoyed his writing and have also watched a few of his talks at various crypto conferences a few years back.

Taleb is not a “crypto” guru. In fact, he isn’t very loud about crypto at all. As I said, he spoke at a few conferences, but often bashed the idea of speculating on crypto. He clearly agreed with certain fundamental ideas and financial principles, but he was never a “buy crypto now” kind of influencer.

Back in April, he came out and urged the people of Lebanon to utilize cryptocurrencies as the central bank’s actions deepened the financial status of the whole country.

Hive

I always enjoy thinking about Hive use cases and how we can make the world better with projects like Hive. Obviously, many of these ideals apply to the broader crypto space — whether you’re looking at Bitcoin or Ethereum — but there are some unique qualities of Hive that make me believe that it’s a more vital piece to the puzzle.

Let’s just apply this directly to the people of Lebanon. I’ll tie in some prior experiences I’ve had with some people who are already on Hive and live in countries that are ravaged with poor economic policies (like Venezuela, for example).

With Hive, these people can transact for free and instantaneously. They can send as little as 0.001 HIVE (currently valued at $0.000219 USD) to each other with no fees and all from their mobile smartphone.

With BTC fees and the enormous inflation of GAS fees on the Ethereum network, I believe that this is an incredible mechanism that is available on Hive.

Of course, Hive isn’t the only chain with free and fast transactions. But Hive is unique in a few other ways on top of those already amazing qualities:

  1. Earn more HIVE (blogging/curating)
  2. Connect with people and provide digital services

I constantly reiterate this: you won’t get rich writing on Hive.. but you might pick up some extra crypto in exchange for spending time writing/creating content that you should already be passionate about regardless of the money.

Hive gives us all the ability to earn something in exchange for our passion or even in exchange for a straight up investment of HIVE POWER.

While the investment part is out of reach for most people, the earning through creation part is accessible to anyone. I also lean into this idea that anyone can come here and offer their digital services to other people on Hive and create a brand within the Hive ecosystem. Hive might be small relative to other networks, but it is very active in terms of the crypto space. There really aren’t many (if any) communities out there that are like it.

I personally have hired people from all over the globe to help me with various projects. From design work to dev work to one-off tasks, I’ve utilized Hive as a way to connect with others and leverage their talents in exchange for my capital to get a unique project done. In return, I sent these users payments from across the world instantaneously, for 0 fees and with only their Hive username handle as the receiving address.

Their brand and my activities on Hive is what brought us together and opened the opportunity for a deal and that is truly powerful.

So while I don’t necessarily believe that the people of Lebanon (or other economically torn countries) will come to Hive and start earning enough to make up for all their economic woes, I do believe that they can opt-in to a crypto future through Hive. No matter how small the starting point.

I will also leave you with this thought: the people of Lebanon - or anyone else - can come to Hive, spend nothing but time and earn cryptocurrency.

They can earn HIVE, LEO or any Hive-base token in exchange for their work. They might make $0.10 in a month or they might make $100 in a month (and they may even make quite a lot more if they can monetize their digital services). Whatever amount they earn is something that is completely outside of the reach of their central bank and local government.

If you look at BTC prices around the world, you’ll find that the prices in economically torn countries is often 20% or more higher than in places like the U.S. or Europe. Crypto is increasingly becoming a hot commodity on a global scale, especially when the alternatives are so unstable. Being able to opt-in without spending a penny matters and I believe Hive delivers on that vision.


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15 comments
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I think that this is a brilliant way to reward creativity and content. And yes, you exchange time for money, but if you are passionate about the specific thing you are sharing, you are doing it anyway. I find it so unbelievable that people still pick other social media platform to just sit and scroll for hours with nothing gained, all that time equals zero. Unbelievable.

Since I discovered Hive I would not return to other platforms and if all the masses would realise the potential... Just imagine. This is power in the hands of the creative, a thing which should have been granted by default. Learning about crypto and other stuff is a bonus. And I noticed a thing here on Hive: a lot of smart over the average users. People who do have something to say/show and are being rewarded for it. Social media at its best.

Thanks for sharing!

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I agree completely, Hive has become a unique stomping grounds for intelligent and creative folks. I have never found a place like it on the internet.

Added to that is the idea of earning for our engagement.. just like your comment here. You engage with my post much like you would any other post on social media, but here you're earning something (no matter how small) in exchange.

Like you, I haven't been able to use other social media platforms the same way since discovering Hive. The only way that my time over on those platforms feels worthwhile is when I'm spreading awareness for Hive & LeoFInance in an effort to onboard people from there to here. It's a funny world, but I think we'll be on the right side of history.

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Yes, totally. Getting value for the time spent is mandatory for any creative person. And this is not always about money, it is also about the quality of the interaction and of the answers. I am simply amazed by how smart are the people of Hive, it is not about click click flap flap. It is more. And if you add the bonus, then this is a no brainer for me.

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Thank you for your engagement on this post, you have recieved ENGAGE tokens.

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I think in these instances a combination of HIVE and the lightning network would be excellent. Since HIVE is extremely public as in the case of my profile, people could actively view my history and purchases, which is fine in a free society but when theirs oppression of some kind its best to have some sort of anonymity which BTC and the lightning network can surly provide

Yes, you can open up a new account of course and use it to blog or transact I guess. I think where HIVE can make a real difference is supporting the real on the ground stories you don't get in the media and supporting the people affected directly, that's where its power lies

Sadly I don't think Lebanon will be the last country to go this route, i think many African countries have been stripped bare thorough debt monetisation and the political elite selling out their tax base for commission. Defaulting or hyperinflation is really the only two options so plenty of currency collapses coming in future

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There is a lot of potential in leveraging atomic swaps/connecting Hive to other ecosystems & protocols like the Lightning Network. I hope more cross-overs and iterations are explored in the future to make it easy for us to say, swap Hive for an ERC20 or for BTC directly on-chain.

The tech is still young, the developers here are smart & craft and the community is rock solid. I think we have the perfect mixture to make things like that happen.

And yes, it is definitely sad to know that Lebanon won't be the last (and probably not even the worst)... the suffering is going to continue and I just hope that the message of not even Hive but just opting out of fiat and into crypto gets out into the world.

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I believe we have to however leverage some of these stunning qualities to bring mass adoption to hive. In comparison to Lebanon and the hive situation, I feel that qualities that hive brings to the table is enormous and when we've successful gotten this out there to people I'm generally thinking hive will be the biggest thing the crypto and blockchain world has ever seen.

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I love Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Let’s get him onboard with HIVE soon

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Honestly, I clicked on this article thinking that it's ridiculous to think the Lebanese would ever adopt HIVE. But the scaling and the free transactions are excellent points.

I took a quick look, and at the moment 0.003 HIVE ~= 1 LBP. So the units are close. Of course, HIVE has an inflation problem too, but it's not anywhere near as severe as the LBP inflation problem.

You've convinced me!

Now the question is, how to get the word out to the Lebanese.

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I constantly reiterate this: you won’t get rich writing on Hive..

We will get rich writing for leofinance though xD

They might make $0.10 in a month or they might make $100 in a month

Not sure if you know who Scott Cunningham is, but he blogs about cryptos on many of the crypto platforms that we have available in the crypto ecosystem and he is earning around $600 per month between all of them... that's a little less than the minimum salary in my country(850 euros), and $600 in war/economic torn countries is probably A LOT! And this is deep in a bear market...

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interesting perspective. I have not been following lebanon currency crisis closely but I have often read from Mr. Taleb on twitter. He touched these subjects and it's intriguing how you connect it with hive.

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Good point made!
"Whatever amount they earn is something that is completely outside of the reach of their central bank and local government."
Shouldn't then posts under 20 Hive be treated equal to help the "small man/creator"?
Are we still on that HF?

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