I feel like a bit a of a hypocrite. I was going through my notes of post ideas that I store in Google Keep and I noticed I had written down the title of this post as one of them. Believe it or not, I am talking about HIVE. Actually, not HIVE in general, but these projects that are built on top of HIVE. Then I got thinking about a comment I made the other day about how I am long on HIVE and I still think it has a lot of potential. That's still quite true, but somehow I can't help but feel a bit two faced for writing this post.
I think you would be hard pressed to find someone on HIVE that hasn't been at least touched by some kind of scam or other. The most recent would be the whole BRO debacle that led to the creation of The Pub. It's also part of the reason myself and the co-founder of The Pub haven't been interested in creating a token for the community. That isn't to say one doesn't exist, but we never went forward with distribution. The problem is, when you tie a token to something, you also tie a lot of implied value and expectations to it.
Of course there is CUB, POLYCUB, CTP, Listnerds, a dozen other ones, and the most recent source of my anger Trust Exchange. Many would argue it's my own fault, and to some degree I agree with that. Also some might argue that several of the projects I listed didn't technically "rug", and while that may be true, there was some form of mismanagement, exploit, or nefarious shenanigans that caused them to collapse and leave people holding the bag.
I tried to find some photos of actual rugs, but I didn't really have any (I mean why would anyone right), so I am just going to keep sharing some of my photos from May in this post. So BTC is hovering over $80K, the CLARITY act is finally moving forward, and many of us are holding our breaths waiting to see what happens with crypto. I've go some monthly buys on Coinbase that I have had for a while, and I am getting close to the point that I might just consolidate all of them into a single BTC purchase each month. That honestly seems like the smarter play.
Trust Exchange
So you might remember before I mentioned @trustexchange. This is a project that I bought into back when Ray was still running BRO. I don't blame Ray for putting it on our radar, like I said, many people were questioning it back then, but I'm an idiot and I bought in anyway. If you do a quick search, you will see that they haven't posted since 2024. Their Discord is pretty much dead. In fact, lately there have been zero updates, and people have been posting cam girl links in the main chat and the "team" is so long gone with our money that they don't even bother to delete them or moderate the chat. That's if they even bothered to show up at all.
I was willing to believe that the long bear market and lack of a real pump was the reason things weren't taking off, but if you follow the funds through the accounts, it's pretty clear that @edsull is likely long gone along with our funds. Oddly enough, the Trust Exchange site is still up, and I can still view the rewards that I am likely never going to see.
My hats off to my friend @dbooster for giving this one a pass. I can't even remember now how much I paid for the Enterprise License that I hold. I've likely made that back in posting, but it still is just a bad look. We have far too many things like this happening on HIVE. It's one thing when it's a memecoin and you know you are likely going to get rugged going in, but it's another when this is supposed to be a community. Perhaps I just need to take off my rose colored glasses.
Mail in general is pretty rare these days. Usually when we do get it, it is mostly junk. In fact, it's so obvious that I rarely even open it. I just shred it and move on with my life. The other day however, I got a letter that looked more official than the rest. I opened it and was surprised to find it was actually just more junk mail. Some company wanted to give me a credit card. On the front of the letter were all the benefits we could experience by signing up for the card.
I immediately flipped the letter over to the back and just started laughing. @mrsbozz knew exactly what I was looking at and asked how bad it was. You can see from the photo above just how bad. 35.99% interest. I remember my first credit card was under 10% interest. That was forever ago, and I honestly can't remember the last time I actually paid interest on a credit card, but still. It's sad and pathetic.
These insane interest rates are a sad reality for many people who are barely making enough to pay their bills let alone cover these fees. It's a bleak picture of the world we live in today.
Silver
As many people have already pointed out, silver seems to be on a bit of a run again. I haven't checked the price lately, but I am likely done buying until next December. At that point I am going to have to look at the price and try to decide if I want to invest any more money into the precious metal. If prices are this high or higher, I likely will have to find something else to buy my nephew/godson. It's too bad he doesn't have a stock portfolio like his brother. I would mind buying him a few shares of this or that.
The silver I do hold is likely a long term investment for me. I don't see myself parting with it unless something really crazy were to happen with the price, and even then as many have pointed out finding someone to buy it could be difficult. It's likely something I will just hold onto and keep for my nieces and nephews to have when I am gone some day. If it ends up in a pawn shop, so be it.
That's all I've got for today. Be careful out there. It's still kind of like the wild west. Use your head and invest wisely!
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There is a high level of trust for investing in any secondary coins on Hive as you rely on whoever runs that project. I really am not that bothered about what I earn from them and so I dumped most in favour of $HIVE. I keep a few for old time's sake :) I definitely wouldn't want to run one myself as I don't need that pressure.
There's always !PIZZA :)
Yeah, it seems like it's a lot of headache for not much gain, but if you are going to do it you should at least be committed to it and not a bad actor.
I think of most of them as "pseudo rugs" because there generally wasn't ill intent involved, just excessively wishful thinking. And any "blame" for that — at least from where I am sitting — can be tracked to the insane crypto run-up of late 2017 where a precedent was set that we should expect to get staggeringly high returns on our investment... and quickly.
The only L2 projects on Hive that last for a while seem to be the ones that focus on "get rich SLOWLY," like the @spinvest group (now in its 7th year) and Hive SBI aka @steembasicincome which offers small boosts in the extreme long term and no grand promises.
These days, I'm cautiously keeping an eye on Magi... we'll see if it gets legs; even if it doesn't get DHF funding.
Credit cards are insane. We have a couple because of things like needing to rent a car, hotel reservations and such. Occasionally carry a balance for a few months and pay it off because evidently "you have to" in order to keep your credit score up. It's all nuts. Credit car interest was 24.9% when interest rates were 10%; now interest rates are 2-3% while credit cards are 36.9%. I even got an offer for an "unsecured personal loan" a while back and after tallying all the fees/costs it worked out at about 107% APR! It's usary.
That is ridiculous for that loan interest rate! Definitely usury. I wasn't lucky enough to get into crypto until 2018, so I didn't get to take advantage of the big alt thing. I really like the idea of a long play for passive income. No complaints from me there.
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Beautiful photos of nature, what a shame about that place where you had your funds, maybe you won't be able to recover them, I hope you do. If you have managed to recover something, it's better than losing everything, I suppose.
I don't think there is any recovery possible at this point.
I think with a lot of projects various people keep working and trying to do what they can but at some point a lot of stuff doesn't have enough money to focus on it full time or even with part of their time. I am one of the top holders of DTC (DTUBE) and we haven't quit on the project but all of us are getting our teeth knocked out by inflation and none of the people still involved did the initial capital raise for that project so there is no actual fund or liquidity to pull from currently. Other projects can be in a different situation but most project were traded against or tied to another underlying asset and when that gets pulled down so hard the well sort of runs dry and to generate the interest and work on the stuff day to day it is tough.
That interest rate is insane and it was yet another BS thing Trump ran on saying that he would take credit card interest rates to 10% temporarily. Never happened and of course not..... the banksters would haven't liked it. They are able to charge insane interest on fake money and they have no reserve requirement.
These are crazy times we are living in and I had to inform my mom yesterday that we are in WW3 and gas prices will likely go over $10 this summer and every business and everyone is feeling the crushing blow. Aldi which has been in the town close to my parents for over 40 years is pulling out. She was trying to say how the people in that town are stupid and don't know how to bargain shop but I told her every business and all the farmers are on thin ice. The numbers just don't work.
Oh wow, they just built a new Aldi down the road from us. It's pretty bad when those stores start closing up! $10 gas will be a pretty big blow for me.
I had to pay $6 in Chicago so I can see it getting crazy this summer. One woman was telling me she has 4 jobs. People are hurting around here.
That sucks. I have some big trips planned and my truck only gets about 8 MPG when I am pulling the trailer, so it is going to be rough. I wonder how many people will not even bother traveling.
The sky itself is rug pulling us now 😂 Even nature’s not safe anymore!
Crazy right!?
Speaking of @dbooster, haven’t seen him around since March. Hope he is just taking a break.
I think he is just chilling. I haven't talked to him in a while. He has been absent from Discord as well.
seems like all L2 tokens on Hive have failed. Does that mean they don't work in general or they just don't have real utility? I think it probably just a lot of work to build anything with real value... it's not easy which is why we have ended up with such a mess
I think part of it is just human nature, but who really knows...
It's hard to have trust in some of those projects, after the BRO and a few others I've been burned by as well. Fortunately, I didn't get into @trustexchange either, sorry to hear that you did. That seriously sucks! I can see why you're gun shy about creating a token for PUB after all that scamming.
DUO continues to perform well, and since helping create it I haven't had the desire to even think about a new token. @bulliontools sure is and I'll do my best to support him, a daunting task these days here on Hive!
Silver is always a good investment and a great thing to buy. If this Iran mess ever goes away and more money is taken out of oil I think prices of precious metals will really start taking off again. It's just a matter of time! Have a great weekend, I hope you and the wife have something fun planned. Enjoy some good bourbon while you're at it!
We actually did have something great planned. Tune in next week for more info! Yeah, Duo has been solid, so I am happy for that.
Rug me daddy
Hive is a long Game, yes, but most of the everything’s are cluttered; either in funds, or work, or projects etc. Can’t really say anything I am glad I got out on some in profit. Now, no one is there to buy even in 99% loss .
I am longing on most top altcoins as well.
Silver has sparked my interest lately, and you are one of the unseen motivator . lol will add some over the year.
I'm just glad I started buying my silver when I did. It's much more expensive now!
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That's really unfortunate about the projects built on HIVE being such a disappointment. I feel like the entire altcoin space has become more scammy this cycle. I think it's fine to call things as you see them though, that doesn't mean the blockchain is bad as a whole. I don't know about you but it's been difficult for me and many others who have survived through past cycles to turn a blind eye to alts but I do think the big money-making days are over for most of them. I've mainly focused on stocks and ETFs this past year. I'd REALLY like to get into the SpaceX ICO. I'm hearing a lot about a Tesla/SpaceX merger and Tesla shareholders receiving bonus shares during the merger. I wish I had a crystal ball to know if that merger was really going to happen. 35.99%!!! That's robbery!
I still have a lot of faith in HIVE. It has a lot of strengths despite the handful of bad actors. They could have just as easily run their game somewhere else. My traditional portfolio is definitely doing better than most of my other investments. That does sound cool about the IPO. I have a feeling the valuation per share will be nuts.
It's still shocking to me, how the US is living on credit and you can get so much credit so easily.
It's definitely predatory, but people need to be smarter too. Or at least be paid a decent wage so they don't have to rely on credit.
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