I've been tracking web sites that interface with the HIVE blockchain on the Internet Rivers Directory. There appears to be several hundred web sites involved with this blockchain. The number seems to be growing by the day.
I believe that the best way to promote the HIVE blockchain is to promote the web sites that interface with HIVE.
To do this I decided to create a new account with the handle @irivers. I will use this account to write unsolicited daily reviews for web sites that interface with HIVE. I will place the reviews on the Site of the Day section of Internet Rivers.
I wanted to create this account with HiveInvite, but had a slew of problems. I finally decided to fall back and use BlockTrades.us by the @blocktrades team as it is one of the most reliable sites on the blockchain.
As noted, BlockTrades was one of the first sites to interface with the STEEM blockchain. For several years, BlockTrades was the primary path for funds in and out of STEEM.
During his hostile takeover of STEEM, Justin Sun committed the deeply unethical act of confiscating funds from BlockTrades. This act proved that Justin Sun was a rogue and showed why it is important for blockchains to have a distributed control structure.
The BlockTrades site offers a simple swap style exchange for an extremely limited number of currencies. The site does not give users control over the ask and bid prices for their trades. Even worse, the site does not provide decent information about the fees. I've performed a half dozen transactions with blocktrades. The site gives users an address. One sends BTC to the address without knowing how much HIVE the account will receive until after the funds arrive.
I believe that it is better to use a full service exchange such as Bittrex for moving funds in and out of HIVE.
Examining the Block Chain Explorer I see that blocktrades is no longer handling the large number of trades that it handled a few years ago.
However, the blockchain explorer shows that BlockTrades is doing a bang up job as a top twenty witness. The @blocktrades by the BlockTrades team is one of the leading developers of the HIVE blockchain. I am an outsider looking in. I believe that the are instrumental in developing the core code for hive.blog and the many tribal sites.
Account Creation with BlockTrades
As mentioned, I tried creating this account through HiveInvite with little success. I then tried direct calls to the HIVE API. After several weeks of frustration I decided to just pay for the account.
There is nothing wrong with paying for things! The idea that everything on the net must be free means that the net is filled with a large number of half-assed web sites that failed because they couldn't find a funding mechanism.
Anyway, I examined all of the tools for creating accounts on HIVE and concluded that BlockTrades.us was still the best tool for creating paid accounts. If you have a fist full of BTC and want to create an account. I would recommend BlockTrades.
The looked up BlockTrades on the web back machine. The account was registered in 2014 and appears to have been online before the launch of STEEM in July 2014.
BlockTrades.us asks users to create an account on their site. This is understandable as the service predates the blockchain.
Blocktrades offers to keep a back up of one's master HIVE password. I declined this service, but realize that it could be helpful in a few situations.
BlockTrades requires a fee. Since the price of tokens and network fees fluctuate, they recommend sending more than just the account creation fee. They deposit any overage as HIVE into the new account. So, when I created this account, I sent 6.1 HIVE through the service. They created the account for 4.1 HIVE and deposited 2 HIVE into my account.
Conclusion. The @blocktrades team has been instrumental in developing the HIVE blockchain. Unfortunately, the exchange on BlockTrades.us is a bit dated. While this is a great service if you need to make only one transactions, I would recommend using a full service exchange for people wanting to engage in multiple trades.
That said, I think that blocktrades is the best source for creating paid HIVE accounts. @blocktrades is consistently a top twenty witness and I suspect that they were instrumental in developing many of the features of the HIVE blockchain.
This is the link to my review. I intend to write unsolicited reviews for a large number of sites that interface with HIVE.
Please let me know if you have interesting information to add to this review or comments about blocktrades. If you would like me to review your site, let me know. I am easy. I intend to write a review a day.
For the picture I tied a chain to a block. I need to come up with a standard image for these reviews.
