We only really need to become big in one region to eventually become big everywhere. On the other hand there's little point in being a little bit everywhere, but not especially big in any single location.
The reason for that is that economic network effects with money are in practice pretty local. The vast majority of financial transactions that almost everyone does, are the small ones that people use day to day, with people they meet in person. Particularly things like going to the grocery store, the coffee shop, the pub etc.
A network like ours needs to get to the point where there is a self-sustaining economy that is using it at its core. If Hive and HBD starts being used not just as a niche source of income, soon converted into local currency, but as something that people are using together in their local community, in their local shops and businesses - that is a solid foundation to expand from. A smaller presence in many places, but where you cannot use Hive or HBD in your local community, is much more likely to disappear at any time.
In Venezuela, the stars somewhat align to make this a possibility. Money is not functioning as it should in the country, and people are basically crying out for a solution to this. It also just happens to be where we have our largest community by far, and that was before we made any particular effort for it to be the case. By making efforts to grow in this particular market, we are attempting to exploit an opportunity that doesn't yet exist elsewhere (although some countries like Turkey and Argentina are potentially on a Venezuela-like trajectory).
I can understand that we want to try to start to become big somewhere in the world, but I don't believe that we will be bigger in Venezuela when in the statics we are talking about 350 Venezuelans when Venezuela has a population of 28.7 million.
So, I think we are too far away from being relevant on Venezuela and we, as community, "are paying" more than national double salaries for 0.000015% of Venezuela population and this it is only taking in consideration the reward pools.
Have you looked to the HBD that are being transferred to Venezuelan users/projects from Decentralized Hive Fund?
Because taking in consideration, these transfers, the values presented in the post are too low.
So, now Hive the goal to be a micropayment coin to daily basis, right?
If yes, 95% of the country will never be interested to use Hive or HBD as payment coin since they are already using bitcoin lightning network and people will prefer to receive BTC since it has more liquidity that Hive or HBD.
With more people come more merchants, with a bigger widespread come more people, at some point there should be enough people here who directly earn, stake, get interest etc to make the bridging from hive to lightning unnecessary because they can pay with hive/hbd directly and the merchants who have a hive/hbd account + an exchange account would be happy to accept that directly, especially with a stable hbd. I'm not too concerned about the costs of proposals going towards paying for conferences and events that spread the word of Hive, no matter the location or how impactful it is, it's a good first step towards marketing "in the real world" and at the same time all these people who go to the conferences are more established and rewarded and at the same time incentivized to bring more people in because they're receiving rewards in more ways than the person next to them discussing other projects cause of how Hive L1 works here where contributions are rewarded in many ways.
I am not also concerned about to spend money with marketing (conferences, publicity campaigns, events, etc) but I have some concerns related to a project that received more HBD than an apartment value with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in Caracas.
Do you think that is normal?
I am just being more participant on entire Hive ecosystem and see what projects are being develop in different areas. So, I don't know if this kind of thing it is normal or not.
I understand the impact to bring more people to our ecosystem that will make it attractive to merchants to accept direct Hive/HBD payments, as occurred with SLP in the Philippines during Axie Infinity FOMO.
Are you talking about @pettycash? It's in the hands of trusted keyholders and decision makers so I don't really see the point you're trying to make nor do I understand why you have to compare it to what you did. Doesn't matter if it's devs, marketing or whatever else is being funded, we strive for a general equality on the platform where it doesn't matter where you are from as long as you do what you say you're going to do when making a proposal or asking for funding for certain events. I curate the same way, although there it's more about activity, history and other factors rather than "just being about the content", but to give you an example, and by this I don't mean to imply that that's what you meant in your comment, but I don't go around checking what a country's average GDP is before I decide what vote to reward an author with. I'm also pretty sure that while some countries are in a deep hyperinflation it doesn't mean that the costs of things has gotten cheaper along with it.
No, I am not talking about @pettycash.
I am talking about @swc-oficial.
@hivefest received 54905 HBD to help with costs to organize our annual blockchain meetup.
@swc-oficial from 21st April until now received 43541.4 HBD, and we have two months until the end of year.
Do you think that is normal a work-out event receive almost the same founds as HiveFest?
I know that does not matter where we are from since first crypto premise is "not exist countries" and I agree that we shall not take in consideration if the user country it has hyperinflation, but I think we need to have some data related with this "investments" in marketing to have a transparent information (for example: how many people attended to the event/conference, what was the traffic on hive landing page, etc.). Otherwise, it is unclear trying to understand whether these campaigns bear fruit for our blockchain.
Yeah that's not something I know of unfortunately, I do agree though that it'd be nice with some transparency, for all proposals to be honest. Everyone's real nice when they write what they plan on doing with the funds but they quickly go quite when it's time to show what they actually did with them.
The same way, we have projects to check post plagiarism and abuse content we shall be like an audit team to this and be responsible to check if everything is being done like planned and the funds are being well-used by the projects.
This team shall be consisting of elements that are not directly related to any project submitted or even involved in the approval of projects.
SWC is a series of events that are only held at highly affluent places in Venezuela. The locations are very selective. The audience are the 1% of Venezuelans or tourists. The cost is about $5,000 per event which is just the cost of logistics for the most part (there are dozens of people involved in each). The events are multi-day because of the set-up and tear-down required. The costs in those locations, because they are high-end, is on par with costs anywhere else in the world. We have gained significant interest in Hive from local government and businesses in relation to these.
We return to the issue of transparency of project objectives because the project account has not made a single post since the 24th of August to explain the events held and what were the gains of the same. However, it continues to receive the HBD anyway and the community has not known what has been going on in this project for over 3 months.
If it has attracted the attention of local government and local businesses, isn't there a single local media article on the subject?
The transparency/feedback of these “investments” should be mandatory, in the same way that Ghana Wells through @mcsamm publishes whenever a new drinking water pump is implemented or has its project defined.
That's the cost of marketing. And is very cheap if you ask me. In the end is Hive's money for Hive purposes, not yours, not mine, not value's plan. I've partaken in the Caracas Blockchain Week, had to ask for a loan to Neoxian and actually had to spend of that money, the cost of living is quite expensive here, more than first world countries.
Wait... Are you comparing Caracas Blockchain Week participation vs a workout event?
Do you really believe that event shall receive almost the same as HiveFest or even as Caracas Blockchain Week?
I'm just talking about Caracas Blockchain Week Bro. I actually participated in a Street Work Out Event as Speaker. There was great assistance but can't tell you about how the funds are being spent. I guess that's for them to clarify. I agree with you that every project, event, initiative must be audited. I guess we all are learning from this.
The clarification part it is only what I think that should be more transparent.
Caracas Blockchain Week it is a different case and I'm not concerned anything related to that.
It's not a lot money if you ask, come to Venezuela and see the real cost of living. No one in their right mind lives here with minimum wage. It's just a marker.
We are not talking about Venezuela's living costs.
No, we are talking about how Hive it is doing, which is the blockchain's future.
Fortunately, I live in a "developed country", but don't say that the cost of living in Venezuela is higher than in other countries.
Because of these two images Portugal vs Venezuela.... it seems to me that our cost of living is high.
But as I mentioned earlier, this is not what is at issue here.