As sure as spring has followed winter, more activity and users on Hive and its various tribes has followed an increase in price. Hardly a surprise, as larger $ signs on each article sure makes it more tempting to sit down, have a cup of tea, and get that new blog post written. At these prices, it is also increasingly tempting to sell anything you earn.
However, you may want to consider first that getting more of these tokens later will likely be increasingly difficult.
Both HIVE and POB have a lowering inflation rate. For HIVE, the current inflation is about 7.5% (down from 9.5% when I first joined) and it will continue to go down until it is just below 1% eventually. For POB, it follows the same deflation model as Bitcoin, with a capped supply of 21 million tokens (which won’t actually be reached because of burns) with a similar halving event every 4 years. In other words, the amount of new tokens issued on a yearly basis is currently decreasing. Thus, there are less tokens being distributed through the rewards pool, and it will be harder and harder to obtain stake through posting content.
To me, this makes perfect sense. I’ve never viewed the inflation-derived reward allocation through stake-based voting as a long term solution for content monetization. Rather, I see it as a method to enable the users of a platform to become co-owners and thus have an aligned incentive with the growth of a platform through participation. And where early adopters have that additional incentive to use a platform while it is still somewhat premature and can benefit from helping it grow. Thus I don’t see any problem in the fact that HIVE will sooner or later not be able to sufficiently reward a large userbase through the reward pool, but instead have to use the many benefits of its native currency to provide similar platform economic solutions as other web 2.0 platforms except with the added benefits blockchains provide (self-custody of accounts, p2p fee-less txs, transparency, potential for trustless smart contracts, etc).
What I am getting to with all of this is the fact that it may never get easier than it is today for users to acquire stake. Both because of the reduced inflation, but also because of potential higher competition. As prices goes up and more users flock to Hive or to a tribe to share their content, existing stakeholders will have more to choose from when curating. This will result in many receiving less upvotes whether in the form of lower percentages from active curators who then also choose to support more users, or from people no longer upvoting them as there are now better content made by others.
It may be a bit of a paradox that writing content when prices are high can end up being less rewarding than writing when prices are low. I think it is similar to how people seem to only want to buy a crypto or a stock after they have seen it go up a lot in value, as they want proof first that indeed it will go high in price. Similarly, people who wait to post good content and engage frequently on Hive or in tribes such as proof of brain or leofinance will find themselves obtaining less stake than those who were persistent also during the bear market or early stages of a new tribe. You may want to keep that in mind not only during the next cycle, but also today if you believe the price of these tokens will eventually increase. If the current price increases do indeed attract new people who then also want to compete for the same rewards, you may not be able to get your stake back as easily as you obtained it.
So don't get distracted by the moving prices, and put your money and your brain where you believe there is real value long term :)
Fredrik
In a way it does however in other ways it makes it easier. The fact that Hives price really has not moved much while Doge is now worth MORE per coin than Hive means if you had 1,000,000 Doge you could covert that into over a million Hive. I would say a million POB coins but that's not possible as I don't even think that many are out there yet.
POB being new means there is a short supply of it as well. As the platform gets older and older the more tokens there are to go around if they don't get locked up. It's an ever increasing supply with no real hard cut off. However the one nice thing about POB is that it will have a reduced supply every 4 years. A long time though if you ask me would have maybe like to have seen it yearly. Eventually what happens is demand catches up to the increasing supply and you start to get a tank in the price. I don't see that happening any time soon though for POB.
Your first point is imo less related to tokenomics and more about the fact that while coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum and even Dogecoin have been getting increasing name recognition and respect, Hive has remained almost entirely unknown. It's a failure of our own stakeholders in supporting and prioritizing growth more so than the inflation rate (which is lower for Hive than the staking rewards in Ethereum 2.0). So one has to control for that.
The point is that with more adoption + less inflation, it will be harder to get the token. Let's see if POB can succeed more than Hive in attracting and growing an active and committed userbase.
Very good points, POB I think is and will attract new people and engagement on the platform has been pretty much 10x compared to any other front end at the moment. Fully agree that all of us as token owners staked are invested and it's in our best interest to continue to spread awareness and get others involved. I've been doing that myself on many fronts but I don't really blog about it much as I don't see that really being a good post. Instead I like writing about hot button or hyped up information at the time to gain the most viewers from outside of hive on my articles.
You're right, people wants to only buy a coin when it seems to be going up in value, I bought a lot of my hive stake at 11 cent per hive because I knew even if it didn't rise in price I could still use it to curate and earn curation reward.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
This is an important point. There was always going to be a larger stake distribution during the early stages (technically still there now in the grand scheme of things) because there was hype, more discussions, and the content standard was finding its feet. It's not possible to quantify what was deemed as acceptable rewards on any real solid basis because nobody had a clue what we were really about.
I don't think people realise how reliable the consistent rewards are from commenting and engaging within the community, and if the time is spent mingling and getting to know other creators the stakes soon add up. Over time, with engagement within the community, you start to piece things together and you understand the platform more, which means it's easier to voice your opinion with quality and accuracy, which then helps with recognition (This is Proof Of Brain).
Posts are obviously a large factor in rewards and it can be hard to get recognition without having the solid basis of a following, but that's why the contests and projects like @amr008's engagement project help out in a big way for people to get the ball rolling.
My personal efforts to delegate and distribute liquid POB are purely based on the fact that I know if people show up and keep on track, they'll see benefits in the long run from the compounding interest of the whole situation. There was a great comment made by @onealfa on @interpretation's post, here, which showed the percentage weights for "what determines a whale" and I think it's a good reminder for anyone who is here in the present and looking to grow over time.
Although, who cares about being a whale, too much responsibility and pressure... just show up and do your thing, and hopefully people will appreciate what you have to say (hopefully, sometimes they don't as well, balance is good).
Exactly. I guess this adds to the point I am making in the post that for as long as I've been around here (4 years soon) people have complained about how those that came earlier than themselves had an unfair advantage (mostly referring to early miners or people posting during the 100% hyper inflation period on STEEM), not realizing that there could still be decades ahead of newer people looking at those people that day as the lucky ones. But again, people only want to spend time and grow their accounts once it has already proven to be successful, which of course is when it is typically less rewarding purely stake-wise.
I seen this better than most as the first thing I put out on this chain was a comment that got a pretty decent payout (especially considering I had 0 followers yet). Not only did it get good payouts, but the fact that I got some good followers from it was the main reason my introduction post not only did well, but went to trending and resulted in instant-fame for me (which itself was mind blowing, as I had established a set of expectations coming from the traditional bloggin sphere where it may take months to earn your first dollar and to get others than your mum and friends to read and comment because you shared them a link on Facebook and asked nicely). So commenting in an early stage of a community is not only key to get rewards, but also to build relationships and connections with others aspiring to build stake.
Haha, I recall being on one of those voice chats with Anrew Levine when he was still head of communications at Steemit and they were trying to get people optimistic about SMTs + Communities. He said that there would be different tokens for all kinds of different communities and that there would be "food whales" and "yoga whales". I remember just wondering how that could possibly have sounded attractive to people. Who wants to be a "yoga whale" and basically have the "job" of curating yoga content? Well, maybe some. To me, those ideas never seemed attractive.
I would rather see platform economic models where the success of a community's growth can come back to token HODLers through some kind of decentralized and autonomous dividends. Whether it is the buyback and burn program that LEO was doing with their ad revenue, or other more creative ways of capturing the value that the platform creates and distributing it in a trust-less way to token holders (I have more ideas for how to make that work than I can fit in to a comment so will have to be for another day).
In such a scenario, the ideal role of a whale should simply be to contribute to making the platform increasingly attractive for more people to join, spend time on through content posting, consumption and discussion etc.
You have made valid points ,
Such model if applied consistently will make the POB to grow and become more successful....@fredrikaa
Agreed. When you join a community early, there's going to be a lot more upside being able to shape the community and the rewards with some downside risk that the community fails.
But then again, a community can fail at any point, even longstanding ones... so people might as well join early.
There is a lot of truth in what you say, the best of all is that human beings tend to repeat behaviors .. And as everything is only a matter of time for us to realize who will really be those who resist the brain test and who Fail, everyone has equal opportunities, only persistence and perseverance can be useful in an endurance race!
You are right
As time goes on, and the value of POB goes up, it will get increasingly difficult to earn it
since most people who rather upvotes posts that have more values than the rest of the folks who will be farming for upvotes then
IT is better as you said, that we get it now, invest it, and wait, instead of waiting to get it then when the competition will increase
I already realized that. It really is getting more and more difficult, @fredrikaa. However, I see this as an extra incentive for me to continue writing and publishing quality posts.
You know... Go hard or go home.
True but we have no choice than to try has much has possible to make the rates of POB rise to the first on the table
A very valid point indeed.
Many only seem to climb on board as the stagecoach has left the town.
It is important to stake or invest early if you believe in a project as you stated it will only get harder as time, the platform and the price progresses.
Great though provoking article, makes you wanna get in their early and fill the wagon up Lol
It is wise for each person to do this at their own pace, but if we believe in @pob then now is a good time.
I have already began to stake my humble earnings and plan on improving apon this monthly and even possibly weekly, fingers crossed.
So much Truth about POB in what you have just said in the POST @fredrikaa...................
I am Liking Proof of Brain More and More Everyday............
Best Get my Hands on More Tokens ASAP
Yes, that's quite paradoxical. I've been on hive since 2017 and I've witnessed this first-hand, it's just something that I know. When the price is lower it means more vests and when it is lower you only get the backed dollar. Unfortunately for me, though, my most successful days on this blockchain was when the strrm price was high. I would have gotten more stake if not for that.
But well, at the same time we need these prices up! Nothing will ever make up for that😀
I'm not tempted at all even though PoB is well over 1 Hive at the moment. I've learned my lesson from past mistakes I made.
Early adopters of solid projects can steer the ship so that it sails smoothly. "don't get distracted by the moving prices" especially as they are compared to fiat. Staking all my POB earnings as mentioned.
This is an interesting phenomenon you've described here. It reminds of an economic tactic I thought was bizarre that I had read about where a country will actually devalue their dollar when they rely on a lot of exports to maintain their GDP