It's a tough one for sure. Virality definitely is the "luck" factor of any successful web technology. It's such a difficult thing to quantify though. I think that as @thatkidsblack mentioned, Malcolm Gladwell made an attempt at this, but I haven't read it yet.
Once an account has enough Hive to get the resources they need to post what they want to post, they don't really actually need any more Hive, and so they can sell everything they earn from there.
I think you're underestimating the power of human greed, but I could be wrong. There are plenty of wealthy people in the world that continue to seek wealth despite being set for life.
In any case, thanks for the thorough reply.
That's actually my point... when people have enough Hive resources to post regularly, then they can sell everything they earn from there, converting it to their local currency and buying things in the real world. I think greed from selling off Hive tokens is almost always going to outweigh the greed of accumulating Hive power for votes, etc.
I think this means there will always be significant daily selling pressure of Hive... and I'm not sure if there is ever going to be a reason for buying pressure to outweigh it.
I get that. I was saying that maybe they'll just keep accumulating. There's always that keeping up with the "Jones'" attitude. However, I do agree that this diminishes greatly when there isn't a sufficient value proposition. But, maybe not, look at meme coins. Usually the consensus I get from the average person pertaining to meme coins is the huge supply and "what if they all reach a dollar" attitude.
Who knows though?
I think to illustrate your point I'd be interested in what percentage of their stake that a large stakeholder normally sells vs. a smaller positioned account.
I'm sitting here trying to think of ways to build some utility on Hive. (Hopefully that's enough to increase the value proposition.)
I think the way to build utility on Hive is really just to create more dApps that use the Hive blockchain that allows people to post on-chain. You could take a percentage of their rewards, and you'd also need resource credits to allow them to post.
I definitely agree that memecoins have an appeal with the crypto public because of greed. People want to get in early and then sell at whatever the "top" is... without really thinking about who might end up holding a worthless bag at the end. They are purely get-rich-quick schemes that people knowingly go into, hoping the get out fast enough to "win".
Like $BEN right now... Bitboy and the maker will do well, so so so many people are going to lose money.
I'm not sure the memecoin mentality really reaches Hive though... if you look up the Makeup or Travel communities on Hive, I think most of the posters there are cashing out their Hive continuously. I'm just not sure many people are competing in who holds the most HP. Hive is just a way for most users to earn from posting.
I think this graph shows that more Hive is powered down than powered up:
source