"how much enjoyment you get from posting and interacting with other users"
This is currently my major reason for sticking around (excuse my lack of blogs recently that's life and nothing to do with Hive).
Mine, too. Recently, my earnings have been very good compared to most other Hive users. But they alone a far cry from enough to justify the time spent from a purely financial perspective.
"If I look at my earnings and the time spent earning them, it is absolutely clear that it has not made any sense from an economic perspective."
Truth, this does present problems for Hive, since it's actually profitable for some people. There is often a difference in the quality, but one day or another someone will need to devise a solution if none just appears.
I'm not following you now. Could you please clarify?
I often wonder how to make a lot of money off hive without speculating about future value. If I blog every day or do a few good ones, I can easily earn around 100 Hive a week in rewards. Right now that's not enough to live from in most developed countries, but at 5$ per Hive it would be a meagre option.
If the price hits $5, it will happen near the end of the next bull run and it will crash hard afterwards. The price will go back to under a dollar but possibly not much if BTC bottoms out at $50,000 or thereabouts in 2024/2025. It is all driven by the BTC mining reward halving schedule. What else?
One advantage at high prices is curation rewards earned are stable, there won't be a sudden massive influx of HP or vests. However, let's assume curation needs to be reinvested to not fall behind.
While author rewards are shared among more people as more posts are made. Earning 100 a week may become even harder. I may only be able to earn 30 Hive a week under that situation. Who knows really?
If you live in a developed country, the worst possible thing you can do with your Hive earnings is to cash them out immediately without reinvesting them during a bear market when the price of HIVE is so low that you're getting peanuts in fiat terms.
Imagine if you had a second job delivering ads the main motive of which were you getting cardio. You earned a little bit of money that you did not need for living but the catch was that your earnings were paid in tokens that had the possibility of spiking x50 to x100 in value if you waited for 1-2 years. Why on Earth would you do that if you really didn't need the money right away?
Of course you can choose to invest in some other project than Hive.
I was referring to the fact that for people from developing countries, blogging on Hive is profitable and perhaps even lucrative. This may present unique challenges in terms of the authors it will attract and the content that will be created. Tasteem was a great example to illustrate this point. I mean did you find the reviews of cafes and working-class restaurants from the suburbs/non-tourist areas of developing megacities valuable? They made up the bulk majority. We also find this problem with travel dapps. I'm guilty myself of posting things that would only ever attract very niche interest.
I agree, moving them into other high-risk speculative assets (other cryptos) this could be a great hedging strategy. SMTs will make it more likely that this will stay within the Hive ecosphere.