"You need about 100 HP to get through the day if you're an active user. That is not an insignificant amount."
And yet is is. 20 bucks or so...
It isn't given sufficient users. Do the math. A million users needing to buy 50 to 100 HP would vacuum 50 to 100 million HIVE off the market. The total supply is about 380 million at the moment. 200 million HIVE are liquid.
The only reason to hold more Hive is to expect price appreciation and get more rewards from curation. Tell me what other utility does the token currently have?
I just told you. But I should also add the opportunity to buy digital assets such as Splinterland cards. They all have trading pairs with HIVE on the internal markets.
"That's a misunderstanding. A blockchain must have a native token to reward block producers to run the nodes."
That is not. Blockchain does not have to have any token per say to function properly as long as there are block producers that validate and secure the chain. Tokens have been introduced as a form of incentive so people make up their minds to spend their resources to support one chain or another. In case of bitcoin it's a bit different as it had to mint new Bitcoins as it's primary function is to serve as currency.
A private and permissioned blockchain does not need a native token. A public and permissionless one does. You can't run a Byzantine fault tolerant consensus mechanism without incentives. You can't do that trustlessly by using another blockchain or a set of bank accounts (sic) if your rewards are paid in fiat!
Nevertheless, there is no set rule for a blockchain to run to have a native token. If some people would be so altruistic and run nodes for free, let's say to maintain a network of censorship free site for the news to ensure freedom of speech it could be perfectly run without any token. But it seldom happens because most people are
hypocritical fucks.
Exactly. For a public and permissionless blockchain you need a Byzantine fault tolerant consensus mechanism. In PoS and DPoS, staking coins allows you to directly validate blocks (PoS) or vote for blockvalidators (DPoS).
The whole idea that decentralization and trustlessness (= the entire point of decentralization) is possible without cryptocurrency is simply false. Private blockchains are either owned by a single entity (and thus pointless) or run by a consortium of a sort and thus require trust and by extension lawyers and the police to enforce the rules (and thus pointless).