As economies across the world become uncertain and unstable, diversifying into crypto is appealing to more and more people. It ticks many boxes for a world where employment is often uncertain and automation threatens to take the place of workers. We're hearing more and more stories of people replacing their wages through crypto earnings.
With my husband and myself not getting any younger, but retirement goalposts moving further away each year, I decided I really need to pull my finger out and attempt to learn more about how earning and investing with crypto can work.
With the help of some of my fellow Australian Hivers I joined some groups and started asking questions. The biggest thing I learnt was that Hive already offers a broad range of opportunities to do the very things I began learning about. At that point I realised why it is often said that this platform is a gateway to cryptocurrency.
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Earning on Hive doesn't just have to be about content.
Day trading is a bit beyond me at this point. I have met someone who does it and he did try to explain it somewhat, but I've got a long way to go before I can wrap my head around it or gain the confidence for it. So I've been looking into the other opportunities available.
One of the biggest buzzwords currently going around is staking. Many people are sharing which coins offer the option to earn via staking and, of course, I immediately recognised that term. On Hive we can stake or power up Hive to lock it in as Hive Power (HP) which I gather earns around 2.5% purely from inflation (which is currently more than you'd likely get from fiat money in a bank account). So it will passively earn, even if we you nothing with it. Yet we also have an added bonus in that we can use our HP to upvote and reward content which will give us a curation return. The percentage return on this varies, depending on how you vote, but I've seen estimates of around 8%.
What affects your vote, or curation returns is when you vote and your Vote Power (VP) at the time of that vote. Currently a vote given in the first 24hrs of the content being published will return half of that reward to the curator upon payout of that content. Later votes will get less return, unless the post has yet to receive a vote. Each vote uses VP and as that power drops the reward you can give drops, which means your returns will also decline. So is worthwhile keeping an eye on your VP levels, above 80% is usually recommended to keep it recharging at an optimal level.
Our stable coin, Hive Backed Dollars (HBD), can also be staked in the form of savings. While we are only locking it up for three days using this method, it currently has the best return in interest at 20%, which you can claim monthly. This is similar to having money in a bank savings account, so it's likely familiar to all of us.
The next interesting term I came across was yield farming. Someone was saying that his wife had replaced her income with crypto earnings and when I asked how, his response was ""yield farming for the win." Naturally I looked it up and essentially it's locking away or lending your coins for a return. Staking is one method of doing this and when renting was mentioned I realised that we also have this available for Hive. With the option to delegate we can lend our HP out, either for free, or to projects wanting to "rent" it for a return. We actually have quite a few of these projects and it's merely up to us to choose which ones we wish to lend/delegate to. Most are committed to rewarding a wide range of posts, but they each have different policies which you may want to look at before choosing which ones to support.
The ones that are probably the most open about what they are doing are @ocd, @curangel, @tipu and @ecency. You can go to their pages or sites to read more on what their goals are. Some others are @qurator and @appreciator; while it says on their page that you'll get a return for delegating I couldn't find out much else on them. I'm sure there are many more, please feel free to mention them in the comments and add information on any of them. The returns from these projects are usually higher than what you could make through personal curation, but you relinquish your decision on who benefits from that vote to the account using your delegation.
I realise that returns from delegating are still not as good as putting HBD into savings, so why not just convert it all to HBD and put it in savings? After all, it's even quicker to get it back from savings than from HP. Well, there are drawbacks and benefits to both.
Payouts from staking, curation and rental delegations receive returns daily. They accumulate as HP for inflation and curation, immediately increasing your investment to gain further interest. The rental returns will be liquid, so you can choose to use it like it's an income or power it up to increase investment. With HBD savings you can only claim once a month and if you decide to take it out then interest will stop being calculated on that amount the moment you request it back and it will be tied up for the next three days without earning.
Also, any Hive in savings as HBD is not being used within the Hive eco-system, so it will do nothing to help support the Hive blogging community. While it may seem like the gains from being involved in the blogging community are purely charitable, it's more complex than that. People who choose to invest in that side of things want to see it succeed, so they tend to preference supporting others who are also contributing to that eco-system by keeping powered up and actively voting. So your returns will also come back via your blogging and interactions. Even the best content creators will eventually lose support if they give nothing back to the eco-system that's been supporting them. Those who need to use Hive earnings to support themselves outside of Hive do the best when they have that give and take in good balance.
Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)
NFTs are the next big thing and, yes, we can even have a slice of that pie without leaving the Hive blockchain. I'm pretty sure there are a few options available, I know that Hive Punks were very popular on their release, but the ones I've rather taken to have been the Splinterlands ones. I don't really get the appeal of NFTs for the most part; I guess it's something like investing in art and if the picture doesn't appeal to you then it has no value to you personally. However, with Splinterlands being a Play to Earn game, each NFT/card has a use within that game, so I see more value in that than if it was just a pretty, collectible card. I also know that a limited amount of them will be minted, so once minting stops, they will only go up in value as demand increases, which I see as a good investment that I'm unlikely to lose out on long term. Then just like with Hive, I can also practise some yield farming by renting out my Splinterlands cards for a return if I'm not using them myself.
Diversifying without stepping off the chain
Something that a lot of crypto gurus recommend is not putting all your eggs into one basket and diversifying. Okay, I realise I'm actually currently not doing this by sticking to the Hive blockchain, but talk of things like gas fees on coins like Ethereum make me a bit nervous about just jumping into other cryptocurrencies. Then having gone through the experience of seeing first hand an exchange using people's funds to help take over a blockchain, as happened in the Steem take over, also makes me a bit nervous about getting an account on an exchange. Having said that, there is no getting away from the fact that ETH is a very popular coin and blockchain that's been doing a lot. So it's hard to not want to look at picking some up. I realised that I can still play around with trying other coins from my comfort zone, though, with Hive Engine, or Tribaldex, which seems to be becoming the more popular front-end for this exchange.
Hive Engine originally started out as a place to create and buy tokens for communities which are connected to the Hive blockchain. It's come an incredibly long way since then, however, and now you can invest in swap versions of some of the other well known coins which can then be sent to corresponding wallet addresses, if you choose to, or just converted back to Hive. Off the top of my head BTC, LTC and ETH swap are all available.
I'm not sure what my next steps will be from here, but I feel like it might be ones to take me from my Hive comfort zone, unless anyone can tell me about some more opportunities I might be missing here. 😉
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Love this one, I meant to come back the other day when I saw it! I think that hive is definitely a great gateway cryptocurrency! We have so many things that when I see people shilling shit coins that have fees and other things like that, I’m very hesitant to dip into that because a lot of them are Ponzi schemes in all honesty. Take a look at Luna right now lol.
I know that hive isn’t perfect and has its own issues but it’s such a wonderful way to experience the way things could be with crypto and how things shift towards that direction. There is so much opportunity to be had and it’s as complicated as one can want it to be! Want to jump into dev for a crypto? There’s lots to help guide you so you can get your first project off the ground.
Overall this is a great environment to get exposure to crypto!
I didn't know that, but I guess it makes sense. This is the best thing about combining crypto and blogging, I guess. The community side of it brings everyone together to share their experiences and interests, even if a lot of that is so did on discord.
I'd never even heard of Luna until this last week. What a way to learn about it! Hopefully it's something to be learn from for other cryptocurrencies.
I now have a bettee understanding of voting and how reward is gotten.
This is wonderful post needed at this time.
thanks for sharing
Cheers
Glad it was useful.
In a bear season, curation plus posting rewards are a pretty good way to keep momentum, but I love how many opportunities are available on the chain.
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Absolutely!
Also good to have other opportunities when there are whale wars...which was actually what prompted me to start thinking outside of content and curation. That what if you get caught in the crossfire...🤔
I have had disagreements with a few of the whales, most of them can have a reasonable conversation. For the few who can't I just completely ignore their presence whether they are talking to me or not. It keeps me from getting entangled in that mess.
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Seems like a sound enough approach. No-one is going to agree on everything anyway.
A big difference from a few years ago. Things are expanding rapidly.
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Very nice summary of curation rewards. I tend to spend more time on the Splinterlands side as far as investment. Card rentals are normally a good investment, but of course this week, there may be no good investment! The most difficult part of cards is tracking your purchase price versus the actual return. While peakmonsters does a nice job of following the market, I am still looking for an individual product other than my spreadsheet. Hopefully, those goal posts will pull in closer to you in the next few years instead of pushing away from you!
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Yes, my timing as I wrote this wasn't great. I was determined to finish it, though. This have been worse on the Hive price front, though, so there is a good chance of recovery.
Splinterlands for me is about the play first and foremost, so I don't buy for rent, but to improve my teams. The cards I rent out tend to be ones in doubled up on with regards standard and good foil. I keep hold of the highest level one and rent the other. Not the most professional way of monitoring returns. 😅 I can say that my Splinterlands account has grown faster than my Hive one value wise, though. 😁
The hive blockchain is more than a blogging platform with so many opportunities surrounding it for every individuals to succeed which requires the steps they take in achieving that. Like you said rewards is not only gotten from making contents but also can be gotten from investing tokens and then curating contents which is really amazing as a blockchain to witness such opportunities and impact it have in changing situations positively.
I believe the blockchain is a platform where you don't only earn but also learn which also have impact in our personal lives which is also a bonus in achieving benefits in two sides. The Hive blockchain is awesome and this have attracted more individuals to be part of the blockchain to also benefit from the impact it offering.
Thanks for sharing I appreciate every part of it.
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The Hive blockchain certainly does attract a lot of people, but it's a steep learning curve that many don't make it through. I am a very slow learner, so it took a lot of persistence to get to this point. My old brain isn't as quick as it used to be. 😅
Lol but the most important thing is at least there is something you would still gain while on the platform
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Has sido curado por @visualblock / You've been curated by @visualblock
Bienvenidas delegaciones / Delegations welcome
Encuentra nuestra comunidad aquí / Find our community here
Trail de Curación / Curation Trail
Hive Engine is also good to generate passive income. You can stake and delegate many of the tokens there, similarly to the main chain.
This is true. I was thinking of mentioning that, but it was getting a bit long winded and off track, so I thought I'd try and keep it on the one track for this post. I could also do with experimenting a bit more there myself. I mostly just have everything staked.
Excellent post and I've certainly learned something from this as there were some aspects of Hive I wasn't sure about. Keep up the great work :-)
Thank you and I'm glad it was useful to you.
HIVE is addictive 😁
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Lol! It sure is a great little comfort zone to be addicted to! 😁
I wish I'd seen this post earlier, it would have saved me a bit of research time and I could have voted it up too.
Lol! I think you've delved into the tokens side much more than I, so I might be picking your brains there.
It's all been pretty much a waste of effort. I have had fun identifying patterns in the whole mess though but don't have enough money to make it worthwhile. Too many ups and downs to interest me, give me a garden any day.
It's one reason that I haven't done a lot with @lotuscoin yet. I'm trying to make it something of value, not just another reward coin that can be speculated on. I'm also seeking a way to give it value outside of Hive. There are so many of what are called by bitcoiners 'shitcoins' that have no value and have lost sight of what the token economy is about at it's heart, which is giving value for people who are involved in projects. There's a long way to go yet and most of that is swimming against the tide of speculation and easy money. To me, there's no point in having 10K of a token and that 10K being worth $0.23 like my stake in Hustler dollars (yes, I have that lol).
If you have any ideas, please let me know...
I don't know the nitty gritty about how monetary value is increased in the tokens, but it seems to be mostly about supply and demand. There's no getting around the fact that value equates to fiat money, so it's how willing people are to exchange it for their fiat. Unless, of course, you can unhook it from fiat and get another value to link it to.
River used to burn lotus regularly from the community account as part of the effort to increase value. She had some help from someone as well in that department, so maybe you could ask her about him.
Crypto and many kinds of trade will only free us up once we stop trying to give them a dollar value. But that ain't going to happen in our lifetime unless Russia is successful in unpegging oil prices from the USD. Then we'll have the option of switching to gold backed currency and not one that folks can print willy nilly. If MMT makes more inroads too, things will be better on that front.
I'm going to peg @lotuscoin to a corn backed Ruble/Yuan hybrid. Corn because its the biggest commodity out there and food prices are linked to oil prices (as my upcoming post on the food shortage will explain) and with oil on the way out and the false promise of biofuels on the way in, I reckon corn is the commodity to hold to. Ruble/Yuan because, while both Russia and China are expanding their global economic clout, China imports most of their food while Russia is pegged to be a net exporter once global weirding kicks in fully buy 2030 so China will import most of their wheat from Russia and will be most reliant on their services for food and fuel. I see a symbiotic Russia/China partnership taking over where the dying US empire once was effective. @lotuscoin will be the only one taking advantage of this scenario.
I wish I had a lot more attention to the diversification opportunities here on Hive. Felt sensible going off-chain at some point. But Hive literally has EVERYTHING.
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It doesn't seem that long ago that it was just the bare bones. A lot of people have done some amazing things here to get us to this point.
True. The investment opportunities here weren't this many a few years ago.
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There's different ways to earn money in Hive. What we need is concentration.
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I'm a slow learner, but persistence certainly goes a long way.
Ok
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Hive is always full of opportunities that gives you alot of good options to choose from,I enjoy curating creating content alot,but this time around I think I am more of curation .
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When you account balance is still small, curation is certainly the best approach of these methods. It's going to help with building connections too. A comment with a vote says you're interested and engaged, even if your vote is still small.
I am glad you are doing the necessary research to understand all the aspects and options on Hive and blockchains in general, Thank you for sharing your findings!
You're welcome. How have you been going on learning the ins and outs on Hive? Did you know much about Crypto before you joined?
Thank you for being patient with my late reply! I had an inkling of knowledge on Crypto regarding Bitcoin but I really delved into info about the different type of 'proof'ings and what each cryptocurrency was based on when I joined Hive. I did much of my learning on Youtube and Google searches on trusted websites and only checked out videos and articles about 'Cryptocurrency', 'What is (COIN)', and 'How does (X) work?' made within one year so the information was recent.
I wrote down everything of interest (A lot!) because there is no way I would be able to retain this knowledge just by seeing it once. Thank you for asking and I hope the explanation of my process helps you out.
Hive is simply a gift that keeps giving. The opportunities for growth are incredible, and you’ve done a fine job learning and researching about them for yourself.
I recently learned about the tokens I’ve accumulated on my hive engine wallet and I was so happy. Yield farming is the next project I’ve been meaning to venture into. Not only can you stake Leo tokens on polygon but hive(Phive) and recently Phbd can now be added to liquidity pool for some juicey APR. Incredible stuff.
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Polygon is a new word for me! Something else to look into now, thank you. 🙂
All benefits to what Hive is and how things are expanding.
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There are developers doing some amazing things on here. It's impressive.
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Great read!
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absolutely one of the best onramps
Agreed, although I've actually not heard it mentioned as a gateway since I first started back on Steem.
same
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Thank you so much for sharing all this information.
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This is a great and very informative post for people like me that is kinda new to hive. I've been a player/investor in splinterlands for about 1 year but i just recently explored the other opportunities under hive ecosystem. I have learned a lot from this post. I'm looking forward to increase more my hive power and maximize the potential to earn more aside from
Great article, lots of info, thanks.
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great !