My mother had a lot of handbags and shoes, and other than one time as a three or four year old where I dressed in a pair of her heels and put on some bright red lipstick, I was more into the handbags. While I do have pretty good taste in accessories and women's clothing, the thing that interested me the most about the bags, was what was in them.
Change
One of my brother's and I would rummage through them all, looking for coins and back then, there were copper 1 and 2 cent pieces that were common to find, a few fives and if we were really lucky, some 10s, 20, and the holy grail of a 50 cent piece. We didn't do this to stick into our piggybank - in fact, neither of us had a piggy bank. Instead, what we wanted was candy.
We would collect what we could scrounge together and then walk the two kilometers to the local petrol station and buy "mixed lolly bags" - handmade collections of random candy that were packaged in white paper bags. Back then, a dollar would buy quite a solid pack and was plenty for the three of us - my little sister included.
Good times.
While this didn't do much for any of our health, nor did it do anything for teaching us how to save money, what it did do is reinforce the lesson that in order to have what we wanted, we needed money to get it and some way to get that money. Since we couldn't earn, we had to find another way. In a household that didn't have candy available often, going through this process whenever my parents were out and we were looking after ourselves, felt like working for something we wanted. Some might call this work "theft" - but it wasn't like our mother was going to be paying anything with the shrapnel at the bottom of her bags.
Still to this day, I get a sense of accomplishment through working for an income, but this doesn't mean that I don't embrace other ways. While I don't want to do nothing for money, I do understand the importance of generating alternate sources of income that are largely more passive, so that while I am working, my money is also working for me in tandem, making what I earn more valuable over time.
I think that this is something everyone should consider in regards to their investments, as we have no natural intuition for the power of compounding, especially when it is happening over longer periods of time. As we are increasingly living in an instant gratification environment, we have less availability of opportunity to learn the rules and retrain our intuition, especially since our attention gravitates to the here and now and instant desire satisfaction points.
This is the daily chart on BTC.
All year, it has been travelling sideways in this range, despite the ups and the downs today, we are pretty much in the middle of that range still. Is the bull over and the bear beginning? I don't think so, as the breakout bull hasn't even arrived yet, making this the lamest bull cycle if that is the case. If it is the case however, I won't be too upset overall, as this is not what I have been collecting for - this is not the bag of candy.
So far, this year has been largely like when I was a kid, rummaging through my mother's handbags collecting coins. I have been doing it in several ways with investments into CUB and Splinterlands for example and have been consistently increasing my holdings, even though prices on both are going down. The reason is that since I am a crypto believer, I take the approach that even if I overpay for something today, it is going to be affected by the compounding of time and when the moment does come to walk to the corner store, what I have collected will be worth more than what I paid, especially if I am able to earn more on it while collecting. Rather than being able to get a dollar bag of candy, perhaps I will have been able to collect enough to get $1.50 worth instead.
A lot of people laugh at "bagholders" in the past, but bag-holding is definitely not what it used to be, now that there are more ways to increase the token stack during the downward and slow times, without buying or selling. This means that at least with the right tokens, once the bull cycles do come around, the bagholders will start to see their value climb at a faster rate than what their starting holdings might have indicated.
For example, while people scoff at the 10% yield on Hive curation, it really depends on when you bought it and how long you have kept it activated. For example, 10,000 HIVE POWER at the start of the year was around $1100 dollars worth - now it is around $14,000 worth. But in that time, the HP could have earned about another 1000 HIVE in rewards, with a value of $1400, worth 300 more than the initial investment. A few weeks ago at the ATH of HIVE ,it would have been an extra $3,400 worth, 3x gain on the starting capital, even though it is only 10% of the initial tokens.
Candy Income
Of course, that is more like my candy money for the next half decade, but the concept is the same. Quite often, people are so unwilling to hold through the bear, that they forget that there will be bulls and once they do arrive, they are trapped largely coinless, having spent their gains at the highs on whatever they did, but most never finding a low "low-enough" to enter into the market again. I think that now with more people moving into yield farming, this will be less of an issue in the next bullrun, but it will also mean that the lows aren't as low, as more people are staking rather than selling to secure their gains. This ultimately helps the yield farmers earn more too, while the no-coiners are waiting to buy in.
With the latest dips, I have used the BUSD I have to combine with CUB into the pool there, as I figure that adding occasionally into something that has a 110% APY isn't such a silly idea, especially with the coming (one day) PolyCub contracts and airdrops.
For me, a large "payday" would be brilliant, but ultimately, I don't want to then have to worry about what I am going to do with what I have so it doesn't all just get whittled away. I am planning on taking a wider hybrid approach to make sure that while I might miss immediate gains, I will have a steady stream of trickle income and multipliers working for me, so three or four years from now, the candy money collected will be significantly boosted by the compounding interest of time in the crypto markets. Of course, this isn't all exactly "set and forget", yet it is still semi-passive and is manageable while I am earning doing other things, like my IRL jobs.
We all have our own paths though and this might all collapse into nothing and I will be one of those lamenting investors complaining about what could've been, but at least - there are some coins in the bottom of the bags still, so the candy run is still on.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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50c worth of mixed lollies used to be insane. The little white paper bag, with the teeth, the racing cars etc. It was probably 3c worth of sugar; but as a kid, damn.
Walking to the shops (only 100m away for me), picking out the lollies; handing over the money, it was a big deal.
Yep - they are the ones!
I think there are lessons in that somewhere - I am hoping that my daughter will do the same, though they don't seem to do it anymore, at least here. Everything is supermarket and branded. There are probably laws against people "selling separately" or something.
Bliss is just a few more rules away.
We lived down the street from a store that sold penny candy, it was awesome. We would walk there and grab some as well lol. Thankfully my teeth haven't rotted out of my skull from those unfortunate choices!
It's good and important to have lots of those bags! I am very grateful for Hive and all of the opportunities it has presented me with, both on the knowledge perspective and the various streams of small bits of income as the platform grows and develops. There are many different ways to get to the end-goal of financial stability but one of the things that's remarkable is the different possible streams that we have available to us. It's also given me exposure to investing in other projects outside of our ecosystem here by just connecting me with people that have info and perspectives on them. Solana seems to be a pretty good one!
In years past, it was restricted to bank bonds, savings accounts and stocks. Granted there were certainly others like precious metals and resources like oil but that was very much restricted to a select few that could access those investment opportunities. With crypto, there are so many different ways to get to something. Live in the US and can't access a foreign exchange? Use a VPN! I like that there are many opportunities to make an income and all of those small bags add up to a pretty good portfolio. I think this is vital to us as everyday citizens, it reduces the grip of the crazy powers-that-shouldn't-be have over people when they aren't absolutely reliant on one income.
This is what surprises me the most - I should look like a crack addict ;D
It is quite interesting that because we are generally pretty open with how we speak about investing, many people end up connecting and helping other get involved. No guarantees in the investments themselves, but i think that is a critical step for the future of economics.
Hurdles to economic empowerment - rally shouldn't be a thing...
It is getting harder I hear, but at the same time there is the "where there's a will, there's a way" attitude on the internet and, especially in crypto.
Through my almost 5 years in crypto, I have tested several services as the very first year I was willing to test everything I could in order to learn. I keep track of all my assets but several of them have gone down in price as the project did not succeed. A couple of times though I have experienced finding a nice amount of assets in a wallet I had completely forgotten about and even if it is a small amount, finding something you don't expect is a fantastic feeling.
This year I have been putting some earnings into different DeFi services to have additional income streams, it is true that sometimes as the market goes down it seems it may not be worth it, but when you experience a nice market spike, those earned tokens make the whole difference.
I always try to think about the value of crypto earnings a few years ahead of today's value and for those projects which succeed, the value increase of your assets makes a nice difference.
It is indeed. Sometimes, those amounts aren't so small either :)
And they are quietly accumulating there - out of sight and out of mind. This means that they are less "stressful" to hold in my opinion.
I am consolidating into things that I can see being here in five or ten years time still. There aren't that many!
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This is a great metaphor.
Thank you :)
That was what I wanted to do, but I missed the dip in the beginning of this year. Perhaps, I can do this time if it comes to $1-$1.10.
This is why i like to buy more randomly, so I always have something. Of course, scheduled buying is probably the best way to mitigate missing out.
Nice story and one I can relate to. Unless grandma and grandpa came to visit, the only way I and my sister had to get our candy money was scraping the house for those precious coins.
The compounding effect is really something we have a hard time grasping and even more so on crypto. I'm new on Hive and I must admit I have been lacking in activity lately but still when I look at what I built during this 1 year I've been here I'm really thrown back by the potential that this network - and crypto in general - has.
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Do you remember that whilst working together, you were far less likely to fight?
It is interesting that people call new ! year now - some used to think they were old-hat after a month :) The potential is mammoth here and as you say, crypto in general. All of these little bits of participation will add up to something awesome I believe.
I kind of moved away from holding/trading crypto towards staking/curating. I think there are few tokens here on hive that can go up in the future and in general hive itself will probably get bigger
I am hoping the network effect will start driving all kinds of Hive assets upward. It doesn't take much, just timing and a little luck :)
I completely agree with you. Just fill the bags according to your financial status and let it roll. A few bucks for free is as atleast for a free coffee one day.
Well, at the rate of inflation at the moment... :D
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I remember the days where my siblings and I bought Guldens ( Dutch currrency pre Euro ) worth of candy - all kinds of different ones - each little one costing 5 cents. We were serious bagholders, back then, but emptied them almost as fast as we fillled them.
I believe this took place soon after receiving pocket money though. Our mom was very strict with sugar consumption so much so that we sometimes tried to eat from the sugarpot when she wasn't noticing.
Nice analogy!
I am better at holding and filling my bag of 'candies' these days. My body doesn't react to sugar too well ;^)
:D
There are three types of people - buyers, sellers and eaters.
In the picture there are those little sprinkles. In Australia (where I am originally from) they make a thing called "fairy bread" which is white bread with butter and those sprinkles on top.
We didn't have white bread or sprinkles - we didn't even have white sugar. We did it with wholemeal bread and brown coffee sugar! :D
Mine either - but I have a full set of sweet teeth that don't seem to care.
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I never thought of it that way before but yo are dashed right, bag holding is not such a bad thing anymore as we can get returns on a lot of bags and make them work! Take that 2018!
Yep - screw 2018 - what a crap year that was. However, those 2018 bags are doing okay (some of them) in 2021 as earners :)
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This is quite interesting, using a candy story when young to analyze crypto process at the moment. It is different kind of people we are definitely going to see that are involve in crypto because not all have the mind to take risk either can they even hold on to their token when the price is going down, all they want is a little increase and after then boom! they withdraw which is not to really enjoy candy in the crypto world.
For me at least, I need to have stories I can visualize and connect with in order to understand more complex processes. It helps a lot.
People generally sell crypto too early - at least in hindsight.
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Bitcoin could go down to $ 40,000, but I also believe that it is the right time to accumulate and get busy on HIVE
40K is only 20% away - that is a 24h correction in crypto :)
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I‘m not sure to where DEFI is actually headed, it still behaves like a game. APY in a foreign Token is worth the world or worth nothing, depending on how others perceive that Token over time.
I’ve stopped doing endless dives in shallow waters. If it looks interesting and ain’t about to fall apart tomorrow, I consider it worth a shot. Some of the projects I recently entered are beyond 100.000.000% APY. To me it doesn’t matter, 100, 1000, 100000000 is all the same, what matters is the Market alone. If everyone got 100% APY a year and the Token dropped 90%, that’s bad. While 100m APY and the Token dropped 90%, that’s great! Demand meeting Supply, day after day, creating effective results.
My life is not a zero sum game, time will not heal everything, I better get ahead asap.
They will have to start adding value to them in various ways, like all tokens in the future. For me, it gives me the chance to convert to something I do have more faith in.
Interesting, Robert Breedlove called it moving stored value to a point of higher potential, subjectively of course.
It is subjective. For example, Hive doesn't have the highest return, but it is definitely the one I use the most.
Hive offers what people seek with NFTs on other chains. Visible reputation and social status. That’s also stored value, we just don’t really know how to quantify or utilize it properly yet. That could change with HAS. Using a well reputable HIVE Account on others Chains or Platforms might turn out to insanely powerful.
Man... going through bags was definitely a rewarding childhood habit... :D
As of now, all I had is already in and I'm just waiting for the next FOMO to kick... It's awesome that you're still taking in some good positions at this time...
It doesn't feel like it was that long ago I was still doing it - though not for candy money :D
FOMO is never far away :)
Hell yeah man... I can already smell it. ;)
It's happens my nephew do the same so we have to hive cosmetics from him
lol - it is good to experiment :)
Agree we had our fun when he did it at the age of 3
A bag holder here :)
Holding nearly 900k hive powered up. Won’t sell at $1 won’t sell at 10 cents. $10? Maybe
Also now holding 750K SPS staked
You hold a few bags around the place :)
$10 dollars is tempting - though I can't see myself selling everything ever and I do see myself buying more than what I sold back at the lows with HIVE.
Your evaluations about the investments we made with Hive have been very explanatory. Thank you.
Glad it helps
It was not long ago that 1 Hive would buy 2.5 HBD, and I was buying a few HBD with Hive when Hive was up there in ATH range, not a lot because I wanted to get to my 10,000 HP, which I did. But I did not let my goal get in the way of trying to get a little extra, so I was also able to pretty cheaply get 100 HBD in savings and still have a little left to play with to reconvert to HIVE at the right time. Yesterday and today are the right time for me.
It is not major increase, but being able to get 1 HIVE for 1.37 HBD is a bargain for me. That 2.5 HBD that cost 1 HIVE now buys 1.73 Hive. Small gain, but still a gain.
Even though we know candy is not that good for us now, at least back then as kids we walked or rode the candy off in the hunt for it. Now-a-days, mom or dad drives the kid to the store, gives the kid the money, and lets the kid buy the candy with no work involved at all.
I used to like riding around hunting for returnable soda bottle and then trading them in on a nice cold RC Cola.
Whatever you need to tell yourself XD
It's usually my kids that are throwing coins in the bottom of the bag, they ask if they can have money for whatever and I say sure just grab it out of the wallet, they grab it out of the wallet but while they could be bothered grabbing the wallet to get the money out they sure as hell can't be bothered getting it back out to put the change in XD Both they and I have managed to scrape enough together for the "medically required" chocolate bar when we're late at gym and the little black holes suddenly realise they didn't eat enough before going.
And just like your candy change I'm sure there's an investment analogy in there somewhere.
unlike your candy change I don't think we could have ever gotten that much for that much, everything had to be flown in where I'm from so everything was always expensive
Hey @tarazkp, sorry to jump in off-topic.
Your support for our proposal this year has been much appreciated but it will end in a few days!
Do you mind renewing your vote for 2022 so the team can keep up with its work? Thank you!
https://peakd.com/me/proposals/199