Just some of the many odd thoughts I've had over the last months.
Some who speak about wanting lower prices have gone silent now, either that or they say prices will go even lower so they're trying to "time it".
There's been a few users correctly predicting we'll hit sub 5 cents, something I obviously didn't expect as I've been buying and powering up all the way since 70 cents down to 20 cents, now just looking to power up random earnings here and there. Yet they're suddenly gone now, either not interested in buying or thinking it'll drop lower.
The blocks keep on being produced however and inflation keeps on being directed by those remaining staked.
Some kept complaining that participating in governance is too expensive and that a few hold too much power and can control the DHF as they wish, etc. Yet now that their power, in terms of usd at least, has been diminished quite a lot, to the point where simply powering up 50m HP, less than what @lazy-panda has in his savings, could lead to one actor singlehandedly pushing proposals past the return proposal to pass today.
To give you another example, one of the biggest holders, @blocktrades, who has roughly 32m HP in their proxy vote or $1.25m in today's value, used to have ~$100m that they held through at the top of the market. Now it seems they haven't been increasing their stake in terms of buying cheap hive, which technically gives anyone the opportunity to buy more to "compete" if you will with his voting decisions or HP APR, but none are doing so.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that no one is stepping up, I'm merely looking at things from my own perspective. If I had been smarter about when I bought Hive back or about having more eggs in the basket, I'd never question buying more Hive here, in fact I would've probably made the same mistakes and bought way earlier. Would I buy here if I still could however? Yes.
Now that may just be me, and a few other stakeholders I know still here and active and who've also shown signs of buying more Hive at lower prices. But it does make me wonder why others don't seem to see this as the same opportunity that I would.
Is crypto dead? Did AI kill it?
Those are weird questions to me, for one because the former has always been asked anytime we've been in similar situations and two because the latter I think works really well with crypto.
Mainly however because things in the world still remain unchanged. Freedom of speech hasn't improved much, community notes are a joke on that one platform you may be thinking of when you hear "freedom of speech", and they're still banning people for certain views and content while allowing outrageous clickbait to grow rampant. I wonder what the former owners of Twitter think about it today. Similar to its "competitor" bluesky things have been a lot more centralized and anti-freedom of speech than one could've expected given how big game they talked about decentralized tech starting out. The rest of the social media platforms have just become corporations chasing AI because that's where the money is now while disregarding how it affects users, not that they ever cared about that.
I deeply think that the community with its own distributed stake is a better moderator than any of these platforms can ever become. It's this sawtooth function where there's always a bigger fish in the sea and doing malicious things easily spreads around to the right ears.
Let's assume I'd go "bad actor", and I'm not talking about the loud little voices blurting out garbage because they got rightfully downvoted, I'm talking about actual malicious reward-pool activity. Let's say I started downvoting someone who does well here for no good reason, some would be all "their (delegated) stake - they can do what they want with it) as we've heard often (which I don't fully agree with and probably never will), while others will be like, "that's odd", and they'd share my activity around until it reaches someone who'll take a look at it and be like "this doesn't make any sense". And this someone would have more stake than me or have connections to someone who delegates stake to me, do you think they'd just remain silent? No, why should they, they're invested in the platform, they wouldn't want a valuable member of the community to get needlessly downvoted for no good reason cause it may affect their own stake badly. They'd speak up as would many others, actual malicious actions would ring very loud across the platform, especially if completely unprompted and unjustified. This would mean I'd eventually serve repercussions for my malicious actions, the community would attempt to counter the downvotes with their stake (even at a small cost in terms of curation returns), they'd make sure the news spread so others delegating to myself or any of my projects would remove their delegations (which has happened in the past for certain reasons which I'm fine with), and if I'd be actively posting I would face some downvotes potentially as well due to my actions. If I then doubled down to start downvoting people back because of this, it'd only make everything worse of how the community perceives me.
My point being, while downvotes aren't perfect, this sure is way better than how other platforms are handling things.
For shadowbans where the creators don't even know if certain creators can even read their posts (youtube has this), to actual community-wide or platform-wide censorship where you can't write anything on there to complete blocking of your account you may have worked hard on for years, all while the platform and its users aren't affected by at all. They don't and won't care, even if they do care there's nothing they can do because most of these platforms only have AI as support now who don't care to figure out if you got banned rightfully or not, there's very few actual souls checking if you should've gotten banned/downvoted which here is possible since all actions are public and open and one doesn't need to be a genius to figure out if someone is maliciously downvoting a person or if they have a good excuse to do so.
I've seen so much chatter over the last months discussing DHF spendings yet very few actively care about how we're distributing our reward pool. Many asking for downvotes for the DHF yet never taking a second to check if they should rightfully use theirs on hive to combat farms/etc which do still exist and are happening even at the lows.
Last note, I'm still seeing so many users hold on to their HBD rather than pick up some stake, many who've been around for years if not close to a decade. Sure one can argue we may go lower and they may get a better deal out of it but I'd argue some don't even care to have stake or get back into the game. What does that say about them that they'd rather hold onto a token pegged to fiat than actively contribute to distribution of stake for future stakeholders in our ecosystem. Maybe they weren't so much about the community after all, or they've completely lost hope in Hive. I don't know.
End rant.
Random banner I had grok generate quickly.
Odd thoughts or realistic thoughts?
Many users only create noise with the 10% of DHF. They do this because they want to hide what they do with the 65% of the rewards fund. Automated votes, votes between the same accounts. Always the same ones. They spit on Proof of Brain.
Others even brag because everything they have comes from rewards, they never bought HIVE. And, curiously, when they post, they are the most rewarded.
Those who strive, those who take care of the ecosystem, those who buy HIVE, are silenced.
Some curation groups despise those who buy HIVE, they don't vote for them. They don't recognize the effort, they only vote for those who delegate HP and those who have KE with 2 or 3 digits. Fortunately, AI exists. There are AI agents that will unmask many groups soon.
Those who were not currently funded by DHF, but were in the past, have liquid HIVE to sell at the lowest price. They prefer this to justify that they were right. They are praying for HIVE to fall even further.
Now that they have the chance to buy and increase their power, they are complaining and mentioning the 10% DHF again. As if that were the biggest problem. Soon, the mask will fall on them, in super slow motion.
Personally, I don't care if HIVE falls to $0.0001. If that serves to purge, if it serves to cleanse the rot that inhabits this place, then let it fall even further so that everyone disappears. Perhaps then, starting from scratch, a new beginning, they can appreciate the ecosystem it truly deserves.
Thank you for lifting the veil.
Long live HIVE!
I also recently saw one user. His KE was over 100. He had received about as much rewards as me. But not only did he power down most of it... he also was happy about not buying HP. And said that Hive rewards should be abolished. This seemed really comical and...weird coming from someone who himself had earned and powered down a lot of Hive in the past.
I would prefer if Hive would stay at this level for a good while and not fall or rise much more. In that case maybe be the end of 2027 I would reach 100k HP. Curation rewards at that point would be really cool. But that is a bit of selfish mindset. For Hive as a whole a rising price would probably be better.
The blatant vote trading and delegation for votes sure is little talked about and the longterm effects it has on the ecosystem. Just because they may be smaller stakewise than other more obvious stakeholders doesn't make it any less of a risk since they can be many all centralizing inflation towards each other and none of their votes ever even accidentally landing on new accounts.
I hope that this (low) moment is the right time for these discussions. No drama, no fuss, but with elevation. HIVE blockchain deserves it.
I think crypto may be past it's peak of popularity.
If anything, I think AI use in coding could help in developing more for Hive that will attract users. Not sure though.
That's kind of my plan with the AI subscription proposal I currently have running. I do however think people are underestimating how important crypto may be for AI later.
I can relate to a lot of this. Few days ago I powered up 2k HP and wrote a post about my great shock and disappointment that more people are not doing the same. A day(?) before that I powered another 500HP(this time I did not buy it but won in a free spins of Hive slot games). 2k I bought may not change anything the big picture but for me it is still decent amount of money. I also am now making a huge art piece about Hive(152.5 x 76 cm). Still not sure if I will want to try and sell it(and buy more Hive with that money😛) or hang it on my own wall. We will see as it is still faar from complete.
Don't gamble! Especially during times like these :D
it is my weakness. Also sweets. and dogs.
A while back I did win and powered up maybe a few k HP. But I still think that I lost way more by gambling. Still giving up that thrill is quite hard.
It's great that you can vent and shed some light on the ins and outs that few of us understand. Personally, I don't understand much of what you covered. But I do notice the differences you pointed out compared to centralized social networks, where everything is automated with artificial intelligence. Us creators keep betting on it and giving our best, hoping that... everything falls into place for the future. Cheers...
We can't complain on web2 for account bans or shadow bans
On hive we have legendary kgakakillerg promoting our censorship resistance feature. We r true censorship resistance after all 🤗
on my own site I've decided to simply not show rep 0 and under accounts
I know for sure this is the thought in so many peoples mind.
The 2020-2023 crypto boom was something crazy.
It's something like the brighter the light is, when it's gone the darker the darkness becomes.
And now is pretty dark.
In still here though, on HBD cause it's genuinely what I'm using to survive.
Rebuilding my HP though, and if offline conditions become better, I'll work on liquid hive too.
Cause right now, it's too cheap to actually hurt.
I think it might be the twilight for crypto, the world economics look bad, people look for safer things to invest in, something you can easily buy and withdraw from without much hassle... crypto failed to be brought in real life, it's too complicated, not to consider tax wise problems with the state, and besides hive all require gas fees...
On hive you got the issues of loads of farmers, vote buyers, circle votes, people spamming accounts to abuse... Just look mcgi community...
I'd been away from blogging on hive for over a year due to life events and when I returned I saw the price and immediately converted a chunk of my hbd into Hive. I'm now converting the rest of my hbd into Hive.
Why others are selling at this low price is baffling to me.
Hive is more than the token price. It is probably one of the last places we can express our views without fear or favour. This alone is priceless.
I'm not controversial or into conspiracy theories but I do have opinions about fairness and equity and voices like mine can get sidelined because I may not be advertiser friendly lol
Fuck advertising and marketing hive doesn't need or want any of it. The sooner we learn this the better.
Word of mouth and users experience is what really matters.
As for the rats living the sinking ship as they see it. I say adios amigo.