For the past few weeks, I've been powering down my Hivepower. In other projects this would be known as "unstaking".
I'd like to share my reasoning and why I'm doing it because without this community & project, the stake wouldn't exist and I'm really grateful for that!
nfa
Bear Market PTSD
The past few years of bear market were rough. When I came to Steem in August 2017, the price was around 1 USD and some months later it even went up to 7$. This created unrealistic expectations, and it was a brutal experience to have the price fall down to the 10 cents mark and stay there for years on end.
Ultimately, the price recovered a bit, thanks to Mr. Sun. One can only imagine what might have happened, if he wouldn't have bought STINC and SMTs would have been released, Steem Core team would have been still around and community wouldn't have been fractured.
Anyway, only recently due to the BTC bull-run HIVE price made some digits - sadly far less than many other altcoins, but still a solid amount.
Powerdown Delay
With nearly any other cryptocurrency, if you want to sell, you can sell. Maybe there's a small delay or a "threshold" due to gas fees, but if you think the market as a whole is getting hot, the Koreans are pumping it to insane heights or you just need some liquidity, taking profits might be smart.
But why make it easy, when it can be difficult, amirite?
Of course, HIVE as a currency can also be sold instantly, just in liquid form - as long as it's not powered up.
And that's basically the main reason I'm powering down: the 13 weeks are far too long.
Now, I've been mentioning this problem over and over again, hoping that it gets solved. Even 4 weeks are too long, but still much better than 13 weeks. (Kudos to @thecryptodrive for proposing it initially).
But since no consensus is close to being reached and even HF25 won't include a reduced power-down period, I'm going liquid.
Bear markets are the best times to go full-on staking, but bull-markets with 13 weeks power-down and 10%+ APY with required voting participating or delegation (doesn't work with parallel powerdown) or auto-voting (which destroys the purpose of PoB? No thanks.
Selling now?
I'm not selling everything. I've taken some profits of course.
But I'll continue to sell some more here and there, as I'm getting weird vibes from the current market situation. Many scammy projects (SAFEMOON, SHIB, [ENTER_COPY_PASTE_DEFI_OR_NFT_PROJECT_HERE]) and seemingly people are more bullish than ever (especially very fresh retail ppl), even though most coins have 3x or more their 2017/2018 ATH.
If a potential drawback/dump were to happen, HIVE wouldn't be exempt.
And sure, sentiments are still generally strong and everyone has a different risk level, but 2018/2019/2020 gave me some good lessons.
Still on Hive
Besides that, not much has changed. The project I've been working on will still utilize Hive for some cool features. And if stakeholders decide so, I'll continue to produce blocks as a witness.
With this said..
Hive on
I must say thanks for stumbling across your publication. I am also doing Power Down, but I was feeling a bit guilty because many tell you that if you do it you are almost that you are a traitor or you don't love Hive.
But seeing such an active and valuable witness like you doing PD and even recommending it, took away that guilty feeling.
I referred to this post and another one of your authorship in my last post. However, I didn't mention you, I didn't want to spam. I wonder if I can mention you.
A big hug from Venezuela.
Excellent to see a witness put forward a reasoned argument to encourage people to take some profit! We simple users are sick of being told to power-up all the time!
Makes sense. I'm powering down about 10% of my stake. At the moment it is to play the markets and sell all of the peaks that we have seen. Buy back at about 20% less and keep growing my stake.
If we do get a solid run to $2 or so I will sell and hold some USDT for a while and wait for the drop to really increase my holdings. I'm long term hive but this is a good chance to add a lot of stake to my account over the summer. Liquid is good to have in a bull run.
Understandable and reasonable...
Hive on!
I did the same thing and have same background (but smaller of course) and purchased some other cryptos 100% liquid to EURO with coinbase. However I may decide to buy back hive when the time is right. I mean all will understand your actions :)
Good day. In any case, a competent and purposeful person will always find a place to invest, it can be a small real estate or your own project-business. Thanks so much for the informative post. I sincerely wish you all the very best.
Well, you mentioned some good points here. As someone who's yet on the beginning and there's no big profit yet, still... that 13 weeks sounds and ARE too long. You can't calculate well with the price and powering down at the time doesn't guarantee the price will remain high when you meant to sell it. Practically, it's lottery after all. What about the voting power? Does it bothers you that your vote will get noticeably weaker or you calculated with that as well?
This is the sad reality of the cryptocurrency we continue to hodl and support. 13 weeks is an eternity in the crypto world. I only have a small amount powered up but I agree fully with you on this. Especially in the weird times you mentioned, this might be the best for you.
In this crazy world you do what you need to, we're doing the complete oppposite as it happens, since our Planetauto community was boosted by @ocd with a dream car contest we're powering up everything for the time being to reward our contributors, we never saw this coming, it's good to hear you're not leaving too and thank you for your support.
We remember those crazy prices on Steem, we hadn't been active long though and every big reward that came in we powered down a chunk to buy new equipment, Manfrotto trip ,fluid head, lens etc for our newly launched video car reviews, now it's time to reward our community, and supporters - thank you @therealwolf
The memes really made me laugh, you're getting good at this hahah
I think the PD time should be reduced to let's say 1 week, compromise was 4 weeks.
I still like my idea for changing the 13 week powerdown to an "ability" that goes on cooldown.
Power Cooldown
I'm also a big fan of changing the system to sliding scale governance.
This would allow the network to vote and reduce the powerdown period one week at a time.
I'm an even bigger fan of fixing HBD by creating CPD smart-contracts and allowing users to print HBD on demand from the savings accounts. In combination with allocating yield to the savings accounts this would be the best place to be should the price of Hive spike, as there is only a 3 day hold.
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I think that Q4 is the time to powerdown, it's all about risk management. On the one hand if the price of Hive takes off 6+ months from now (that is my belief) you miss on curation and staking rewards. On the other hand if you think that the price of Hive has already peaked and is on the way down the sensible thing to do is to unstake.
In my opinion the bull market still has 6 to 9 months before it turns south. Hive in particular could do a 5x or even a 10x (or more) from this point. I just don't see it going down until the bull market is over.
Good reasoning and sounds good. I won't do the same because I realize I am not part of the 5% who manages to make money when trading, so just holding on long term is good enough for me. But everyone is different, as you say, and I see nothing wrong with taking profits or trading if you are good at it. More power to you!
The 13 week powerdown has to be one of the biggest things holding Hive back, there’s no technical reason it needs to exist, it’s just there because people are scared of being dumped on which is “small town blockchain” mentality.
It’s your money, do whatever tf you want with it. I wish people would grow up with the whole obsessing about what other people are doing w their money.
The gains are attractive. I feel ya. If I have some HIVE, I would do the same. make some gains, convert them to hive (more hive), then power up!
I am holding my hive for the moment but not powering anything up. Its not as relevant anymore in the grand financial scheme of crypto for me but I still like the platform
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
One thing to bear in mind is that psychologically we are more impacted by negative experiences rather than positive ones. I know, it's impossible to be 100% rational. We may see a pull down, maybe, a fast one i would say if it happens. But the nature of the ecosystem has changed from 2017/2018, I still don't understand why people compare 2017/2018 with now. Also, investments coming from companies and larger investors will have to wait, they are more patient and do things different than the average joe. I believe we need to be more patient this time around, the global trend is a continuous adoption of cryptocurrency.
Liquidity is liquidity. You could wake up and without a sign it could be too late...then again it could be too early too 😅...ah the world of cryptos. Interesting post, Hive on ✊
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