Hello!
There's a lot to figure out! π Ecency is one of the many apps that run on the Hive blockchain. Your Ecency account is actually a Hive account that can be used to log in to all sorts of things - many blogging interfaces as well as several games!
The dollar amounts under people's posts are what people have earnt on that post. Basically, if someone upvotes a post or comment it's rewarded based on how much Hive Power that someone has -- I've voted on your post and my vote is worth 36 cents. After 7 days, the post will payout 50/50 to the author and to the people who voted on it. So say a post has $10 on it. $5 will go to the author of the post, and the other $5 gets split amongst the people who voted for it. π
It's in crypto. The $HIVE cryptocurrency, which can be converted to actual money. You can also keep it in your account, power it up, and accumulate a bunch of power with which to vote on other peoples posts with!
There are no silly questions! The other commenters have already given you some helpful Discords and things. I hope you're able to figure it all out. π It's all a learning curve, but worth it! π