My thoughts on HIVE of late by @the-bitcoin-dood
Pretty wild. I've been reading a lot of different opinions about where HIVE is heading and I wanted to do a post like this for awhile now, @jaynie decided to run a contest and it gave me the perfect excuse to write this post. Plus I needed something for my #HiveBloPoMo post today. Feel free to join in, she runs some fantastic contests and you can find the rules in this post here.
@jaynie/share-your-thoughts-on-hive-of-late-and-win-the-post-earnings
Recently I've noticed a lot of dissatisfaction among our fellow Hivers. When I seen this contest to write about our feelings toward the current state of Hive I couldn't resist. I've been wanting to write this for awhile now. Oddly enough, I'm happy! This isn't going to be a Ra Ra go team post though. I get why some people might be a little concerned and these are simply my observations of what's going on.
I can't really talk about where we are now without touching on where we came from. I wasn't happy on Steemit. I've posted about this before and just before Justin Sun took over I was already powering down. When I found out Justin had bought Steemit Inc. I stopped powering down hoping his genius and marketing skills would take us to the next level. Honestly up until that point I just wasn't seeing the amount of development happening from Steemit Inc considering how long they had to build something fantastic and what they had to work with both financially and the strong community behind them. It seemed like a lot more could have been accomplished in that time. Steemit Inc seemed to waste money and not accomplish much. At least on the front end, being someone that was there from close to the start and only seeing the addition of advertisements to generate more revenue to waste. I was told there was plenty going on in the backend development, I wasn't seeing it though.
Yes, I'm being a bit harsh but these were my feelings just before Justin entered the picture. In the meantime I watched my account value dwindle to almost nothing. There were other issues too, but lets just leave it at I wasn't happy at all. I refused to invest anything more than what I earned into the project from the start and I never gave it the attention it deserved because as much as i LOVED the concept, I didn't like what I was seeing behind the curtain.
As soon as Justin enters the picture I assumed this would end in a forked project from the start but I decided to stop powering down and see where this lead. Wow, what a disappointment. As usual Justin didn't bring innovation, only his usual flair for drama and controversy. My hunch was right, the project would end in an innevitable hard fork and community split. Wanting forked coins and an opportunity to double my hodling on one project or the other I waited for the community to come to the decision they did. F-U Justin we don't need you! This is the beauty of opensource and blockchain projects. Don't like it, fork it and do it better.
So here we are today. I never held a lot of Steem but in the short amount of time that has passed I've come to love this fledgling community on HIVE and I've already tripled my current HP holdings. I've been participating in the monthly HPUD (hive power up day) because I believe in the project. The ninja mine is gone, the power has now returned to the community and our witnesses, I was seeing excitement and enthusiasm in the community again. I felt good adding money into the project each month again. PLUS I LOVE WHERE THE PRICE IS RIGHT NOW. Yeah, I know the price sucks but as a trader this is when you accumulate. Buy on the way down, sell on the way up. So I'm building a small position on exchange, converting a percentage of my HBD to HIVE for long term hodl in anticipation that these prices aren't this low forever. On that note, not financial advice and for all I know we go lower. The Dood however is extremely bullish! I'm accumulating HIVE every way I can!
For those of us who aren't traders, I get it, these low prices suck. I too watched my Steemit account go from being worth several thousands of dollars to being valued at several hundred dollars. That's sad, de-motivational, and bothersome for us all.It's a crappy feeling. The good news is that HBD converts to a lot more HIVE. If the market reverses and we start heading back into that $1 range and you're prepared for it there's opportunity there. I'm currently converting a few HBD each week into HIVE, powering up some and HODLING the rest to trade on exchange when this market reverses. Currently not spending a dime outside of Splinterlands and some Hive gaming.
It sucks but this is how crypto works. Some days we're up, some days we're down. I try not to spend when we're down. As more people use our platforms and join in the fun, the price tends to stabilize a bit. We're not there yet and I know some people rely on their HIVE rewards as part of their income but it is what it is. We have to take the good with the bad. Which brings me into where we are right now!
This is a new a ground floor opportunity. We've overthrown our dictator JS and broken free of any corporate control. We are now a true community lead project. With this comes many changes and obstacles to overcome. This is like the forming of the United States after the revolution. We the people are now in control. We threw caution to the wind, told our king to piss off, and are now responsible for our own destiny. Nobody said this would be easy and it probably wont be!
For the record, I'm not a Bernie Bro but thought this was fitting for the post.
Many of you know I'm not a big participant in Hive politics or any politics for that matter. I just started voting for witnesses and taking an interest in that. I really can't comment on the politics of Hive but may start taking an interest soon. I have made myself much more available to the community and will do all I can in the future to continue forward and help where I can. Like I said at the start of this, I like the direction we're heading in now. We have development, we have community, we have FREE SPEECH and I think this is going to be a driving force in social media soon. People are sick and tired of their corporate overlords telling them what is true or false or what is allowed in their timeline. We don't have those problems. #HiveFixesThat We also have a lot of people on other social media outlets campaigning to onboard new users. Trust me there is no lack of effort here. Everybody is working hard to help grow this thing and I'm sure the right people are taking notice to.
We have token creation, and everything I'm seeing over at LeoFinance makes me extremely bullish for the future as well. What a fantastic community over there and soooo much dApp development. We have gaming and more developers taking notice of our blockchain all the time. We have 3speak, we have d.buzz, we have several blogging platforms now. My point to all this is that even though we may not see it, there is serious growth happening all around us! There aren't a lot of projects in the crypto space right now with all this greatness happening around them. We've managed to continue to grow coming out of a serious bear market that has been a serious death blow to so many projects in this space. We have come out of this with a strong foundation on which to build upon! From someone looking from the outside in, this is a huge accomplishment. While other blockchains are struggling and failing through the bear market, we've actually grew and there's much to be excited about there! Congratulations to everyone reading this. YOU were a huge part in that!
As far as community is concerned I get it. Things aren't the same. A lot of people are still putting in the effort to try and build things up. Engagement is down and so many of us are preaching the gospel of engagement and why it's important. Earlier I used the reference to the forming of the United States after the American Revolution, but it's more than that. JS tore apart a great community. YES THINGS HAVE CHANGED. This is more like the splitting of Germany, N.Korea vs S.Korea, a civil war that has torn apart families. Some people stayed behind, some people joined the new frontier, a lot of people on both sides aren't sure if they made the right decision or if things will ever be the same again. What happened to the Steemit community and now HIVE community was a terrible thing. It's going to take a long time until we feel whole again and completely heal.
I think if we look at the overall picture of what's happening here, for every negative there's a positive. It's going to take time. There will be obstacles. HIVE belongs to each and every one of us though and I think now that JS and Steemit Inc are no longer part of it, we are presented with a future worth fighting for. Believe me, I'm not a "go down with the ship kind of guy". If I didn't see a future here I would of took my forked coins, dumped my STEEM and HIVE and left a final post saying good luck everyone I'm out! I'm not even close to that right now! I think our future looks bright, we just need to rebuild after the war. Our destiny is back in our own hands and we have to make the best of it.
We need to stay positive.
We need to support and engage with one another.
We need to continue to post regularly and KEEP IT FUN! (This should be about fun, rewards and everything should come secondary.First and foremost have fun!)
We need to continue to believe in what we're trying to accomplish here and the importance a censorship resistant, open source, social media platform has to offer the world.
These are incredible times we're living in and we are at the front lines of both a social media and blockchain revolution! (Yes I'm getting extremely militant in my old age and The Dood believes in the revolutionary ideas of bitcoin and cryptocurrency.)
That's all I've got. The Dood's happy. I think our future is bright and I think it's going to take some time but I think in the end we can turn this into the fun place it once was and grow into something we can all be proud of. I hope everyone who reads this decides to stick around because it wouldn't be the same without you!
Love you all and I'm super excited to see where we go with all this heading into the future.
I would love to hear thoughts from
@steevc @traciyork @slobberchops @belemo @whatsup @theycallmedan @nathanmars @chrisrice @hiro-hive @clayboyn @jongolson
Please join in the conversation and write a post about your feelings. I too would like to know where everyone's head is at.
