It’s always good to have goals to strive for to keep yourself motivated. A long time ago I wrote a couple of Saturday Savers blogs. I had set myself some goals for the year and worked towards those goals. That finally resulted in me reaching dolphin status on Hive.
Somehow I only created one Saturday Savers blog after that. I didn't set myself a new goal to reach.
Since the interest on HBD savings back then was 20% I decided to move most of my rewards in HBD Savings.
Focus on Hive (again)
Recent developments made me change my focus back on Hive again. One reason was that the interest for HBD savings changed from 20% to 15%. It still is very high, especially when you compare it to fiat options, but it is a 25% decrease from what I had.
The second reason was that the price of Hive dropped to 0.17 USD. I hadn't seen Hive this low for a long time. These factors made me decide to convert my HBD back to Hive again and power up, which I did last September.
My new 30k+ Hive stake gave me new energy to grow my account even further. The 33% increase of Hive power also affected my curation rewards. I've also changed my post payout from 50%/50% Hive/HBD to 100% Hive power payout.
The recent pump of Hive made me very happy that I had made this choice. With the value of Hive at 0.20 USD that would mean a 17,65% increase of value. Today it's even more. Hive is 0.238 USD, so that's a whopping 40% increase!
But I have to take into account that the prices can also drop again. So I will start focusing on gathering more Hive again from now.
Big Hairy Audacious Goal
Since goals can keep you motivated I decided to set myself a new one and why not make it a BHAG?
I decided I want to become a Hive Orca!
This way I have even more influence on the Hive blockchain and voting power to reward quality posts.
After having decided what my goal would be I was trying to find out what it would take me to become an Orca on Hive.
So I went to https://hivebuzz.me/ranking and checked the amount of Hive the smallest Orca has.
This seems to be user dandays with a total amount of 58932 Hive.
Then I checked where I am on the list. At the time of writing this blog I was in spot 518 with 32437 HP. This means I have to collect 26495 Hive Power to become an orca. At least, for now because I once heard this amount can fluctuate.
But for convenience, I’ll assume this stays the same.
My current 32437 HP is 55% of the total amount of 58932 that I need to become an orca.
So there is a long way to go....
How long will it take me?
Now I have decided to become an orca I wanted to know how long it will approximately take me to become one. To find this out I checked the growth in Hive Power over the past month (October).
I started on the 1st of October with 31267 HP and had 31947 HP on the 31st of the month.
That means I increased my Hive Power with 680. The remaining 26495 HP will take me approximately 39.39 months (if I keep earning this amount each month. Converted to years that will be 3.28 years.
So when I keep collecting 680 Hive each month I will become an orca on the 1st of march 2028 😅
I have to take into account that the for becoming an orca will probably be higher then, but I'll also receive more curation rewards along the way, so I think those can be offset against each other.
How can I speed things up?
I have calculated that it would take me 3.28 years until I become an orca with the current speed.
That is with the 'current' 680 Hive I earn each month. My goal is to increase this to at least 1000 HP every month. If I managed to do so my ETA for being an orca will be February 4, 2027!
That's a year less than the first calculation.
But how am I going to achieve this?
I could turn some fiat into Hive, but I have decided to grow my Hive in a organical way.
1. Consequently create quality content
Over the past few years, I have been active on Hive to varying degrees. It's certainly not only the earnings aspect that makes me want to create more content. I also like to create content, share stories and things I do like photography and cycling and interact with the community.
I'm not planning to create a blog each day, but two high quality blogs a week should be possible.
I've already noticed that it stimulates me to do more with photography.
2. Curation
Curation on Hive is a great mechanism because both the author you curate as yourself profit from it. You support others and earn Hive with it. Every extra bit of Hive Power results in a Higher Upvote, so more profit for both.
You can keep track of the effectiveness of your voting behavior on https://hivestats.io/
3. More engagement
I have been a bit inactive in the past months. Not only in the area of creating blogs, but also in terms of interacting with others. If you want to grow your account, you need to grow your network. This means investing in engagement on the Hive blockchain by commenting. Both on your own posts as on blogs from others. The recently launched commentrewarder initiative has a positive effect on engagement too since you can get extra rewards for commenting this way.
4. Microblogging (Snaps)
Recently the PeakD team has released the microblogging platform Snaps. Snaps is a nice way to share short form content (max 180 characters). Since the launch I have been active on Snaps. Micro blogging is resulting in micro payments at the moment. Since the commentrewarder initiative also supports Snaps now you can also get an extra upvote from that.
The rewards are small, but all small rewards add up in the end.
5. Looking for trading opportunities
The biggest jump towards becoming an orca came because I traded my HBD for Hive at the right moment. Last week there was a new opportunity when Hive peaked above 0.30 USD for a short time. Unfortunately I didn't had any liquid Hive at the moment, so I couldn't profit from that. If I did have some liquid Hive I could have bought some HBD from it and buy back Hive when the price went down. And the price dropped again to 0.246 USD today, which would result in 18% more Hive for your HBD.
I'm trying to keep a fair amount of Hive and/or HBD ready for these opportunities to grow faster.
6. Miscellaneous opportunities
There are a couple of more opportunities to earn some extra Hive. One of them is joining contests. Since I like photography I try to join photography contests every now and then. This has multiple advantages. I get inspiration for my photography posts, have a chance to win some extra Hive or extra upvotes.
I recently discovered an opportunity for one of my 2nd layer tokens. I have gathered quite some POB tokens over the years. The token itself decreased in value, but I accumulated more of it by using the POB tags and curation rewards. Now I found out that you can delegate your POB tokens and receive Hive tokens as a delegation reward. It's not much, probably just a couple of Hive every week, but every little bit helps.
I will also keep an eye on other 2nd layer tokens that are free to collect and might be interesting to keep.
My progress
As I mentioned before I'm at 55% of my goal now. I will post an update every now and then to see if I'm making good progress towards my goal of becoming an orca. Hopefully I can shorten the time so I don't have to wait until the 1st of march 2028.
Current totals
Hive Power: 32437
Liquid Hive: 17.2
Liquid HBD: 3.847
FriendlyMoose
Creating blogs about photography, cycling, gardening, craft beer and more...
Hive Photographers Unite!
If you are a photographer on Hive too, come join us in the Hive Photographer Discord Channel so we van make Hive a better place for photographers!
One of the initiatives is the #AAP hashtag. By adding this hashtag to your post you indicate that you are open to critics (tips and advice) from other photographers.
You can also check out posts from other photographers that would like to have feedback by checking out the following link: /created/aap
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