I have to share a great post by @jonsnow1983, that I watched a few days ago as I found tons of value in it! It is a podcast video (actually audio) where you can hear Jon interviewing @elmerlin, the creator of liketu.com Hive frontend! I know, I know... The video is 3 hours long, but if you are chilling on the beach, running, or have some free time take a look and listen to it! You will not regret it!
Personally, I have found many great points in this interview, that have inspired me to create a video about one topic (still didn't edit and publish) and this post that you can see in front of you... These are my thought inspired by that interview and you should check the post out and "find" your view... They have gone through different topics in the interview and I would like to talk about HivePower today as it is closely connected to #MyHiveGoals!
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In the beginning, what is HIVE POWER? When you stake (power up) your HIVE tokens they become HP (Hive Power) and they give you additional advantages on this blockchain, but also you have certain disadvantages of doing that (you lock up your liquid HIVE for which you need 13 weeks to unstake)... The most important is to understand that staked HIVE tokens give you POWER on this blockchain! I know that the name itself says that, but many people forget about that...
What are two main options that you can do with your Hive Power?
You can curate (upvote) other posts that you like on the Hive blockchain (on any front-end built on it), for which you are "rewarding" other people for their effort, but at the same time, you earn part of your upvote... If you transform all those numbers into the "banking language", and if you are upvoting 12-13 posts (100% upvote) per day, your APR will be around 8-9%...
On the other side, you can delegate (part) your Hive Power to someone else, which means that other members can earn those curation rewards, but continue to be an "owner" of your Hive Power (you can undelegate it)... This is also a nice way to show your appreciation for the work of the other party, giving them part of the earnings if they are doing a good job, providing value to everyone, etc... Also, you can do that if you want to earn a higher APR than with manual curation as some of those projects pay you "dividends" which could be 10-15% APR on your delegated HP... Now we are coming to a dilemma...
To delegate or to not delegate Hive Power?
If I would give you a "black or white" answer to this question, I would be a hypocrite... You can check my wallet and see that I do delegate some HP, but (add your excuse here...) On one side, you can earn more, but what is on the other side? On the other side is POWER! I would go even further with this and say, on one side you have "short-term thinking", and on the other side you have a "long-term vision and commitment"!
Let's go one step further... On one side you have "liquid income" (usually you get "dividends" in some liquid asset that you can spend immediately) for paying your "urgent" things in life, while on the other side, you have a brand, a home for you and your friends that you are building through time, priceless as it is "locked"...
In my opinion, there is no black/white solution to the question from the title... If you go in one direction and only curate posts, you will have to power down and take some profits when you need (if you want to live from this)... If you delegate all your HivePower, you will become "powerless"!!! Some kind of balance has to be made between these two things, definitely!
In a decentralized world, your personal POWER counts a lot! When you have power, you "mean something", you are a reputable member, and you have SKIN in the game... Actually, the last one is probably the most important... Delegating all your HivePower, you are "losing your skin in the game" as you move your "responsibility" for the network to someone else... You are no anymore the person who is asked about the future...
My personal approach to this topic is balanced more towards keeping my Hive Power, but I do delegate some of it to curation projects that care about the platform and promote principles that I shared with them... But, in my opinion, nobody should delegate out more than 50% (rather 20-30%) of their Hive Power... Why?
Well, most of us have come to this platform as we are tired of monopolies, tired of listening to others, and tired of having 0 power to change things... So, if we are here because of that, and we give our power (delegate HP) to someone else, what difference did we make? We have created again the CENTRALIZED system from which we have "escaped"!
Hive Power is your VOICE! Don't lose it eating ice cream, kicking the can, and standing on the sidelines...
Thank you for your time,
ph
PS. This isn't financial advice... Also, I will probably come back to this topic in the future as I find it very, very important to understand... I apologize for that in advance... 😃
PPS. I have posted this in the Hive Learners community without being a verified member... I hope they will not mind... I hope it can help people in building their HIVE portfolio!
If you want to support my witness, you can do it by voting for @ph1102.ctp here https://tribaldex.com/witnesses, or just scan the QR code down below...
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