Hello,
I came across this discussion on Hive: @tarazkp/value-in-the-spend and wanted to share some thoughts on the topic of economics. I have a formal education in economics, so I’ve got some knowledge both on the theory of money and the theory of value in their various historical forms.
In my view, each use case for blockchain should be self-sustaining. That is, it should generate value and reward that value. So let’s talk about blogging. Blogging could be a self-sustaining system if there are people willing to buy Hive tokens to reward the authors they appreciate. If the blogging audience grows, it creates demand for the currency through a large number of small players who don’t want to remain at zero. For example, it’s quite inconvenient for me to buy Hive in my country, but when I enrolled my child in kindergarten and returned to reading posts from our community and sharing my own progress, my first thought was: “I should buy at least $50 or $100 worth,” so that my upvotes would carry some value.
So if the audience grows and Hive as a blogging platform attracts new users, readers, or bloggers, that alone can sustain daily Hive issuance through demand.
It’s also worth noting that the core value of bloggers lies in the attention economy. We become interesting enough to be read, we create our own bubbles, and we can monetize those audiences. Most often, bloggers sell advertising. What puzzles me most is why, after so many years, advertising hasn’t come to crypto blogging platforms — because that’s real demand. And it could serve several purposes:
- Support the currency — by selling ads for Hive and/or burning a portion of the Hive earned from advertising.
- Support platforms that add value to Hive (get more audience in search systems).
- Reward authors who bring more audience to the platform (of course, verifying that it’s not bot traffic).
- Increase content appeal by adding the value of reading to the value of friends and community on Hive.
I don’t think an ad strip on the side of the page would bother us much if we knew that our glance at it adds value to Hive in the stack.
The internet economy works in tandem with the real economy. If there’s something here we’re willing to spend fiat money on, then the money generated here will also have demand in the real economy.
Thanks for your attention 🙂