A while back, I wrote a blog post asking whether the future of Hive is as a social platform or as a backend solution for businesses.
You can check out my blog post here
Part of the reason I asked is I've already identified and incorporated several of Hive's tools into my "regular" recording studio business, adding an additional stream of income to it:
Hiring talent
A lot of time's clients will ask for package deals. For example...
Can you record my album and also upload it to Spotify for me?
This happens for musicians as well as clients who produce their podcast with us; mostly the latter. The problem is, since we are not a graphic design business, we don't have an in-house graphic designer we can just ask to whip up a thumbnail or album cover. We have to outsource.
Outsourcing talent means we either have to go to an online gig website such as fiverr or outsource talent locally, which implies creating and invoice and, of course, paying taxes. If you can hire talent directly and pay with a US dollar-pegged stable coin such as $HBD and NOT pay taxes, why would you do it any other way?
The same goes for video editors, session musicians, copywriters, and even presenters. Are you any one of these on HIVE? I'd love to get in touch :)
Having a feeless, non-KYC payment solution
Cryptocurrency adoption, particularly bitcoin, has been on the rise in Central America: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, all the way up to Mexico City and now Rosarito thanks to some amazing, black tea drinking folks. I know of two companies that have already built solutions for businesses to accept bitcoin and have funds sent to their bank account on a daily basis and they are on fire driving bitcoin adoption.
Although it’s still a small minority of people that currently pay with cryptocurrency, it happens. And when it does, we don’t send funds to a bank account, we generate a Lightning invoice with @v4vapp and keep the money in the form of $HBD, a stable coin on the Hive blockchain that can be used to hire talent (as expressed in the segment above) or deposited into an interest-bearing savings account that at the time of writing yields 20% APR.
Getting rewarded for creating content
You might have seen some live in studio sessions produced at @recording-box
The main purpose of these sessions is to have content for social media so that potential clients know the business is active. The original scope of our social strategy was web2 platforms only: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. With Hive, however, we can create those same sessions, free of charge for the artist, and we get some cryptocurrency in return while the artist gets a free recording in the process. A win-win situation that leads me to another stream of income, which is…
Showing normies how to web3
While we are recording a music session, artists sometimes ask how I got into cryptocurrency and what it’s all about. My first answer is always as simple as possible; something along the lines of
“well, if you’re interested, I can teach you how to use this platform called HIVE. It’s a platform where you can create content in written, audio or video form and if community members like it, they’ll give you upvotes and tips that have actual monetary value.
If they show interest (which they don’t always do) I’ll show them how to create and account and write an introduction post or video. The rewards they receive from making an introduction post can then be used to pay for studio time or rehearsal time at the studio. Money that, as mentioned above, we keep in our self-custody $HBD account. away from banks, governments and tax agencies.
Parallel economy anyone?
yes please.
These are only three ways I’ve incorporated web3 into my “regular” business. I’ve also created NFTs for music albums, I’ve exchanged cryptocurrency into fiat and charged a fee, and a few other experiments. My point is it is very easy to incorporate web3 solutions into your existing business with very little friction. If you don’t want to speculate or be exposed to price fluctuations, no problem. You can hold your cryptocurrency in a US Dollar pegged stable coin like $HBD and you’ll never have to worry about the price going up or down. You will, however, reap the benefits of operating outside the custody of earth-based governments, police and banks. A no brainer if you ask me.
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