Just do it!
I've been wasting a shocking amount of time on Twitter lately. Reminds me of way back when during the Facebook era when it was legit the only social media on the planet. Remember those days? So weird. I used to think that no platform would ever be able to take away any market share from Facebook. Twitter? That will never go anywhere! Just goes to show that you can't put a monopoly on tech, especially if that tech begins to merge with ever-evolving social constructs.
Now Elon Musk is buying the community for an absurd sum. He sure as hell isn't buying Twitter for the tech. The real value is the community and network effect, which Justin Sun learned the hard way. You can clone a technology but you can't clone a community.
I'm really happy with the way HF26 turned out. So smooth. Such massive upgrades that are also somehow a bit understated. Block irreversibility seems to be working quite well, and tests already show that money can be transferred around block to block just like it's supposed to work, rather than having to wait 45 seconds for permanence. Feels nice.
RC costs are going up.
So far the cost of operations on the network have gone around x2 or x3 across the board.
Interestingly enough... the price of account tokens hasn't changed at all yet. Will be interesting to see how this situation evolves and where these levels even out to. It will be nice to finally have appropriately priced operations, so we can begin to understand our limitations as a network. Hive could use another stress test, but it certainly would be ideal to accomplish such a test with a legitimate application rather than just spamming the network with garbage. Soon™
Speaking of Elon Musk buying Twitter and potentially turning it into a crypto thing: that would be good for us. Being able to more seamlessly integrate into another crypto social media can only benefit us in the long run. Many would wrongfully frame it as a competition. This is all collaboration.
Even if some crypto social media popped into existence that was twice as good as Hive (not possible), it still wouldn't matter. Many don't seem to realize how this works. In order for one thing to replace another thing on a technology scale, it has to be x10 better than the previous thing. Crypto is that solution when compared to the legacy system, but it's highly unlikely that anyone will come up with something that's x10 better than Hive (or Bitcoin, for that matter). Each crypto has a niche to fill, even if that niche simply boils down to robust redundancies.
Do people stop rooting for their favorite sports team because their team is on a losing streak? For the most part, no. We have our tribes, for better or worse. When I look at HF26 and see everything that's changing and knowing everything I know about the platform, I realize that moving to another chain is simply not an option. Starting over is not an option.
The difference with crypto is that the fans themselves can change the outcome of the game. We've already seen this play out in the craziest ways even given the most centralized shitcoins such an XRP. The XRP community doesn't care, they will defend Ripple in court and allocate thousands of hours to that defense free of charge. Communities will always move to protect themselves, even if they aren't getting paid. Anyone from Hive already knows this from experience. Of course, getting paid certainly doesn't hurt. Incentives matter for long-term sustainability. Altruism can only go so far before it fizzles out under the weight of its own unsustainability.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that crypto does not compete with crypto. Crypto competes with the sheer incompetence and corruption of the legacy system. More accurately stated: the legacy system is the Titanic, and it is sinking. Crypto is just a bunch of scattered lifeboats attempting to pick up the pieces of this broken American Dream. Some of those lifeboats are also full of holes. Some will survive, and some won't. Anything left standing in ten years is going to be a thriving ecosystem when paired with the void left behind from institutions that were too-big-to-fail... that failed.
Economy looks bad, should I sell?
Sell into what? Back into the Titanic? This is what people don't get. They still think that USD is a safe option, even with bank bail-ins on the table. Money in the bank is not your money. If you want to hold fiat during this crazy time: I highly suggest cash, at least then the bank won't be able to steal the money.
Paypal attempting to modify their terms of service to be able to steal $2500 for literally any reason is a huge red flag and a sign of the times. It doesn't matter that it got rolled back instantly and they were like "just kidding". They flat out didn't expect anyone to read it. Nobody does. Someone did. They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The toothpaste is not going back into the bottle.
Take back, ten seconds!
I hate to say it... but the safest place to put money right now... is Bitcoin. Even if it ends up crashing another 30% from here, it was still the correct thing to do. Getting unlucky doesn't mean we made a bad call, and when everything works out fine that doesn't mean we made the smart call. That's not how statistics works. That's not how probability works. That's not how gambling works. If you go all in with 72 and win, that was a bad play. If you go all in with AA and lose, that was a good play. The outcome does not reflect on the merit of the decision in retrospect.
We are seeing exponential adoption of crypto in the face of complete and utter economic collapse. The biggest bank in America is becoming a "trusted" custodian of Bitcoin. Google is planning to sign a deal with Coinbase (which is obviously ridiculous considering Google one of the biggest tech companies). Disney is minting NFTs. Honestly there is so much going on right now it's hard to keep up, but all the naysayers just look at the stagnant spot price and the fragile economy and assume that getting in now is a mistake. These are the same people that bought at $50k+. Their track record is non-existent. Stop listening to noise.
In the past month, Nasdaq also launched crypto custody for institutions and Franklin Templeton, Betterment, Société Générale and other wealth managers have made forays into crypto.
It's not about number go up anymore.
It's about surviving. What is going to survive and what is not? Your bank account? It might not survive. That's what a lot of people don't seem to understand at a moment like this. Bitcoin has a 100% chance of surviving as long as the internet exists. Hive has a pretty good chance as well.
CPI report comes out tomorrow. Should be interesting to see the speculation involved there. I hear the PPI is already worse than expected, which means products are costing more to produce. This is going to get very awkward as warehouses continue to fill up with product that isn't selling. Amazon and Newegg are emailing me everyday now with a new sale. It's quite telling. Black Friday is going to be insane this year.
Conclusion
Well this one was all over the place, but then again the world is all over the place at the moment. In summary, we should always remember that crypto is a collaborative space, not a competitive one. Open source tech does not compete; it creates abundance.
The Titanic is sinking, and that doesn't look great for the lifeboats as these waters become treacherous. Does that mean we should jump out of the lifeboat back into the Titanic? Rhetorical question is rhetorical. With financial instability this widespread all we can do is hunker down in the safest place possible. Bitcoin on a hardware wallet has never looked more attractive than it does right now. Price is irrelevant. It's about survival. Don't get sucked into the icy depths below.