~ Jeannette Walls
The most important benefit of what bitcoin has brought to humanity is complete ownership. Yes, bitcoin as an asset and a network is much more than just ownership. But everything else bitcoin offers is just a bonus. Without complete ownership bitcoin wouldn't be what it is today. Complete ownership wouldn't be possible without decentralization. Similarly, Hive the most important feature of what Hive has to offer is complete ownership. Bitcoin provides ownership of a financial asset in a decentralized monetary network. Hive takes ownership one step further. It also provides financial ownership, but also ownership of digital presence.
Not only Hive owners are the ones who have full and complete ownership over their wallets and contents of the wallets, but also Hive owners own their digital life, be it in a form of social interaction, blogging, gaming, following, etc. Perhaps, the financial ownership is of highest importance for people and bitcoin may just be the right solution. I love bitcoin. However, I believe Hive wallets are much easier to use and manage. This kind of new ownership without relying to any third party services like banks is a new technology. Many still do not understand it, many still do not see the benefits that come with true ownership. Compared to many alternatives and solutions, Hive is a lot easier to use and it comes with a lot of bonuses.
True ownership of property is possible in bitcoin due to the network decentralization. Same is true for Hive. If the implementation of the blockchain network is not open source and decentralized, true ownership would not be possible. Many blockchain projects that have ambitions of becoming decentralized, have not reached these goals yet. Level of centralization of a network present a high risks of account funds being arbitrarily confiscated, frozen, and removed.
Decentralization is not easy to achieve. Many will continue to claim they are until something bad happens or they actually achieve this goal. This is one of the confusing and deceiving parts of the crypto world. Many claim what they are not. That's why it is important for people to do their research and rely on their own judgement regarding each project they would want to be involved or invest in. That also applies to bitcoin and Hive.
While I am not trying to give anybody any financial advice, for me personally I have determined that both Bitcoin and Hive are decentralized network, and my wallets in both of the networks do provide complete ownership. I don't have to worry that somebody or group of people, or group of witnesses/miners one day take on some actions that will remove assets from my wallet without my authorization. Of course there are always unknowns, things that may happen in the future that we have never considered could happen. But for now I don't anything that may pose a risk to the ownership of wallets in these networks.
If you asked me for one reason to have a Hive account, it would be the ownership. Everything else on Hive is just a bonus and there are many of these bonuses. While there is a small fee for creating Hive accounts, there are ways to create one for free. Complete ownership of property and digital presence is no longer a concept. It has been a reality on Hive for a while. Why wouldn't you give this a try?
Taking advantage of decentralized networks and ownership of property doesn't necessarily mean rejecting the traditional financial or social networking systems. We still can and will use banks and web services. We don't need to burn bridges and create unnecessary hardships by opting into decentralized solutions. Our ability to utilize these new solutions will add freedom to choose and make better financial decisions for ourselves and even be prepared for what future is bringing.
We have seen time after time how banks not necessarily the most reliable entities. They sure do provide convenience and peace of mind in good times. But when things go wrong they can easily close the doors and don't let people remove their money from their accounts. We have also seen how bank accounts can be frozen for many different reasons, that aren't the decision of the account holders. Even in crypto space, we have seen how centralized entities can easily stop withdrawals and leave asset holders without access to their funds. We have seen how stock brokerages can stop trades. There has been plenty of evidence that centralized solutions do not really provide full ownership of property.
Things with centralized social networks are even worse. Time after time it has been proven that these social networks only care about making money off people's digital presence, content and interactions. None of them act in the true interest of the people who use their networks. User base fo them is just numbers, statistics that attract ad dollars. Nobody has ownership of their accounts. People's accounts can be deleted from the face of the internet anytime by these entities without authorization from the users. People who use these platform really made them so powerful and rich. Now they have incredible amount of resources to continue their strong hold of these networks with one purpose in mind, making more money.
In a free market, there is nothing wrong with making money by creating new technologies, tools, apps, platforms, networks, products, etc. The delusion is when these networks think they made all the money due to their great technology and networks. When in fact they owe it to the people who use their platforms. The very least they can do is provide ownership of their accounts. They would never do that. Because this would transfer some of their power to people, which result in less control over people and less ad money as a result.
One of the examples of transfer of power from networks to people was demonstrated when Apple introduced a feature where Apple device users would be prompted to a question wether they would want an app they are using to track their digital activity. For Apple it was an easy move, since it would affect the company itself financially. But this move mage companies like Meta really angry. This revealed how all of these companies have secretly been manipulating and deceiving people. Of course, Apple too is part of these networks that would like to retain control over their users, and highly unlikely they will provide any true ownership of accounts either. Until there are open source mobile solutions and networks, this will remain to be the case.
Web3 is primarily is about ownership. Without ownership the next iteration of web is meaningless. Start enjoying true ownership today and get a Hive account.
“No matter what the industry you choose to ultimately invest all your time and energy in, be sure you're the owner, founder, and CEO. Remember, if you don't own it, you can't control it nor can you depend on it.” ~ Brandi L. Bates