Does Hive-Engine actually add value to HIVE?

As it stands right now, there are some serious demand issues for HIVE. Currently there are very few reasons to buy and power up HIVE beyond the posting and voting possibilities.

However, some (many?) are advocating that we take those away and have HIVE instead be truly a base layer with very low inflation upon which other things are built.

I am quazi one of those.

I say quazi because I am one of those only with a major caveat, and that has to do with us figuring out how to create new demand for the coin.

If we remove the social rewards layer there is almost no other demand driver for the coin, what reason is there to own it? To vote on witnesses and proposals? That holds little to no interest to outside users/investors.

From what I have heard the idea was that we would eventually launch SMTs, these SMTs would be tied to HIVE in that it would cost HIVE to create them and then it would also require resource credits to keep them running, more resource credits being required the bigger the token/community were to get.

However, lately I am hearing that SMTs may not ever be a thing and instead may look more like smart contracts, similar to what is being done with Hive-Engine tokens.

That sounds great and all but where is the demand for HIVE going to come from exactly then?

The un-popular opinion is that Hive-Engine and it's tokens have actually sucked value from HIVE as opposed to create it.

(Don't get me wrong I am a fan of HIVE-Engine in terms of what it offers, but from strictly a HIVE value perspective I have mixed feelings)

What I mean by this is that basically out of thin air we have had all these tokens created that now have real market value, where do you think that value has come from?

Has Hive-Engine pulled in outside users and outside money that has invested into these tokens? No, not really...

The majority of this value has come directly out of the HIVE ecosystem and flowed into these tokens, giving them the value they have today.

Not many people talk about this but this has been something I noticed far back when Hive-Engine first launched on STEEM...

I can't remember the exact date but I do remember STEEM had been relatively stable in terms of price, then a few months after Steem-Engine launched, the price of STEEM broke that support and continued to drift lower and lower, possibly because the demand coming into STEEM could not offset the value flowing out of it now.

Whether or not Steem-Engine was the cause or had anything to do with that is up for debate, but the possibility is certainly there and the same exact thing could be happening right now with HIVE.

We have all these tokens with market value that basically all came out of HIVE.

So, while we continue to try to understand why HIVE is having such a difficult time going up, I think this is something that not many people don't talk about that is likely having an impact.

And if we are going to continue down the path of creating tokens on HIVE, we need to do so in a way that ensures they actually create demand for HIVE and add value to it instead of pulling value out of it like we are seeing right now.

Again, this isn't a knock on Hive-Engine per say, it's simply me trying to figure out where the demand for HIVE is going to come from in the future and I'd like to figure out a way that we can ensure tokens created on HIVE continue to add value to HIVE.

All that being said, where is the demand for HIVE going to come from in the future?

Let me know your thoughts below.

Stay informed my friends.

-Doc