A friend saw the HBD change in price and contacted me to find out what they should do with the HBD they have in their wallet, that they had been saving for just such an occasion. I dislike being asked about what to do with someone else's money, as there is too much risk of bad blood, since in such a volatile area, it can swing either way wildly. If I say "sell" and HBD increases, they can blame me for missing out on additional HIVE. If I say "hold" and HBD goes back down, they blame me for not taking the opportunity. There is only a narrow path to being right - and it is mostly luck.
Don't get me wrong here, I do not dislike the person doing the asking, as I understand exactly why they are asking, but unlike a banker, I don't I can't just walk away if things go wrong and, I prefer people to make their own decisions.
It is different when I write a general level post however, as it is not for anyone in particular, it isn't targeted and anything I say is up to the individual reader to do with as they choose. Even if it might be advice, it is unsolicited and should be treated like a conversation overheard at the bus stop. A reader can make decisions to act in any number of ways based on what I write, but it isn't on my head. Having said that, I generally tell the things that I do or would do in various situations, so if anyone follows, I am in the same boat, whether the tide rises or the ship sinks.
So anyway, HBD pumped last night my time while I was asleep, so even if I had some, it wouldn't have done me much good. Funnily, I used to have 3000 HBD I bought on an exchange waiting for this, but I got bored of waiting and sold it a couple months ago. If it did happen to go to sell at the peak of about 4 dollars, that would have been the equivalent of around 85,000 HIVE. Impatience is costly.
But, I do not think that I would have been able to sell, as I had it on Bittrex where the high was at $2.12, but on Upbit, the high reached $4,21. It is actually quite interesting I think and speaks of just how easy it is to pump - in Korea.
Currently, 97.02% of the volume on HBD was on one exchange and it has a 24 hour volume of 5.7 million dollars. For those playing at home, there are 4,476,113 HBD currently in the supply and since they are meant to be pegged at 1 dollar, that means that about 125% of it was traded, which is incredibly high considering that there is a lot of it locked up in wallets still, I assume. I don't know how much HBD is on the exchange, but it looks like it was trading backwards and forwards between the same hands a lot in order to generate that kind of volume.
I don't know if you are "old enough" to remember all the way back to the end of 2017, but a similar pump on what was SBD at the time, was the precursor to the run on Steem to the all time high of 8 dollars. It was a little different back then though, as STEEM was already above a dollar at the time and nearing two, so for a very brief time at the peak, it was possible to get a 7-8x ratio between the two. I don't know what was the highest someone got today, but it looks like it might have been possible to get 20 HIVE to 1 HBD - pretty decent.
The other thing that is apparently different now is that there seems to be a lot more HIVE liquid than there was back then, as while the supply is about 380 million, only 140 million of that is vested. What this means is that there is only 2/5th of the HIVE with the possibility to distribute from the rewards fund, which is pretty disappointing. People talk about supporting people in the community, yet there is a lot of HIVE out there that doesn't seem to care. This isn't much of a problem for the pool itself though as it will still be distributed by those who are here to those who are here, but it does lower the voting diversity a lot.
If the majority of that liquid stake was powered up and actively voting, it would very likely be spreading HIVE more widely, as there would be more eyes looking at content. However, that would mean that all posts would be earning less than they are now, as there are essentially more spoons in the pot dishing out HIVE. It is one of the reasons that as far as earning HIVE goes from content, this has been about the best time there can be, if you are able to get the attention of voters.
A lot of people complain that getting the attention is too hard, but this is about as easy it can be, as there are so few people vying for eyes. If you imagine that HIVE goes to 5 dollars and some are potentially earning thousands per post and many more thousands per week, you can probably guess that one or two people around the world will be interested in taking part. Plus, old people will return as they have been over the last few months due to the bullrun on the market and the expectation that it will arrive to Hive also.
The competition will ramp up, as will the people trying to game the system. With so much value flowing, there is going to be a great deal of leakage that will go unchecked. I am actually okay with that for the most part, but I hate it when I see people who already have decent support start to act like assholes. Back in 2017, I think that half of the new accounts created at the run on Steem were alt accounts so that people could selfvote and without discounted flags, no one did anything about it at all. I would rather a million nothing accounts of individuals succeeding to scam a few cents or dollars where they can, than a handful of large accounts who have been here for ever, scamming for hundreds of thousands.
But, this aside, what I hope the most is when HIVE does eventually start moving, more attention from the growing global crypto community gets brought onto the blockchain and see that when it comes to a community-powered network, Hive is the only solid game in town. I am also hoping that people will very quickly realize how much can be built on Hive without suffering the exorbitant transfer fees that most other blockchains charge to use them. And then, have them discover the real power of owned communities and the possibility to build unique and tailored experiences, whilst still enjoying the benefits of the entire community and the stability of shared, decentralized infrastructure.
I have no idea if HIVE will follow in price and start to reach new highs, but I do believe that it should be getting attention in the market place as a community that is doing it utmost to provide solutions to some of the problems the internet is currently facing, with deplatforming, banning, censorship and of course, constantly extracting the value of the user base while giving nothing in return but an algorithm-driven feed designed to extract value more effectively.
At the moment, there are all kinds of people asking the question "is there a better way to internet?" and here we are, proving time and again, that there is. We just need to capture the attention of the social marketplace and welcome them into the future normal.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]