I am small Hive Power holder ( 1086 HP ) but ever since I joined more than 2 years ago I used every bit of my earnings to power up my account. I also bought really small amounts when I had some spare cash (5 -10-20 Hive each time). I think I only withdraw like 1% of my earnings over time and that is only because I was a crypto noob and just wanted to test buying some other altcoins with Hive.
I don't know about you but I get excited even for a 0.010 curation reward that I get, or when I refresh my wallet and see that my HP increased by 0.001 because of inflation.
It's something really addictive knowing that no matter what you do, even if you don't post at all, you still make use of your Hive Power and earn those sweet curation rewards. And even if you don't post neither curate for a period of time because you are busy or whatever, your HP still increases slowly because of inflation.
Now, I am not saying that withdrawing your earnings is bad and that all you should think about is powering up. Some people use their earnings for day to day expenses, some people see a project that has potential and might want to sell some Hive and get into that. Let's not lie to ourselves, at the end of the day, we are here for the money too.
All I am saying that at least for the new guys on the platform or the people with small HP, prioritizing powering up is probably the best course of action in the long term. You will have a bigger influence on the platform, your vote will be worth more, your curation rewards will be worth more. I like the analogy of the snowball rolling down a snow covered hillside. As it rolls, the snowball will pick up more and more snow and increase it's mass the more that it does this. Same thing for Hive Power. The more you have, the more you will earn. So what are you waiting for, hit that power up button people.
Oh, and here is a nice looking graph of my Hive Power growth in the last 30 days. It's from hivestats.io website. If you don't know about it, you should definitely check it out for some beautiful analytics and stats of your Hive account.
