Today, I kind of went through the rabbit hole deep into Hive Sucre's circular economy. Since I spent quite a while going to where each trail led, I thought I'd make a nice post about it and my discoveries.
It all started with this post (English version at the end), which was the first I saw. It is both a presentation of a tech store in Sucre, and the story of how they came to accept HIVE and HBD payments. I'll let you read that because it's quite interesting. Looks like those Hive-branded hats and t-shirts are doing their job well in Sucre... Before adoption, awareness is needed.
They also say they expect to integrate more in Hive Sucre's circular through B2B transactions, as well as promote their products on Hive. I'm paraphrasing here, but you have the original to consult.
Then, another post from some hours ago talk about 3 new businesses adding the HBD payment option, one for men clothing, one for women clothing and the other for makeup and children clothing and footwear. The post describes the process of onboarding and training staff of each of the stores.
That made me remember the stats put together by @demotruk two days ago. They are all interesting, but of them, I follow closely this one, regarding purchases per week among Hive Sucre merchants:
What I would also like to see is number of payments from merchant accounts to other Hive accounts (maybe separated in two categories, merchant and regular Hive account, meaning B2B and B2C) and the total value. Withdrawals to exchanges should not be counted.
Story isn't over yet... More interesting things follow.
Another post I came across today unveils even more noteworthy elements about the HBD circular economy in Sucre.
Seems like another post that talks about a payment made with HBD. It is that, but more... Somewhere in the video the author says "I received payment for a concert". That piqued my attention. Ok, so is it possible he received payment for the concert in HIVE or HBD and then he used that to pay for groceries or whatever he purchased? That's the definition of circular economy, what we want to have over there in Sucre.
Ok... Let's check...
Yep, I was right! He performs concerts and is paid in HBD. There are multiple such entries, so this means this activity has already picked up, it's not just a one time thing.
That made me curious about the @son2 account. So, next I checked its wallet. It seems to be a business for providing music and entertainment. They are mainly focused on putting together these concerts. If I were to guess, they are small events with the purpose to keep the customers entertained. I see Hola Supercenter used them too.
By checking their wallet, we can also see people can pay for taxi using HBD. I don't know how extended this is, but at least one person accepts HBD for payment of taxi transportation in Sucre:
Since I went the rabbit hole, I also checked the wallet of @econoquesos, where quite a few people buy from. I see that besides the withdrawals to exchanges, they also try to use the HBD they receive in the Hive Sucre's circular economy.
Maybe someone could see this as a drain of Hive resources when alts aren't doing well, but all I can see right now is an experiment which has the potential to dwarf Bitcoin's legal tender in El Salvador through the potential magnitude and usefulness it can reach, without any involvement of government or even local administration (so far, but I believe if this keeps growing they will want to have their faces in the picture).