Hi Everyone,

Time passes so quickly. It feels so recent when I was posting my first content. At the same time it also feels like a long time. This is especially so when I think about all that has changed and when these changes occurred. For example, bid bots feel like a distant memory. The changes made by the Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP) ended vote buying in under a week. The hostile takeover by Justin Sun occurred less than a year after the EIP. It felt like the end of the blockchain. Instead, Hive was born. Hive had the opportunity to be more than what Steem could have ever been.

Last year, we had the Bull Run. The price of Hive struggled to take off and lagged behind many other coins. The second half of the year that changed. The price briefly soared to over US$3 for maybe about a day and stayed above US$2 for just over a week. It settled above US$1 for several months before succumbing to general bearish cryptocurrency sentiments. I managed to trade some Hive for Bitcoin before the price dipped below US$2. Even though the price has fallen significantly, it is still outperforming many other coins. This bodes well for when the market turns more bullish again.

Early Days

When I joined Hive (Steem prior to the 2020 hardfork), I did not have any expectations. It was just another social media website to share content. When I first posted, I did not even think about the link to cryptocurrency. At that time I knew little about cryptocurrency. I started by sharing some YouTube videos that I had made a few months earlier. I shared the link and included a description in the post and hoped for the best. Within a short time my posts had caught someone’s attention. I was making far more per post than I could ever make anywhere else. Those payoffs were a great initial pull. I did not know at the time why some posts had significantly higher payouts as they did not have noticeably more upvotes.

It did not take long for me to realise that the value of votes depended on stake aka Hive Power (known as Steem Power at the time). Initially, equal weighted votes felt more intuitive and fairer. My vote power was almost nothing as I had not invested and was relying on the tiny amount of delegated stake from Steemit. Weighting votes based on stake made sense as it rewarded people for investing. We need people to invest in the blockchain (stake Steem/Hive) for it to grow and maintain the price; many content creators sell rather than reinvest.

In terms of rewards from content, it was hit and miss. Some posts would receive high rewards and others almost none. At that time, Steem was not particularly well distributed. Therefore, it was important to be noticed by the right people (people with plenty of stake). There were a few curation groups such as @curie that would help new content creators gain more exposure and more valuable upvotes. Figure 1 contains the cumulative voting power of different account sizes when I was new to Steem/Hive and Figure 2 contains the cumulative voting power of different account sizes in April this year. There is a noticeable shift towards small and medium sized accounts.

Figure 1: Cumulative Voting Power 31/07/2017

Source: arcange

Figure 2: Cumulative Voting Power 29/04/2022

Source: arcange

Over time, my post rewards became more consistent. I was not getting many large valued upvotes anymore because I was no longer new but I was building my own following. These followers consistently upvoted my posts (some manual votes and some automated).

After about six months of posting on the blockchain (around November 2017), I decided to invest. I bought about 15,000 Steem and staked it. That was a substantial investment as Steem was around US$0.9 at the time. That seemed like a great move when the price of Steem soared to US$8+. I could not sell any of my Steem as it was staked (locked in for at least 13 weeks). At the time, I was not familiar with cryptocurrency altcoin markets. I believed the price could remain high or even go higher. It was the end of the 2017 Bull Run, a price drop was inevitable. However, I do not think many would have predicted the price would fall under US$0.2.

The Bear market did a lot of damage and so did the periodic selling of Steem by Steemit even though the price was falling. Steem was clearly undervalued for what it offered at the time. I took a risk and bought more Steem. I bought enough to become an Orca (over 50,000 staked Steem). At the time, I believe the price was around US$0.30.

Now

I am no longer with Steem. I left immediately after it was hardforked to become Hive. I consider my journey on Hive to have begun on Steem. Hence, I celebrate 5 years instead of 2 years. The creation of Hive was the best thing for the community. It would have been the best thing even without the hostile takeover. However, without the hostile takeover, it probably would not have happened. Therefore, we should be grateful to Justin Sun.

Over the years, I have remained reasonably consistent with my content. My content has been consistently focused on economics. I have run many contests over the years. I have continued my support for Actifit while using these post to promote my content. I have tried to post 3 times a week. My content has changed in terms of appearance. I create my own pictures using various PNGs (Portable Network Graphics); I started doing this around 3 ½ years ago and I add new PNGs fairly frequently. My economics content has become more applied. In my first year, I focused more on economic concepts. I post less videos. I aim to post more and I will do so again soon. However, the written work still has more value and can be more easily preserved as it is secured on the blockchain.

I consider my content the most important aspect of my time on Hive. However, curating content (upvoting posts) is where I am earning the most. I have two accounts I use for curating content (@spectrumecons and @captainhive). I mostly use them together. I have a few accounts that I autovote because I have confidence in the quality of their content. I do most of my upvoting manually. I mostly rely on my feed, which contains accounts that I follow. I usually skim through posts to get an idea of the value of vote to give. I occasionally spend more time on a post or video that I find particularly interesting. If done thoroughly, curating can be time consuming. Most of my curating is not particularly thorough.

Sometimes I look for introduction posts under the #introduceyourself tag. It is great that new people are joining Hive every day. Another way to find good posts from new content creators is through the @lovesniper account. Every day, they post descriptions and links to new content creators. The recommended posts in their blogs are normally quite good and often worth an upvote. This is useful for encouraging these new users to stay. I sometimes even follow some of them so I can regularly upvote their content if they decide to continue posting on Hive.

Future

The future is always uncertain. I feel confident I will be on Hive for many more years. It is the best platform for me to post on. With the stake I hold, it is also a good platform to earn on as well. The returns in terms of Hive are good. The wild price fluctuations add an element of risk to these earnings. I have considerable confidence that the Hive blockchain and community will continue even if price drops considerably. The price was low throughout 2019 and 2020 and things still kept going. In fact, it kept growing in terms of development of features, DApps, communities, tribes, and tools. We lost users and content creators along the way but we have gained some as well. DApps such as Splinterlands attracted a lot of users and is considered one of the more popular games in the cryptocurrency space.

Source: Hive Buzz

For my content, I aim to remain consistent. I will continue to focus on economics. I will continue with my monthly Buying and Selling Game contests. I plan on bringing back the 7-week challenge series. It should start in either July or August. I have not decided on the prizes or the contests to be included. Many of them should be similar to last year’s challenges. It is worth looking back on these contests to see how they were played and the strategies that were successful. I will also continue working on my book. I have organised most of the chapters and the content. I have also completed several of the introductory sections as well; some of them have been posted to Hive but I have not labelled or titled them as book sections. They will be edited for the final release.

As I wrap up this post, I would like to give a big thank you to all those who have followed my content over the years. Your views, comments, and upvotes have kept the channel/page going strong for so long.

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More posts

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.

Hive: Future of Social Media

Spectrumecons on the Hive blockchain