Back during my college days, I remember one particular piece of advice — or maybe it was just an observation — to the effect that "100% of nothing is still nothing."
I suppose it was intended as a bit of a cautionary word that even if you are wildly successful, if it's at something that's failing, the end effect is that you are failing.
"But my ranking in the system has risen from 673rd to 5th!"
Doesn't mean a whole lot. In fact, it's probably worse for your self-esteem to lose everything from a high ranking position than from a "barely in there" position.
Maybe some of us just have a natural talent for backing losing propositions, but there comes a point where it begs the question of why we so unerringly manage to pick things that end up going nowhere.
Sometimes, the answer might be that we choose things that have relatively modest "value" at the best of times, and turn out to have absolutely NO value at the worst of times... whether that be the side effect of being too esoteric or too obsolete or too irrelevant to the majority.
Consider the field of writing (because it is close to my heart) — technical writing, even — which has gone through a long series of setbacks, dating back to the start of the Internet (making your competition non-local); then outsourcing to lower priced parts of the world; now being supplanted by bots and AI.
Maybe the part of the picture we're really reluctant to face is that words have pretty much zero value. We keep reaching for different iterations of fantasy to wrap our words in a package that allows us to play make-believe that we — as writers — are magically providing something that has monetary value.
At best, that value is merely advertising revenue to a third party, not even related directly to our actual creativity.
Heck, Hive is just a new iteration of this issue, wrapped in a different container. Instead of depending on "some corporation" to revenue share their ad monies with us, we point to our system of "micropayments."
But the micropayments gradually end up becoming more and more "micro" because everyone ultimately wants to convert them into something tangible, like a slice of pizza. And in any market that has more sellers than buyers the "value" of the primary commodity — the means of exchange — will decline. Let's be real here: more people sell their Hive than buy Hive.
It's not Hive's fault — it has been so with every online "reward for content creation" venue since the first one in 1998.
Personally, I have never taken out a single cent (or Hive) out of the system, but the chart below pretty much speaks for itself:
| Year End | Hive Power | US$ Value |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 88.434 | $133.54 |
| 2022 | 292.084 | $75.47 |
| 2023 | 461.997 | $170.29 |
| 2024 | 765.662 | $269.742 |
| Now | 994.715 | $120.360 |
Personally, I'm not talking about throwing in the proverbial towel, simply because I enjoy writing, as a standalone fact that exists separately from whether or not I am being compensated for it. But if I were dependent on the Hive I am rewarded in order to do something very basic like eat, I'd likely be increasingly likely to take my words somewhere else.
Of course, this is all just an academic exercise, since I am less concerned with the actual lack of value than I am with the disappointment of promises broken, as they invariably seem to end up being. But was there ever an actual "promise" with Hive? Or just a possibility?
I plan to keep plugging along, just because I am fascinated to find out where this experiment is going to end up... or keep going. What will I think, when I look back on this, from ten years down the road? Will someone in our witness bank have changed the metrics in some way, and turned the tide? Or will I be sitting here with 10,000 Hive, worth $50?
Only time will tell!
Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
As always, a 10% 