Probably you observed (or not) my sporadic presence on the Hive blockchain in special and in crypto in general. That's mostly because while I took some profits this year and I still hold a stash of assets, I simply wonder myself what goals I have in crypto and where I see myself going forward in this space. Initially I was hunting financial freedom and that might be possible, but in order to reach it I require to think at a bigger scale. And in order to do that I would need serious funds to pour it into that and that might get me there... but in the same time crypto became riskier and riskier. There are still some good options out there like Bitcoin and Ethereum and also HBD (still providing a healthy 15% APR which is appealing to me). But for Hive I keep asking lately more and more where it is heading. While it showed promises over promises, since the beginning of the year (2025) it looks like in a free fall even if other assets did amazing, even reaching new ATH. So how I see it is that Hive is decoupled from the crypto market and fights its own daemons. And I don't know if I can do something about it or help in any way as big whales seem to dominate the space and are more and more criticized by users left and right. And I will not point the finger, but now more than ever we need the big players to listen for the community and steer the ship into the right direction.
Community and social endeavor is not enough anymore
With a declining Hive economy it is hard to keep the users and the communities from here engaging and be present day after day. I feel the warmth for being here and I find the Hive ecosystem a cozy and great space to be into, but speaking about web3 empowerment and financial freedom these desideratum seems to fade away. And I think that a portion of the users from here are for this ultimate goal and if that vanishes away, we will see lower engagement, energy and building projects all around. Thing is that time runs against us all and we need to resolve this as fast as we can in order to start building and expanding again with more velocity. At least this is how I feel about it lately and I am discouraged about the tokenomics from here. And I even cannot explain how come Hive became a selling market with constant pressure since January 2025, maybe somebody has the stats and explanations for that.
HBD with the current 15% APR is the shinning star
In this context I see HBD with a 15% APR a shinning start as it is a steady earner. For example in my case I was looking for a stablecoin instrument that could cover my monthly expenses with my real estate. And with this return (while doesn't fully cover it), it is still a good option. Sure, there are other stablecoins more established and well known out there with an APR up to 10% or maybe more, but for me the current 15% APR rate for HBD seems quite good and I like the simplicity of it. I wish there would be more liquidity for it, but for 100-200 HBD a month there shouldn't be much slippage from converting to HIVE and after that exchanging HIVE for another stablecoin and ending up with an exchanged currency like EUR or USD. There are many steps until getting that and use the funds for utility expenses, but I think that still worth it. If it gets lowered, than I am afraid that I will have to look for other stables, so I hope that will not happen.
Hive could still be a winner if I think big
One thing related to Hive is that to be truthful now its experiencing a week economy with the price falling under $0.10 from $0.40-$0.50 at the beginning of the year. This translates to a negative multiplier of -4x or -5x, which in the real world that would mean bankruptcy. Thus investing in Hive at the wrong moment, would have the possibility to bankrupt you. And that's pretty scary and I simply cannot understand this drastic loss of value. The only way to mitigate the risk is to keep the investment at a minimum and build something that could generate wealth and value out of it. Scraping, doing myself is the way I think to approach this, but it is not easy to do this and also touch a big community. But maybe starting from the right idea that's possible and I have few in my mind to try. Some of them I even tried by using AI to develop something, but it didn't help me too much. So I need maybe to try to appeal to others and somehow offer earnings based on the sweat equity that they've put in. Maybe that will work, who knows, but what's clear is that I cannot hunt cents anymore as my time simply is more valuable than that and just put my energy into bigger things.
The crypto space is become more complex and challenging and for me it raises the question if it really worth's it. Considering the time and energy that I am putting into it, I might say no. But if I switch to bigger plans with bigger returns, that might be a yes. So while this can be seen as a retrospective for 2025 and what I plan to do in 2025, I really try to see where I am going forward in the crypto space. I simply don't want to put my time into it, if its not also meaningful financially. When it comes to Hive I agree that being here is sometimes just because we like it, but as a true web3 social media where we own our data, we should be doing better. My plan would be to build a bigger project on Hive in 2026 and correlate it with a healthier economy. I hope that will be sorted out (even if I haven't read lately what might trigger its decline) and in the same time that I will be able to have a project come to fruition. That's my last attempt at this ecosystem for something meaningful as the time becomes too precious to late it fade away. It either succeeds or I will be making just a hobby out of it, networking with great minds and having fun when the time allows it.