A long over due HIVE post catching up on HIVE vote values and the impact of the last Hard Fork that took place at the end of last year.
This was my HIVE vote value on November the 6th last year which was only 9 weeks ago and so much changed with the last hard fork. Below is my current HIVE vote value so by my calculations to get back to that same vote value which is a difference of 1.80 HIVE I would have to grow my stake by approximately 28%. That is quite a bit of HIVE and is around 50K HIVE Power so it will take time to get back to this level of vote value again.
The 1.80 Hive less vote is the equivalent to earning 9 hive less per day so it is a significant drop in earnings. 9 HIVE per day less is 270 HIVE per month or 3285 less HIVE per year. We are all in the same boat and it is what it is and we move on. This will affect everyone's growth rates as less rewards are being compounded daily so this should incentivize you to be more active and reclaim the lost ground.
The other obvious result from all of this having a lower vote value is the posts are also earning less even if they had the same support as before as everyone has lost 28% vote values. In theory our post earnings if everything was relative should be down 25-30% which again is a large chunk of HIVE. The upside is this also means less HIVE hitting the exchanges which should at some point benefit all of us unless you are one of those selling.
I have no problem with this and will continue staking like I always have done and possibly in a year or so will see this vote value appear again. The problem was I used this vote value as a growth indicator which helped inspire me to be active every day. This was me gamifying what we do and never looking at the dollar value because that is not important unless you are selling.
Using a dollar value would not really tell you much on growth because of the volatility in crypto and is never a constant to actually gauge any information from. Seeing your growth through your vote value showed real time growth as your earnings increased as your vote value increased due to higher curation rewards. I will continue to use the vote value as one of my growth indicators as the rewarding part it seeing it slowly increase in size. For some reason we like to physically see the growth taking place besides just the obvious number of HP rising.
The landscape always changes in crypto which is never a bad thing which will always keep you on your toes guessing what will happen next. This was the first hard fork that I know of that kind of nailed us in the way this one has and would not mind as much as long as the DHF fund is managed properly making sure unnecessary HIVE is not being given away to crazy projects that just dump HIVE with no accountability.