According to this tweet by Jameson Lopp (and to some basic math, if you followed the news and observed every major buying event) 30% of the Bitcoin mined during the last 17 months is owned by a single entity. That entity is Michael Saylor.
Just read that again. In less than a year and a half - and during a global pandemic - a single institution / individual bought 138,775 BTC. Needless to say, Michael Saylor is a mega-whale now.
Which brings me to the second part of the title. We've all been enjoying a mega bull run for HIVE. Not gonna lie, I watched the price action dozens of time during last week, sometimes just staring in awe at those green, naughty candles piercing ATH after ATH. It still hovers around $2.7 at the moment of writing, but it went as high as $3.
Well, such an increase means someone is buying. Of course, if you look closer, you realize the transaction volume is not that big, a lot of it may just wash trades, but still. We're talking about a major, major pump, which can't happen in a vacuum, some HIVE will still have to change hands for the price to move as consistently as it does.
If someone owning 30% of the total supply of the last 17 months isn't really a problem for Bitcoin, for HIVE it might be. HIVE is a POS chain and we all know so well that this governance model is vulnerable to big pockets. This very blockchain was born as a response to a sybil attack, led by Justin Sun after he acquired Steemit Inc, the company who developed the first version (and which had a huge stake after a stolen, ninja mined start).
So, on one side the price going up is really a good thing, but on the other one, unless we know and see exactly how this new HIVE is distributed, we might have a little bit of a problem. It's difficult to see how it all moves, because HIVE trades mostly on exchanges, and we don't know whose bags are dumped there.
I don't think we can rule out the scenario in which someone is accumulating with the aim of controlling as may positions as possible within the top 21 witnesses (or even all of them). If that's happening, HIVE will be a nice, juicy token, but a worthless community.
Let's hope this is just a scenario, and it won't come true. Let's hope that the buyers really are retail traders from Korea, which see a huge upside potential for HIVE.
And, if it's not a scenario and a new sybil attack is indeed forged during this pump, we already know how to deal with it. We've been there before.