I've been trading pretty actively in the past several weeks as the DeFi boom struck a chord throughout crypto and we've seen a lot of new and old players getting more active in the markets.
There are a lot of opportunities to speculate out there and I have traded in and out of several coins that I never thought I would touch in a million years (i.e. LINK, ADA, KNC, SNX and a few others), but one coin that I have been heavy-handed in buying is HIVE.
HIVE is the cryptocurrency for the Hive blockchain ecosystem. If you're reading this right now, you're either extremely familiar with Hive (as a daily user of the chain) or you're a new user and have no idea why HIVE is such a great investment in 2020.
I've found myself pushing the buy button on HIVE a lot lately as the price keeps dipping below 2100 SATs. To me, this is a no-brainer trade. Whether I'm looking for a little short-term speculation or a long-term hodl - or most likely a bit of both - HIVE provides plenty of opportunities to buy at this strong level of support.. and as you can see from the recent price action: it bounces off this support like a ball in zero-g.
Without further ado, here are the top 5 reasons why I'm buying HIVE today.
1). Greed
Let's kick it off with the most shallow of the 5 reasons: greed.
As I just mentioned (and as you can see in the following chart), HIVE is one of the most predictable cryptocurrencies out there (in my personal opinion). As someone who uses Hive on a daily basis, I am very familiar with the currency and how it tends to act in different environments and at certain price levels - I also tend to look at prices in terms of SATs as opposed to USD.
The yellow line here is set at the 2200 SAT level. Below this price is where I tend to start laddering HIVE buy orders. I start with some small orders right at 2200 and then as the price gets closer to 2000 SATs, my orders get a lot larger.
This is a daily chart going back to the start of June which is when the major rally after the launch of the Hive blockchain cooled off. That rally was pretty much untradable as it was filled with hype and new exchanges and a brand new currency.
Now that HIVE has settled in and found a price range, it's been fairly easy to just buy when it gets below that 2200 SAT level and then keep some for HODLing/sell some when it's above 2300 SATs.
That might not sound like much -- bouncing between buy orders at 2200 and sell orders around 2300, but it's more than you think. 4.5% in just a few days per trade is not a bad return. Although I typically set the sells around 2500 SATs and then power up the rest for yield.
Greed is ultimately the main driver for most of the crypto industry. For me, trading HIVE on a purely greed-driven basis is easy to justify.
2). BUIDL
Following up on greed, buying HIVE can also come out of a desire to BUIDL. The Hive blockchain ecosystem is filled with opportunities to build your next great idea, a new website, launch your own token or even build some automation cash cow.
Being on this chain for so many years now, I've seen so many types of businesses, communities, dApps, games, automation, etc. It's well into the hundreds at this point.
Holding HIVE gives you a lot of power to build your next great business. With HIVE POWER, you can drive a lot of awareness to your project and awareness is half the game. Just because you buidl it doesn't mean they'll come. BUT in my experience, if you buidl it on HIVE and have the HIVE POWER to encourage community engagement with your brand, business or dApp, then your odds of success increase dramatically.
Hive is one of the most unique places to build a business because of the ability to tap into a living community of real people who really enjoy new additions to this ecosystem. This gives me (and many others) a big motivator for buying and HODLing HIVE as staked HIVE (HIVE POWER).
3). Community
One of the most under appreciated values of Hive is the community behind it. Unless you've spent any measure of time on Hive-based applications or front-ends, it's impossible to really get a sense of the community that exists here.
The above screenshot was taken today from hivedapps.com. It shows the monthly active users and monthly transaction volume for the top 30 dApps on the Hive blockchain. Compared to something like Facebook, this is nothing. Compared to any other blockchain in the world, this is massive.
Hive is one of the largest blockchain communities in the world. A unicorn amongst unicorns. If you're not already a member of the ecosystem, then go take a look around some of the top dApps and see what Hive is all about.
4). dApps
Community leads nicely into dApps. This screenshot shows the top 10 dApps by user activity on the Hive blockchain. A lot of activity is concentrated on the top few dApps, but one thing that is consistent across the board is growth.
When I look at that screenshot (and I track the dApps pretty regularly) one thing that I continually see month-to-month is growth in the number of users and transaction volume amongst the top applications here on Hive.
Whether you're a trader or a long-term investor in HIVE as a cryptocurrency, all of this volume and activity is incredibly bullish for the ecosystem. Without activity, you'd have a dying currency with no community desire to buy it up when the price dips.
One of the many reasons why the media has been wrong every time they said that BTC is dead over the past decade is because of the community behind it who can envision the applications that can be built with Bitcoin. When they see Bitcoin, they see immutable, global, decentralized and trust-less payments. When the media sees it, they see some fake internet money.
When you look at Hive, you should see dozens of applications working separately but together on the core mission of growing the overall userbase and on-chain activity.
5). Yield
Let's close this out with yield which is not unlike how we started (greed). DeFi yield farming is the conversation these days as people in crypto look for opportunities to buy up certain tokens, stake them and leverage different contracts in order to farm out the highest possible APY (annual percentage yield).
On Hive, you can earn a yield in so many different ways:
1). Curation APR:
Curating on-chain content from front ends like https://peakd.com, https://leofinance.io and others with staked HIVE (HIVE POWER) yields a return on your efforts. When you upvote a piece of content, you're rewarding the author for their work and you're also getting rewarded for your curation of that work. Typical curation APRs are anywhere from 6-25% depending on a lot of variables.
2). Delegation APR:
If you don't want to spend the time curating content, you can automate your staking rewards by delegating to a project like 
Delegating your HIVE POWER is a unique way to earn yield because it is a no-risk way to generate yield. It's no-risk because a delegation simply allows the other party to use your HIVE Power but they never actually gain access to your HIVE tokens. The HIVE currency stays in your account, but the power of that HIVE is delegated to the receiving account.
Many DeFi contracts require that you loan out your actual tokens or grant contract access to them. With Hive, you can delegate out the power of your tokens without ever giving up your keys/access to them.
3). Staking APR:
Many people don't know this but holding HIVE as staked HIVE (HIVE POWER) in your account actually generates passive staking rewards in addition to the other rewards you get from curation/delegation, etc.
The current APR is about 3.33% for having HIVE POWER staked in your account. If you go to an account and watch the HIVE POWER from 1 day to the next, you'll notice the small increases that just accrue in the account balance. It's a pretty great feature of this chain that is under-recognized. 
I wrote a mini-series (of which I still have more parts to add) about earning money on Hive. If you're interested in some more in-depth explanations about earning on HIVE check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that none of this is financial advice but merely the reasons why I buy HIVE on a damn-near daily basis. When HIVE is at lows like this (below 2200 SATs) I'm a buyer. The short-term spikes up are seemingly easy to predict in my opinion and I capitalize on those spikes when I can.
Outside of that HIVE is one of the 4 cryptocurrencies that I HODL for the long-term. Mainly for the 5 reasons that I outlined above. I've chosen to spend my time, energy and resources here on Hive to build my own project, create content, curate content and ultimately enjoy this ecosystem that I call my digital home.
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