It has been "wellbeing week" at work and it culminated in a an afternoon of activities at an adventure and exercise park - since I have a torn calf and can't move my neck much due to the artery dissection, I spent the time in a bar with a couple colleagues who also had decent excuses to drink instead.
But wellbeing comes in many forms and it isn't just physical - mental health matters too, as does financial health. On that note, it is good to see HIVE shifting up a gear today and at least from a technical standpoint, I "made" more in the last week than I will in the next six months of work - Which is pretty incredible if you think about it. Of course, you can't pay utility bills with technical profits, nor upvotes.
But, it is nice to get that upside feeling creeping back in, even if it is a brief stop before a drop - but it is going to explode sooner or later. Can't you feel it?
Perhaps you can't. I know lots of people who are very "interested" in earning Hive, but don't actually spend much time learning about how it works or its capabilities. I am not saying that everyone need to dive into all of the technicalities and details, but I think if considering something for long-term investment, at least spend time to have some idea as to what is going on.
This can actually be a bit of a challenge here, as there is a much wider range of people on Hive than are on the pure investment side of crypto, for obvious reasons. To invest, a person has to have access to capital upfront, whilst on Hive it is possible to earn from scratch and many have done just that. I wonder how many other tokens out there have made people significant amounts of money without them having to buy anything at all - anyone know?
Sure, the mining tokens back in the day did this - but how many people can get into mining Bitcoin now? The barrier to entry into setting up a mining farm is enormous, which heavily narrows the distribution at that point. If the miners are able to reduce the energy costs, they are able to retain more of what they mine, meaning that it would start to centralize even more. Of course, almost 90% of the supply is already out in the wild to some degree, so the additional token to come won't be as significant as the first - though their value will be.
As I was saying recently, time matters in regards to value and while something might be a low ticket item today, it doesn't mean it always be. The people who have been working and earning on Hive for the last few years, might very well be looking at their technical value today and saying, "yeah, all that effort is starting to be worth it" and likely, others are looking at theirs and say, "perhaps I should have put in more effort".
This is all part of the process in generating value though, as it takes a process of believers and non-believers to make something valuable. This might sound counter intuitive, but it is the "one man's trash is another's treasure" principle applied, where often people will add more value onto something when there are people who think it is valueless - building a value-creating, self-fulfilling process.
Crypto is a pretty good example of this, where even now there are "crypto deniers" saying that it is valueless and useless, even though the institutions they believe know what they are doing like the governments and financial institutions, are legislating and building gateways into crypto - funnily, while they are simultaneously saying it is worthless and warning people not to buy. And people don't.
I feel sorry for some of the people I have spoken to about crypto over the last 5 years, because I obviously wasn't the right person to influence them into taking a punt on it. I have written about some of my experiences in the past with this and pretty much all of them would have been able to write off a month's salary and buy-in and now, pay off their mortgages just by holding.
But, they wouldn't have just held as once they bought, as with some skin in the game, they would have been far more likely to activate their curiosity and start roaming the dark depths of the blockchains and be exposed to other crypto freaks that would influence them. Some of them would have been on Hive, some would have been on Splinterlands at the start, some would have bought Doge. Whatever they did, they would likely have a far greater financial wellbeing than they currently have.
Their mental health would have probably suffered, however.
We are influenced by many things and as I said, I might not have been the one to speak to them, as they would rather listen to others that they are more influenced by, at least at the time. Quite a few would have bought Bitcoin at 2500 if they hadn't been influenced by a person who they believed knew what they were talking about - A smart person, an IT professional, an expert - but not when it comes to this. They carried baggage in and the opinion wasn't based on relevant information, it was based on misinformed feeling and intuition.
I am quite sure it is the same on Hive, where people people are influenced by other users. While everyone should, "do your own research" (DYOR), the fact is that we often make decisions based on the opinions of others. A lot of people call me a Hive shill and might even blame me in the bear markets for their "misfortune" - but what about in the highs?
What about all of those Negative Nancies who say, "Hive is doomed!" because of downvotes, the curve, the community, the whales, the bidbots, the.... list goes on. These people can be influential too, yet they never seem to take the backlash of them being wrong.
There is an asymmetry in responsibility and blame, where the people who are positive have to make a disclaimer of "this is not financial advice" but the people who are negative don't say anything. Not only that, they fall very silent when things are up with many even flipping sides in an attemt to cover themselves.
I wonder how many people aren't here because of these types of people and how many sold early because of the negative influence these people had. Don't get me wrong here, a healthy dose of skepticism is good, but we should be very careful who influences our decisions, as we might just end up lamenting our missed opportunity.
Just to finish though, the main difference between the people who are influenced in the positive to buy or hold and those by the negative to not buy or sell, is that on one side it takes personal investment, the other can actually get a return. A bird in the hand today is remembered as something, even if it would have been a whole flock and a farm filled with cattle five years from now. But, a loss is amplified and since no one wants to take responsibility for their decisions, they blame those who influenced their decisions instead "You told me to buy!"
Instead of living mortgage-free lives, my friends saved themselves a month or two of paychecks. At the time, this seemed like a good deal, because that money was right there, already in their pockets and tangible, while an invested future held risk and uncertainty. Looking back, I know that several of them are questioning the mindset and the influencing factors that cost them financial freedom.
But it didn't cost them, did it? Not buying something that goes up is only a hypothetical loss, a thought experiment, as nothing was ventured, so nothing was lost. People are so fearful of losing anything that they overvalue what they have in hand and discount what they could hold. This overpowers rationality, it engages fears and it makes that tiny little bird, seem a feast - while a thriving farm lay just beyond the horizon. Better to have something than nothing.
The tyrants of the world are those who inspire us to not try for better, to not invest into our own future, that success is impossible and resistance is futile.
Careful who you listen to and DYOR.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]