A few days ago I tried to power up 500 Hive to become the 250th largest account in terms of Voting Power. I accidently added an extra 0 and became the 237th largest account :-) I'll be powering down for 2-3 weeks but I might as well leave the bulk of it there. I just want to have 10% of my HIVE liquid, just in case.
If you were here in 2017 and 2018, you remember when HIVE (then Steem) suddenly pumped to $5. Since then I've always kept some Hive liquid, especially when so much of my portfolio is in Hive. That is where I accumulated much of the Bitcoin that I am now turning into Hive. If I can make the same move again this cycle, perhaps I may actually become a whale by the start of the next cycle without liquidating all my other assets and savings.
So I am slowly dollar cost averaging out of bitcoin and into Hive, and plan on flipping half of what I dollar cost average into Hive back into more bitcoin if given the opportunity, and powering up the other half.
I know I said I wouldn't make a New Year's Resolution but yesterday I had some fun joining 
I don't mind if I am a little more invested in Hive than I could be and miss some of those bitcoin profits because I can USE my Hive, not just to make more Hive but to participate in governance and help shape this ecosystem, and I'm sure Hive will be back at $1 as soon as we can get our marketing game together. Development is already moving along, the community has great leaders who help make a vibrant ecosystem.
A lot of users are waiting for some big investors to come along and pump the price. Logically, that'd be the quickest and easiest way to see our price increase drastically. I think this is a tad overly-optimistic but also totally and utterly unnecessary for us to recover and stabilize at a price 2-5x higher than where we are now.
The ideal investor in Hive is NOT some millionaire. It's you and me, the existing user base. It doesn't even have to be a majority of our user base. Hear me out...
If you have known me for a while, you know I used to be a minnow who was just earning rewards here. I scoffed at the idea of putting money into Hive, mostly because I had so little savings and because I was earning some sweet bitcoin on my $1 or $6 Hive (steem) with bitcoin at $6-8k.
It also seemed ridiculous to me because at that time, the trending page was full of garbage, most whales hardly cared about new users and just wanted returns, and it felt like the better the post, the worse the payout at times. People were mostly focused on the money, people said "quality matters" but they hardly voted like it did. Steemit Inc. was uninterested in the user experience and incompetent about PR.
Things changed a whole lot. Most of the dirty whales left, most of the spammers and scammers left, a few witnesses and influential curators like 
And the price tanked...not all at once, It tanked once, and pumped and then tanked again, and here we are. But while our price is the lowest it's ever been, our community and development is far stronger than it's ever been, as small as it may be.
And for the savvy investor, such a drastically lower price is a good time to invest, especially when Bitcoin is going parabolic.
It's up to every person to decide when or if they want to take profits on their BTC, but if you do, what better place to put it in than Hive? The best things to invest in are things you understand, and like I keep trying to emphasize is It gives you a chance to have a bigger influence in a place you've made friends and come to love. I am running the Hive Cross Culture community and curation trail and I was able to start that thanks to powering up. My vote on witnesses and proposals can actually impact the ecosystem!
What better investors are there then ones who sincerely care about an ecosystem and actually understand it. After a year or two of toiling to build a stake, you probably know enough to help newbies get off to a good start. More HP makes it easy to support them in ways that can keep them on the platform. I am now using delegation to motivate some of my favorite users here such as 
People who invest for the gains don't care about this place and will dump as fast as they pump. Those who do care may power up and use their stake but they don't understand the ecosystem as well and may not do what's best for it.
You are probably thinking "I can only buy a few hundred or thousand Hive at best, how the hell can I help the price of Hive?". We don't necessarily need huge investors to raise the price though...we just need more buyers than sellers at each price level. The reason we are at 12 cents is because we have more people willing to sell at 12 cents than to buy at 12 cents.
And who do you think is selling!? It's mostly the Hive user base, as most Hive holders are active community members, aside from the exchanges which allow us to buy in, sell, or perhaps where some day-trading is going on. My guess is there are two or three whales playing with the price, and enough Hive holders in really difficult situations who are hoping to use Hive to survive in a difficult time.
If someone are at a loss for how to survive, I guess they should sell at $0.12, it's better to eat than to sit on crypto. But I hope everyone understands that by finding another way to live besides Hive income, the value of everyones Hive will likely 3x or 5x or 10x and everyone can make a huge turn towards long-term prosperity.
All it takes is a critical mass and we are so close.
I won't ell you what to do but if I couldn't afford to buy in right now, I would make it a new years resolution to find some extra source of income so I could stop selling Hive under $0.30. Full time job, part time job, online, fiat, bitcoin, whatever. And then I'd put 5% or 10% or if I were ambitious to grow 20 or 30% into Hive. I'd suck it up and work a part time job (that's what I'm doing) and put 10% into Hive and 10% into bitcoin. 5% would work too.
This is not financial advice and I don't want to judge anyone for the decisions they make. Just know that the one keeping the price down are the ones who are selling now, and how much we all have to gain by holding.
So when you hear the question "What's keeping the price down?" it might be you or people you know. It would be unfair to shame them, but it might be wise to educate them and encourage them to hold off their "Full time Hivester" dream until we have a steadily growing user base and Hive back at $1 or more.
Since a lot of us hold bitcoin, I am sure this will happen eventually anyway. There are many Hivesters who want to buy in but don't feel financially secure. If our BTC or ETH holdings double or triple, we are much more likely to feel comfortable taking some profits to buy Hive. I predict there will be a noticeable increase in the amount of orcas and dolphins at the platform, and a few new whales, once Bitcoins price seems to have stabilized and people start looking to earn money in the alts.
Like Bitcoin, Hive is set up to have a much more sustainable run this time. A lot of our old time users have much larger investments than they started their crypto journey with, and some of the money that went from Steem into bitcoin will eventually find it's way back into Hive. With the bull market in full effect and far from it's peak, any growth we have will likely stick.
As 
, Hive tends to follow bitcoin and the alt markets but at a time lag of a few weeks or months. According to his analysis, Hive is following the 2016 cycle pretty closely, and if that's true, we will see a lot of growth in the coming months, mostly based on BTC flowwing into alts and interest coming back into other coins. I doubt the alt market will be as crazy as last time, but Hive is posed to do very well.
So there is no reason to wait for the millionaires or mass adoption. Our price movement, can start with you and me, and whether we buy or sell. 3 new whales, 30 new orcas, 100 new dolphins or 1000 new minnows who HODL or buy could easily break the selling walls at $0.12 and $0.13 and start a chain reaction where we grow a lot in a short period of time.
Do you still want to sell your Hive?
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