Hello to my fellow Hivians,
I think there is a lot of negative sentiment as it relates to HIVE price. I am not going to dissect where I think that comes from but I do think it is important to talk about this negative sentiment because I do think negative sentiment can have a bad impact on mental health and physical health.
Many people tend to view their investments in a vacuum. What I mean by this is, many people will only look at their investment performance without comparing that performance to the broader market.
When I compare HIVE to ETH over the last month, I am not convinced we have a problem with HIVE price when just looking at this chart.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hive-blockchain/
When I compare HIVE to BTC over the last month, I am not convinced we have a problem with HIVE price when just looking at this chart.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hive-blockchain/
I realize some people will look at these charts and tell me to zoom out. But we did have a hard fork fairly recently and I believe we should set expectations based on what the world is like today.
The most common thing I hear people complain about on HIVE is we have not been adopted by the masses. I do not think you can force adoption. Adoption needs to be organic or it will not be sustainable in my opinion.
For me, the "why" is very important. When I ask people "why" they want us to be adopted by the masses, I rarely get consistent answers. I am not sure being adopted by the masses will be helpful right now. I want us to market HIVE and get more stakeholders that care about the ecosystem, but I am not sure massive adoption is the boon to HIVE price that most people think it will be TODAY. We really need to take a step back and look at the world and what is happening (with things like AI for example).
AI requires "a lot" of processing power and resources but it is ramping up very quickly. There was unprecedented amounts of investment put into Bitcoin mining by corporations over the last few years. Most these corporations have not performed very well in the stock market. The primary reason for this is because mining crypto at the rates a corporation is expected to is very capital intensive. Most corporations need regular cash flow. They cannot practically spend a bunch of money on mining and then HODL for long periods of time.
A lot of these bitcoin mining companies are pivoting to AI. To some extent this is a marketing play, but it is also smart for them to diversify their operations.
The heavy investment into crypto mining created a situation where AI can ramp up very quickly; AI is ramping up very quickly.
AI is already at the point where it is hard to identify. AI Agents in particular are very good at acting like people on the internet right now. In modern corporate social media they have a huge problem with AI. That problem is, what do you do when AI Agents create content and then interact with other AI Agents? How do you prove who is an AI Agent and who is a person just based on what they type? The correct answer to that question could be worth a lot of money.
On HIVE we have defense mechanisms to a lot of the issues that corporate social media faces. (1) We are not dependent on short term profits to appease shareholders. (2) If people have a small stake and are new to the ecosystem these users are viewed with more scrutiny. (3) We are not dependent on algorithms to make HIVE addictive to maintain users.
Point 3 is very important. An algorithm that encourages people to doom scroll is not a long-term boon to social media in my opinion. Modern corporate social media is very addictive today. Those companies which have leveraged algorithms do have a long-term problem. They are in a precarious situation because without algorithms they lose a competitive edge. If they make algorithms open source and people can design their own algorithm, then companies cannot control advertising dollars in the same way. If there is ever a point where corporations are forced to show what they are doing with algorithms that will impact how they design the algorithms. (Talking about algorithms could be its own blog post so I am not going to dig into that any more with this post).
I am going to pivot this blog post to talk a little bit about me and my investment philosophy. I spend a lot of time on my blog talking about me and what I am doing. I think that is ok because HIVE is used as a blog by a lot of people. If I am writing a blog and telling you how I think and what I am going through, that does make sense to me. I think that is what a blog is for, in my opinion.
I think investors, in general, have different risk appetites and that does create a lot of confusion when retail traders compare themselves to other retail traders. I sometimes do things that do not make sense to most people, like buying HIVE when I believe sentiment is low.
I have a tendency to invest in things when sentiment is low. That is because I am a Contrarian Value Investor.
What is Contrarian Investing? "Contrarian investing is an investment style in which investors purposefully go against prevailing market trends by selling when others are buying and buying when most investors are selling."
Definition from Investopedia from - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/contrarian.asp
What is a Value Investing? "Value investors believe that the market overreacts to good and bad news, resulting in stock price movements that don't correspond to a company's long-term fundamentals."
Definition from Investopedia from - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueinvesting.asp
I think it is very important that people understand what type of investor they are and not try to be something they are not. My investment style is very stressful for most people. My investment style is not really stressful to me because I am naturally a contrarian.
Being a contrarian investor typically means a person thinks in "weird" ways. Because of this, being a contrarian investor can be incredibly lonely. I regularly do things that move against the heard so to speak. Moving against the heard can be very profitable but it can be incredibly lonely.
Markets do change and how markets react do change. Many active traders/investors fall in love with their trades. Many active traders/investors have a tendency to fall in love with their legacy. I think admitting our biases is the easiest way to reduce dysfunctional trading habits.
I am biased towards HIVE. I have a deep emotional connection to what HIVE is and what I see people doing on this chain. I believe most "good" stakeholders on HIVE work really hard. I see a lot of people doing things for free. I see a lot of people investing a lot of time and energy to try to make HIVE "successful." I think one issue HIVE has is HIVE is not a monolithic community. We do not all think the same. "Success" for HIVE means different things to different people.
I showed a chart comparing HIVE and Bitcoin above. That being said, HIVE is very different than Bitcoin. I studied Bitcoin a lot before I started investing in stocks with Bitcoin exposure.
One thing I think is a very interesting trait with Bitcoin Maxis is they want the price of Bitcoin to go down. They want Bitcoin to be cheaper so they can buy more.
I am not saying I want HIVE price to go down. I do think the leverage ratio of HIVE is very important. That being said, if I can buy HIVE at a cheaper price then I did already, I will probably do it. I do not recommend people do what I do. But I do think people should take a step back and look at where HIVE is today and where HIVE could be in the future; I do not think hashing out old disputes or old "bad" deeds is valuable to HIVE. I could be wrong but these are my opinions.
I think HIVE is mispriced. That being said, valuing crypto assets is very hard. Businesses are "easy" to value; crypto assets are not easy to value. There are straight forward methods for valuing businesses and these methods have been around for A LONG TIME. I think HIVE is mispriced but there is a caveat to this idea. I have no idea when the market will price HIVE "correctly" based on my interpretation. There is a non zero chance I am wrong and HIVE is fairly priced today; like I said, valuing crypto assets is very hard.
If you are looking at HIVE price all the time and it is stressing you out, it might be good to take a break from looking at charts. That is really up to you and not me. I do take breaks from looking at charts. There are certain times when investing I do not know what to do. When I do not know what to do, I usually just don't do anything and I wait. I did not expect the bitcoin selloff to be this massive here recently. I originally thought we would be at $150k bitcoin price in Q4 of 2025. I was wrong. It is ok to be wrong. If you are a seasoned investor and you actively trade, you will probably make mistakes. When I make mistakes, I ask myself, "what can I learn from my mistakes?" I ask myself, "what positive things can I do next time to be a better investor?" I think learning from mistakes is under rated in today's society. If you communicate you make mistakes some people will try to leverage that against you. You do not need to tell people you made mistakes but I do think understanding biases is very important. It is hard to understand my biases if I believe I never make mistakes; so, I admit I make mistakes.
This is a friendly reminder, nothing I say or do is financial advice. I am communicating how I feel right now. How I feel will change and my beliefs do change. I look forward to communicating with more people on HIVE and trying to understand what "success" for HIVE means. To me, what makes HIVE "successful" is an interesting conversation.
Cheers,
Hurt