What Lebanon’s Currency Crisis Reveals About Hive

What Lebanon’s Currency Crisis Tells Us About Hive.png

I’m a huge fan of the idea that crypto can be used as a way to hedge against local governments and central banks. There are currency crises happening on a global scale — especially with the fallout of the coronavirus.

The people of Lebanon have been battling an ongoing currency crisis with their incompetent central bank infighting with their government. The current figures estimate losses of $49 Billion on behalf of the Banque du Liban.

To make matters worse, Lebanon has also been facing an ongoing food shortage.

"Lebanon imports up to 80% percent of its food, and a UN study has found that, at the end of April, half the country was struggling to find basic food staples because food prices had risen by 56% since October.” Decrypt

"The country is suffering from a severe shortage of foreign currency—dollars, which are needed to pay for imports. As cash runs out, a barter economy has sprung up. Decrypt

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of the most famous modern philosophical thought leaders in the finance space. I’ve personally enjoyed his writing and have also watched a few of his talks at various crypto conferences a few years back.

Taleb is not a “crypto” guru. In fact, he isn’t very loud about crypto at all. As I said, he spoke at a few conferences, but often bashed the idea of speculating on crypto. He clearly agreed with certain fundamental ideas and financial principles, but he was never a “buy crypto now” kind of influencer.

Back in April, he came out and urged the people of Lebanon to utilize cryptocurrencies as the central bank’s actions deepened the financial status of the whole country.

Hive

I always enjoy thinking about Hive use cases and how we can make the world better with projects like Hive. Obviously, many of these ideals apply to the broader crypto space — whether you’re looking at Bitcoin or Ethereum — but there are some unique qualities of Hive that make me believe that it’s a more vital piece to the puzzle.

Let’s just apply this directly to the people of Lebanon. I’ll tie in some prior experiences I’ve had with some people who are already on Hive and live in countries that are ravaged with poor economic policies (like Venezuela, for example).

With Hive, these people can transact for free and instantaneously. They can send as little as 0.001 HIVE (currently valued at $0.000219 USD) to each other with no fees and all from their mobile smartphone.

With BTC fees and the enormous inflation of GAS fees on the Ethereum network, I believe that this is an incredible mechanism that is available on Hive.

Of course, Hive isn’t the only chain with free and fast transactions. But Hive is unique in a few other ways on top of those already amazing qualities:

Earn more HIVE (blogging/curating)
Connect with people and provide digital services

I constantly reiterate this: you won’t get rich writing on Hive.. but you might pick up some extra crypto in exchange for spending time writing/creating content that you should already be passionate about regardless of the money.

Hive gives us all the ability to earn something in exchange for our passion or even in exchange for a straight up investment of HIVE POWER.

While the investment part is out of reach for most people, the earning through creation part is accessible to anyone. I also lean into this idea that anyone can come here and offer their digital services to other people on Hive and create a brand within the Hive ecosystem. Hive might be small relative to other networks, but it is very active in terms of the crypto space. There really aren’t many (if any) communities out there that are like it.

I personally have hired people from all over the globe to help me with various projects. From design work to dev work to one-off tasks, I’ve utilized Hive as a way to connect with others and leverage their talents in exchange for my capital to get a unique project done. In return, I sent these users payments from across the world instantaneously, for 0 fees and with only their Hive username handle as the receiving address.

Their brand and my activities on Hive is what brought us together and opened the opportunity for a deal and that is truly powerful.

So while I don’t necessarily believe that the people of Lebanon (or other economically torn countries) will come to Hive and start earning enough to make up for all their economic woes, I do believe that they can opt-in to a crypto future through Hive. No matter how small the starting point.

I will also leave you with this thought: the people of Lebanon - or anyone else - can come to Hive, spend nothing but time and earn cryptocurrency.

They can earn HIVE, LEO or any Hive-base token in exchange for their work. They might make $0.10 in a month or they might make $100 in a month (and they may even make quite a lot more if they can monetize their digital services). Whatever amount they earn is something that is completely outside of the reach of their central bank and local government.

If you look at BTC prices around the world, you’ll find that the prices in economically torn countries is often 20% or more higher than in places like the U.S. or Europe. Crypto is increasingly becoming a hot commodity on a global scale, especially when the alternatives are so unstable. Being able to opt-in without spending a penny matters and I believe Hive delivers on that vision.