Powering Up Hive & the Power of Owning Your Social Media

I was originally going to do this post about powering up Hive on July 15th and just upload it to my Hive blog, seeing as it’s the halfway point between the 5th and the 25th time frame for the Five for #HivePUD contest I’m running (and needless to say, my entry is just for an example, and isn’t eligible for prizes). But then I saw Crypto Twitter explode with the news that the blue checks got hacked, and when I thought to myself, “Self, that’s why you’re investing all of your Hive into the platform by powering up, because that would never happen on the blockchain” all of a sudden…

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… and I realized I should redo my entry to talk more about that, and share it on my WordPress blog too, especially since some of my non-Hive readers have expressed interest in all this crypto stuff I’ve been involved with over the past few years.

Oh, and given the subject matter, I feel the need to include that fancy, “this is not investment advice – I only know enough about investing to know I don’t know all that much” disclaimer. 😊

And oh again – I thought I should also mention that if 19 bazillion people joined Hive today, I wouldn’t get anything other than wicked excited that mass adoption finally happened, meaning this isn’t some sort of MLM or Pyramid Scheme type of thing. Recently someone in the amazeballs Hive community came up with a referral program, but that’s more (in my estimation, anyway) to make sure new Hive users have someone to connect with, rather than possibly earning some pennies from their postings. And joining is free, either through the aforementioned website, bunches of #dApps (Decentralized Apps), or even individual Hive members like me, who have generated account creation tokens over time.

So when I left that other blockchain in March to join the forked version called Hive, I’d already come to terms with the fact that I might never get my original investment (in the neighborhood of $800) back, but I hit the powerdown button and crossed my fingers. Even though I ended up selling all of my original investment at a fraction of the price I bought it, I consider myself lucky that I was able to salvage anything at all from that ~~dumpster fire of a platform~~ now centralized & censored circus.

Then there was a brief moment in time (a month or so ago) that the price of Hive briefly shot up, so that my account (which currently is hovering around $3,400 USD) was worth close to 10k! A couple of my kids tried to convince me to cash some, if not all, of my investment out, but I honestly didn’t even consider it (and hubby said, “Good idea to hodl” 😂 ). I have no doubt that my patience now will eventually yield an account that is not only worth a decent chunk of change, but is also sustainably bringing money into our household. It might be a year from now, or a decade from now, but for me it’s not a question of, “if” – only, “when.”

So, what does Powering Up Hive mean? Powering up means investing in the blockchain. When you “stake” your Hive power, it means you’re committing it to the platform for a minimum of 13 weeks, so you couldn’t just sell it off all at once when the price jumps (or “moons”) like that. You also earn a little bit of interest on your staked/invested Hive, along with getting larger voting power for when you upvote other people’s posts, and having a larger pool of Resource Credits (kind of like gas in your Hive blog tank that allows you to post, comment, and such) to work with.

Every little bit of Hive I get, other that a small amount that I keep liquid for tips and contest awards, is powered up, That means that if the price of Hive suddenly shot way past the moon, and for some bizarre reason I changed my mind and wanted to sell it, I would only be able to access 1/13th of my powered up Hive after a week (powering down takes 13 weeks, so you get 1/13th every week for the duration). But when seeing things like the Twitter hack happen, it makes me all the more certain that the old way of using social media (we get it for “free” while the corporations get rich off our data and privacy) is long overdue for a change, and having an account that no one can censor, hack, or hide from your followers based on some algorithm is about to become more precious than gold. So I’m not going anywhere (or selling any amount) any time soon.

I figure this is also a good place to drop my recent Twitter thread too, which kind of sums it all up for me –

I’ve had a few #blogging friends asking about the $Hive blockchain recently, so I thought I’d do a tweet (or three 🤣) about it.

I joined the #Hive #community almost 3 years ago (back when it was that other blockchain) & through it I’ve received an amazing education on #crypto, #DPOS, #investing, & #blockchain technology.

More importantly (to me) I’ve connected with a passionate, international group of people from all walks of life. The power of that #community was demonstrated in March 2020 when a certain “Sunone” attempted a hostile takeover of our original crypto home. We responded by forking away to @hiveblocks, a truly #decentrailized chain.

Because I believe so strongly in the value of $Hive, I’ve invested some money over the years (approx $800 total) & even with the current low price of $0.23 USD, today my account is worth around $3,400 (you can see my wallet HERE).

I also know many who haven’t invested a single penny & have simply grown their accounts by creating content & curating others. Their account values range from approx $500 to 1K.

Most of my post payouts lately have been under $5, with a handful a bit higher, and one at $36. When I’m busy commenting on other people’s posts & returning comments on my own, the payout tends to be a bit higher ($10ish). I’m not living off my Hive earnings – in fact, other than pulling $70 out back in 2017 (just to see if I could actually get cash in the bank), all of my coin stays in my wallet, slowly growing my account (it has an APR of approximately 3.35%).

Why am I such a fangirl of this crypto thing? As I said in a recent tweet, #Hive is the place that I can follow the content creators I like & actually see everything they post, without some algorithm deciding for me. I also share my #nature #photography, #Tarot readings, #witchcraft spells, occasional bits of #fiction #writing & my followers see it all.

While I feel we’re still very much in Beta mode (with kinks to be worked out) the power of owning your own data & controlling what you see & who you interact with is priceless.

To check out more about it, take a peek at the amazing HiveOnboard site, put together by community member @roomservice & others to help new people join. There are links there to sign up for an account, or you’re welcome to use my referral link and I’ll delegate some Hive Power (it’s like mana in a game that allows you to post & comment) to get you started – https://hiveonboard.com?ref=traciyork

Also, feel free to #AMA & if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone in this awesomesauce community of @HivePeople who does. ️

So if any of my non-crypto blogging friends are interested in learning more, please feel free to shout out, either in the comment section, through a Twitter or Facebook DM, or even my email. One of the main reasons I haven’t been pushing too hard to join at the moment is that the awesomesauce WordPress plugin that automatically imports all my posts to the Hive blockchain is undergoing a big rebrand & and refresh of its dashboard, so I’ve been waiting until it’s released (and I’ve figured out how to use it again…lol). However, it still works just fine, and there are tons of other interfaces to explore as well, so there’s no time like the present to give it a peek!

And for my Hive blogging friends, a reminder that you still have about a week (until the 25th) to get your entries in for my Five for #HivePUD giveaway, which is running in conjunction with @streetstyle‘s Hive Power Up Day imitative (which I’m running in his absence). There are currently 5 delegation prizes being offered by @nathanmars and myself, and as of this moment…. NO ENTRIES YET!

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Here’s essentially all you need to do to earn up to 5 entries into the giveaway –

Write a Hive post (1 entry) about powering up (minimum 250 original words)

And/Or

Tweet (up to 4 entries) about powering up (must use #Hive & #HivePUD)

Then

Post & Tweet between the 5th and the 25th of the month
Drop links in reply/replies to the monthly announcement post
Winners announced on the 5th via the #HivePUD Official Winners post

Check out the July announcement post for more details, and happy Hiving!

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