Do you come here often or, is this your first bullrun?

One of the things I love about bull runs, is the excitement that people who haven't experienced one before have. There is an energy and an air of disbelief and wonder at the driving prices and the increases to wallet values. I would assume that a lot of the traffic on exchanges is people just refreshing their holdings page. This is especially true for the people who haven't held much in the last bullrun or of course, the many who weren't even around at that time and are just starting their crypto journey.

I get excited too of course, but not overly so, as I am still not in a position to sell any at this point, so it is all very much hypothetical gains. This also kind of protects me against the losses, as they are hypothetical losses too. Price only matter when buying or selling...

Well that is not entirely true of course, as price does affect the tokenomics of Hive heavily, with prices being directly reflected in the value of posts - on the 3.5 day average of course. Some people might remember those 1000 dollar posts from 2017/18, not that I got any of those. I am not even sure what my highest valued post ever was, but I think I crossed 200 once at that time, and had a few around 100. Quite incredible and very exciting - even if it didn't last long.

Of course, I don't expect it to be quite that way next time around as while there aren't many people here now, there will definitely be more next round. There are so many more people in crypto in general and of course, there are all of the cross posters across all the platforms. What this means is more competition on the pool, which is great, as it distributes tokens more widely in amounts that not everyone will be willing to dump immediately.

I am really looking forward to the times where the people who have been stacking Hive for the last 4 years are able to distribute significant value to posts and really feel that they are having a direct effect on someone's quality of life. Even if Hive hits 2 dollars, which is 16x up from here, 10,000 HP will deliver 70-cent votes, or 7 dollars a day. That might not sound like much for some, but that is potentially life changing for others. In Finland, it is about a coffee and a bun. What is it in other parts of the world?

For those that earned, bought and held all of this time, they might also be happy to sell a bit as well, 2000 dollars for 1000 HIVE might seem like a pretty sweet deal for many users. I would consider selling some at that price for sure - funnily, it was around that price where I first bought crypto with fiat too. Just think, I bought around 200 for $400 dollars. That same 400 would buy 3200 today. Oops.

But, that first "real" investment into crypto completely changed my experience with it, as I started to feel connected to it in a way that was missing earlier. While effectively the same, there is a psychological difference between buying with crypto earnings and buying with fiat. I believe at least part of it is the sense of ownership - where people still feel like what is in their wallet (or bank account) is theirs, while digital money is "play" money.

I think that in time, this paradigm will shift as more people start to recognize that the inverse is true - crypto is what they own, fiat is what they are allowed to use. This shift is already happening of course and is being accelerated by the governments themselves, without realizing it. The more they crush interest rates and drive them negative, the more money they print in order to cover their expenses, the less reason there is to hold cash.

While in the past this would force companies into various investments that stimulate the economy, many are making their moves into crypto, a space where governments lose more control. A government can't inflate the supply of Bitcoin, the holders know how much they have of the network at any given point of time, now and in the future. 1 Bitcoin will always be 1/21Mth of the total supply. While the price fluctuates wildly, there is some security in the certainty of it, there is trust. AS the corporations and institutions make their move, the rest of the world will follow soon behind.

While the current conditions are exciting for many, we really are only seeing the first drops of rain that is going to become a flood into the future. It is going to change every layer of our experience as we know it today, it is going to affect all of us in some way, likely heavily.

It is easy to be caught up in the hype and the changes in values, but when zooming out on what is going to happen in the next decade, this is all just a little blip on the radar and what we think are the highs, can look very much flat later on. The emotional response doesn't look into that future for its temperament though, it is only interested in what it sees today and predicts for tomorrow. It is easy to get caught up in the FUD and FOMO when looking at a narrow slice of time but, there is so much more to come.

Whichever way one looks at it though, crypto makes the internet far more interesting - gotta be some value in that.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]