Future streams of green

I spent a little time this morning talking with colleagues about investment diversity, mostly because I have none. Well, I do have a little, since I was granted some option in the company I work at and then swapped salary for some more in cost-saving measures due to Covid, as well as the compulsory contributions for retirement, which includes a bit more from my own business activities, which is also compulsory. On top of this is my house, which has some equity carried over from past places already in it, so it should have some value in the future too.

Of course, I have a little crypto squirreled away, but I am uncertain as to where that is going to go. Yes, "up" is the hope, but if looking long-term to the point of my technical retirement, it is hard to predict how "safe" that investment is. At the same time, with the disruption I expect is coming to the traditional economy and the tools within, what seems secure or predictable now, could lose that status very fast, especially if the centralized points of control start to lose ground against the decentralized.

When thinking about yield in terms of decades, it is hard to predict exactly what is going to come of things. For example, at the current rate of inflation drop on Hive, by about 2035 the rate will be a flat 1 percent of the supply. Taking out all the HBD conversion issues, that would put about 6-7 million into the pool each year, which is about a quarter of what it is now. If in 15 years from now there is demand coupled with decreased supply, the scarcity should push the token value up.

But, there are other factors involved in this case too, since the inflation rate on Hive is set by consensus, which means at some point there could be a decision made to drop the inflation rate lower again. If for example the inflation rate was halved today from ~8 to ~4, the reward pool tomorrow would be half of what it currently is

instead of nearly 900,000 HIVE in the pool, there would be 450,000 - what this would effectively do is make HIVE twice as hard to earn, much like a Bitcoin halving. This means that going forward, it would be twice as hard to earn stake from the platform, which might have a positive effect on market demand, considering that there is about 380 million HIVE in total, but only about 140 million of that is powered up. With it being twice as hard to earn, buying of the market becomes more attractive and the increased interest should push price, which will again draw the focus onto earning on the platform, since there will be high earning posts, even though the HIVE distributed will be half as much.

My point of mentioning this, is to demonstrate that things can change, especially in regards to governance decisions, like legislation. When conditions change, opportunity is both opened up, as well as lost and using the Hive example, the people who have stacked instead of sold over the years, would benefit from being early adopters and supporters, in much the same way as the early Bitcoin miners were ably to get thousands of Bitcoin for what was essentially free. If they held, they are multi-millionaires - if they undervalued Bitcoin and sold, they may have nothing today.

But these legislation changes happen in the "real world" too, and with the coming economic challenges that the traditional processes will face, legislation itself will be changed to try and bring stability. As we know, the way governments, banks and financial institutions work - much of this will cost the average person and create more disruption, as they will be using methodology for one sickness, to treat an "illness" that they do not recognize or understand. It is an, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like nail" - approach.

While there are a lot of confident investors out there, none can really predict what the world is going to look like in a decade or two from now, as the pressure of social unrest driven be economic inequality builds. As pieces of the system start to fail and state control is diluted, the institutions and corporations will try to take even more control, but they too will likely suffer from their limitations, which is their centralization and narrow focus. This won't stop them from trying though and many will overreach to the point that their bread and butter user bases start to find alternatives that exist outside of their reach.

None of this really solves my problem, which is to try and find my own approach that will support increased opportunity in the future. Sometimes I have wondered if my heavy rest on crypto is a flaw in my design, but in recent months I have become even more convinced that the future is going to require it. This is not based on the increasing prices of assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, it is on the observation of social behavior and the changes in many people's thinking, as they too have experienced the precarious nature of the current system, soon to be the legacy conditions.

With the uncertainty comes opportunity, but with that opportunity, we need to work out how we use it to create the kind of world we want. Many people want to be "rich", without thinking about the world and how it can change in the time between now and then, making what I think is a dangerous assumption that it will be similar to now. In some way, I feel like we are moving into the declining golden age of the mega rich and into the shift toward wealth distribution and community development. However, I do not see this as a transfer from one group to another, but rather a generation of new values that will drive new cultural behaviors.

While it isn't like to be a smooth transition, change is inevitable in all things, including everything we have known up until now, which is why making assumptions is so dangerous.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]