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The increasing values of communities, experiences and interconnectedness

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@tarazkp
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While I am not ruling out a change in this, it is nice to see that even though HIVE has seen upward movement, HBD is hovering around the one dollar mark currently, which is where it is "meant" to be. I keep it pretty simple in regards to my HBD and use it to buy HIVE pretty much whenever I get it, even though it isn't necessarily the best way to do it in order to optimize return. However, I figure that in the last eight weeks, the supply of HBD has almost doubled and eventually the market will realize it is getting less profitable to pump to the point that it just gets left alone to operate more as it should be.

Last night, @meesterboom was saying how he thinks it is difficult for more than one tribe to be successful on Hive at a time, which is quite true. The reason for this is that Tribes have a marketplace of Hive users (for the most part), meaning that every tribe is vying for the attention and available value from the same small group of users, which dilutes concentration.

This changes a great deal if there are a lot more users however, as even though there will still be the spreading of value, there would be "enough" value to support a lot of communities simultaneously and they will rise and fall more like business models, with failures, but also many successes. This means that currently, while it is profitable to get in early, most tribe tokens will fail in price unless they are able to hold attention through some kind of usage.

We have seen this in regards to LEO, as while LEO investors are a strong community, once Cub Finance was launched, the attention of the community go split, without there being a lot of new members to come in to buy and hold either token. Many used their LEO and HIVE to get into CUB, diluting the value of all. However, this doesn't mean that things can't change for Cub and Leo, as unlike most other communities, they are building various tools and mechanisms into their experiences to attract more attention and hopefully offer a compelling reason to hold both tokens. This isn't easy to do, but it is possible.

For example, while I don't play or hold any @splinterlands cards, @azircon added a chart of the market cap of the game over the last couple years and noted that there is no bear market at all, it has steadily been climbing.

This is because they are a community that offers various forms of utility to not only earn, but to also play the game itself. @revisesociology was just saying how they are the best NFT because they are actually usable, which is the case. This fundamentally changes their reason to hold, because while most are tokens with the value created by trading back and forth, Splinterlands cards are pieces of the game, making them valuable in and of themselves for players.

I remember playing Monopoly as a kid with an ancient set with crumpled and worn cards and missing pieces. There was still the battleship, car and a shoe, but we would have to substitute other random things as "player tokens" if we had more than 3 players. What this means is that we were still able to play the game without the correct pieces, as while we needed pieces, it didn't matter what we used to represent a player, making the tokens fungible.

In Splinterlands however, I am unable to use a piece from another board, random key or old peanut as a token to play the game, it has to be a Splinterlands card and, which card I use matters for my ability to play the game. If I "lose" cards (sell) of the game, my ability to play is affected. This is why the bear market had little affect on the card values or market cap of Splinterlands, because people valued the game and the associated aspects of it, more than selling their cards and losing their gaming abilities. However, considering what some people bought them at back in 2019 at the start of the graph above, if they had sold their cards for Bitcoin as an example, their current value would be significantly greater than it is today.

But, this is the game.

While in hindsight, it is easy to look back and see what was a good and bad path to take, looking forward is far harder to evaluate, yet people do. For example, I evaluate that the future value of HIVE is going to be significantly greater than it is today, because I believe that in time, usecases that utilize HIVE will grow and increasingly attract attention from the growing marketplace of crypto participants. I see a time where there is a far higher number of users on Hive through a wide range of applications and communities that will develop. I can't guarantee the future, I can just predict based on what I know and work toward it.

In the future, my prediction is that usecase and compelling experience is what is going to attract an audience, while pure yield offerings are going to decline, as they do not bring anything to underpin the value they generate. Splinterlands is a good example of bringing value to the market in a way that benefits all players, who are also "part-owners" of the game itself. This means that unlike the game of Monopoly where the goal is to dominate all other players for value, the value of the game is to distribute compelling usecase as wide and as far as possible and, offering experience that keeps people wanting to stay playing.

@revisesociology was also noting how the tribes are like DeFi pools, meaning that early investors getting gains and then getting out, dumping the price, while they go into the next token. However, Hive has quite a difference in regards to the DeFi platforms as it actually acts far more like the Binance Smart Chain itself, without the fees. What I mean by this is that even though each community is acting like an independent platform, all are on Hive and are therefore creating a compelling reason to be on the platform, looking for the next opportunity. However, as communities develop and become independent business models themselves, there will be less value in pumping and dumping them and far more in helping to build them.

I think this is what many (including myself) are hoping will happen with Cub Finance, where while there are constantly new platforms popping up for yield (with many being scam, rug-pull outfits), the value to stake ground and build is very high, specially if we consider the future of the crypto and blockchain industry as being a place of user experience. The Leo and Cub community go hand in hand and, they are both utilizing the Hive blockchain, that also adds value to the experience of their users. The more interconnected the value across communities becomes on the Hive blockchain, the more value HIVE itself has and, the more value participants are able to tap into across the entire network.

Hive offers a near limitless potential for growth of experience and the more it offers, the greater the yield becomes. Using Splinterlands as an example (and remember I do not play, so there are likely other aspects involved), a player can buy cards to play giving the potential for their NFT value to increase. They can use those card tokens to play and earn more cards. They can rent out those cards for others to play with and they can of course sell. However, they can also post about this on Hive and write articles about their experiences to earn HIVE tokens, talk about the economics of their experience to earn LEO and perhaps most importantly, be part of spreading the Splinterlands experience to attract more players, making everything they do, more valuable.

But, it doesn't end there, because once they have HIVE and LEO, they are able to use those token to build value also, as well as support the growing usecases upon the Hive blockchain and underpin the entire network. As more "independent" communities and business models build on Hive, the more integrated the entire community becomes in numerous ways, creating a mesh of value across many points of interaction, enhancing yield at every step of the way.

And, the more this happens, the more it will drive the innovation of and on the platform and encourage more participants who are not here just to earn, they are here to play the most compelling game on the internet. This game has few rules and is not bound to an individual community or website, it is borderless and becomes like Minecraft, where users can roam free and build wherever they choose on and off the blockchain to add value to their experience and feed value back into Hive.

Of course, I can't accurately predict the future, but I can make predictions, believe it is going to happen and therefore, act toward that end.

For me, it is the only logical way to play the game.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta