I just remembered that we also have the costs of the witnesses covered for running the nodes and stuff like that. i am nit quite knowledgable about the technical site of Hive, but I am pretty sure there are some reward mechanisms for running this whole thing.

What ads are you talking about?

Also I think it's flawed to think of new users as people who buy in. When I advertise Hive I say its a way to earn for free and I think that should be the starting point for every user.

Sorry for all the negativity but Im known to be always criticizing everything.