While curating and having some adult beverages, I decided I couldn't wait until Wednesday to cash out my latest installment of powered down STEEM to power up HIVE. As it turns out, the STEEM payouts would amount to about $20. I discovered this because I bought $25 of Dash and sent $20 to Blocktrades to power up my Hive. The amounts were roughly the same. This got my gears turning.
I could definitely manage to reach 3000 HP in three months if I put in $20 per week. That means that I would reach 4000 HP by the end of the year. If I maintained the same schedule for 2021, I could reach 8000 HP. Of course, this assumes that the price of Hive remains stable. I suspect that if BTC starts its moon ascent, we will see Hive go up as well. This is fine by me. Except it throws off my calculations.
Long term, I suspect Hive will be around in one form or another. There are too many people dependent on Hive for their livelihood or for their creative outlet. I would like to be a part of that experience in ten or twenty years when my curation helps a bunch of people put food on their table. When it comes down to it, $20 per week will not affect me adversely. But, it could change the lives of so many in the years to come. Perhaps I will invest heavily in my Hive account from time to time, as my economic situation permits.
My calculations do not include how much Hive I could earn from my posts and curation. Honestly, I am very inconsistent. Some days I am too busy to check in on what is going on with Hive. I hardly ever make time to play Splinterlands. However, $20/wk is easy. I could reach 8000 HP by December 2021. It would likely be more considering my curation and posting.
So, let's play the calculator game. What if I invested $75 per week? Let me run the numbers. At today's price, that would be about 295 Hive factoring in transaction fees. Let's say 275 Hive to be conservative. Then 275 times 52 weeks gives us 14,300 Hive per year. In ten years, that would give me 143,000 Hive.
Of course, this is all nonsense. The price of Hive will fluctuate. There is Hive inflation. I'll be curating and posting along the way. And, I might from time to time invest more than $75 per week. More importantly, this is all just hypothetical.
The reason I am hypothesizing these things is that I am starting to think about my responsibility to the Hive community. I don't say this in some messianic sense. I'm not going to save Hive. However, I could make somebody's day better with a simple upvote.
I feel silly for spending a great deal of time learning about different cryptocurrencies and watching their prices. There is one cryptocurrency right in front of me that gives me a little bit more control over my investment and also helps improve the lives of others. If BTC goes up, guess what, so will Hive. I have been watching my STEEM/HIVE account languish at low value since I joined only because I refused to invest in it more than a few dollars here and there. Those investments were only to meet certain discreet goals. Tonight, for example, I wanted to get over 2000 HP. In contrast, what if I just continued buying HP every week?
For now, this is all theoretical. I don't know what having 3000 HP is like. I don't know what having 5,000, 10,000, or 50,000 HP is like. Quite frankly, this is the first time I have more than 2000 HP, which has a chunk tied up in delegations. I think I need to spend some time with unencumbered HP to get a feel for how I could benefit the Hive community. In the end, it may be worthwhile to invest in myself on Hive. Let's find out.