I've always been in favor of meritocracy. I don't like handovers - not giving them nor accepting them - and for some reason I tend to lose respect for those who believe in gender, race or virtue quotas such as appointing a female CEO just for the sake of appointing a woman, or when a university lowers the entry bar for blacks or Latinos. I just think that both behaviors - and all those similar behaviors - are even more racist and sexist than the situations they strive to avoid, but that's just a post for another time.
I want to keep this post meritocracy related.
Which brings me to my latest meritocratic streak. I just won my last 11 games of chess and I am now part of the top 12% of players world wide in the Rapid format. That may not tell you much but for me this is incredibly hard and took a lot of dedication and effort - not to mention that having such a long streak with no draws and no games lost is a big accomplishment.
Which brings me to my next point. Last week was a huge week for me in terms of Hive earned. Hive is a long-term investment for me, both time and money wise and even though I no longer have that huge stake that used to give me a fast pass into the dolphin vote trading that very much happens here even if we turn a blind eye to it because it is done by respectable, OG, good-doers, high quality content creators. Hive means 5 years of my life, that's 18% of my entire existence. At one point I had almost 100k Hive, now I only have around 20k which still puts me in the 3% of wallet bulkiness (that's just a random number I thought, if someone actually knows where someone stands by having 20k Hive I'd appreciate the intel); I wish I had more, but unfortunately one needs to diversify.
At one point my whole Crypto portfolio was made of Hive and damn me if I wish I had diversified before. Not because of Hive per se, but because I missed many opportunities to double or triple my portfolio value and then buy more Hive, but my loyalty was a blind one and I truly believe that by 2020 Hive would be worth $10.
I mean, who wouldn't? Hive had been underrated and undervalued for years now - even when we were Steem and in spite of having the worse dev team in the whole universe and the stupidest dude in charge, out coin was undervalued just because of the community. Nowadays, we have the community and a whole new dapp universe, and yet we are still buzzing around the $1 dollar that we were since I joined Hive in 2017.
Who wouldn't have put their money where their mouth is and bought 20k usd worth of Hive - for a Mexican that's a lot - thinking Hive would moon? Yep, me. I still have that amount, luckily I didn't have to sell more due to Covid and economic measures in my country, and even afterwards I've been able to stack a bit more and diversify my portfolio - within the Hive ecosystem that is, all my coins are related to Hive.
But anyway, that got out of path. My point was to talk about last week and how my rewards went to the roof. 8 posts gave me around $700 worth of total rewards. That's more than what the average Hiver will do in a year, and I did it in a week.
It was my best week of the year, and I wouldn't doubt if it was my best week since Hive came to be.
It's funny how several people make that each and every week.
Is Hive meritocratic? Definitely.
Is Hive a charity? Not at all - even if some people believe so, I don't agree but to each their own.
Did I deserve $700 in rewards? Do some people deserve those rewards on a weekly basis? Maybe not, but who am I to judge?
In the end, the rewards you get are the rewards the community considers you deserve. That's why we have an upvote and a downvote button and whatever the community spread to your side, is what you deserve.
It's funny, I didn't post in a couple of days because I felt I would be abusing the reward pool given how much I got allocated last week. And then I thought that was probably a silly thought, especially because I've been here for 5 years through the ups and downs, building, encouraging people, onboarding people etc etc etc (I don't feel like listing my contributions to Hive).
My point is, I just had 2 great streaks, a Chess and a Hive one and I earned them both. So do you, every day you come to Hive and create amazing content.
Don't stop. Keep at it. Stack those coins, amigo.
