More Rugs than Wayfair.com

I feel like a bit a of a hypocrite. I was going through my notes of post ideas that I store in Google Keep and I noticed I had written down the title of this post as one of them. Believe it or not, I am talking about HIVE. Actually, not HIVE in general, but these projects that are built on top of HIVE. Then I got thinking about a comment I made the other day about how I am long on HIVE and I still think it has a lot of potential. That's still quite true, but somehow I can't help but feel a bit two faced for writing this post.

I think you would be hard pressed to find someone on HIVE that hasn't been at least touched by some kind of scam or other. The most recent would be the whole BRO debacle that led to the creation of The Pub. It's also part of the reason myself and the co-founder of The Pub haven't been interested in creating a token for the community. That isn't to say one doesn't exist, but we never went forward with distribution. The problem is, when you tie a token to something, you also tie a lot of implied value and expectations to it.

Of course there is CUB, POLYCUB, CTP, Listnerds, a dozen other ones, and the most recent source of my anger Trust Exchange. Many would argue it's my own fault, and to some degree I agree with that. Also some might argue that several of the projects I listed didn't technically "rug", and while that may be true, there was some form of mismanagement, exploit, or nefarious shenanigans that caused them to collapse and leave people holding the bag.

I tried to find some photos of actual rugs, but I didn't really have any (I mean why would anyone right), so I am just going to keep sharing some of my photos from May in this post. So BTC is hovering over $80K, the CLARITY act is finally moving forward, and many of us are holding our breaths waiting to see what happens with crypto. I've go some monthly buys on Coinbase that I have had for a while, and I am getting close to the point that I might just consolidate all of them into a single BTC purchase each month. That honestly seems like the smarter play.

Trust Exchange

So you might remember before I mentioned @trustexchange. This is a project that I bought into back when Ray was still running BRO. I don't blame Ray for putting it on our radar, like I said, many people were questioning it back then, but I'm an idiot and I bought in anyway. If you do a quick search, you will see that they haven't posted since 2024. Their Discord is pretty much dead. In fact, lately there have been zero updates, and people have been posting cam girl links in the main chat and the "team" is so long gone with our money that they don't even bother to delete them or moderate the chat. That's if they even bothered to show up at all.

I was willing to believe that the long bear market and lack of a real pump was the reason things weren't taking off, but if you follow the funds through the accounts, it's pretty clear that @edsull is likely long gone along with our funds. Oddly enough, the Trust Exchange site is still up, and I can still view the rewards that I am likely never going to see.

My hats off to my friend @dbooster for giving this one a pass. I can't even remember now how much I paid for the Enterprise License that I hold. I've likely made that back in posting, but it still is just a bad look. We have far too many things like this happening on HIVE. It's one thing when it's a memecoin and you know you are likely going to get rugged going in, but it's another when this is supposed to be a community. Perhaps I just need to take off my rose colored glasses.

Mail in general is pretty rare these days. Usually when we do get it, it is mostly junk. In fact, it's so obvious that I rarely even open it. I just shred it and move on with my life. The other day however, I got a letter that looked more official than the rest. I opened it and was surprised to find it was actually just more junk mail. Some company wanted to give me a credit card. On the front of the letter were all the benefits we could experience by signing up for the card.

I immediately flipped the letter over to the back and just started laughing. @mrsbozz knew exactly what I was looking at and asked how bad it was. You can see from the photo above just how bad. 35.99% interest. I remember my first credit card was under 10% interest. That was forever ago, and I honestly can't remember the last time I actually paid interest on a credit card, but still. It's sad and pathetic.

These insane interest rates are a sad reality for many people who are barely making enough to pay their bills let alone cover these fees. It's a bleak picture of the world we live in today.

Silver

As many people have already pointed out, silver seems to be on a bit of a run again. I haven't checked the price lately, but I am likely done buying until next December. At that point I am going to have to look at the price and try to decide if I want to invest any more money into the precious metal. If prices are this high or higher, I likely will have to find something else to buy my nephew/godson. It's too bad he doesn't have a stock portfolio like his brother. I would mind buying him a few shares of this or that.

The silver I do hold is likely a long term investment for me. I don't see myself parting with it unless something really crazy were to happen with the price, and even then as many have pointed out finding someone to buy it could be difficult. It's likely something I will just hold onto and keep for my nieces and nephews to have when I am gone some day. If it ends up in a pawn shop, so be it.

That's all I've got for today. Be careful out there. It's still kind of like the wild west. Use your head and invest wisely!