I made a prediction post last year on Steem ( Link ) taking a look back at the results recently (Link). For 2021, I 'm doing something similar for some of the crypto social media platforms I use the most...
To start off, this space is so crazy and fast-moving that it is nearly impossible to make a sensible prediction. I don't think anyone could have seen the Justin Sun Hostile Takeover saga coming and I would not be surprised if something else of that magnitude would happen this year. That being said, these are my views and predictions on the platforms I have been using and enjoying last year starting with hive.blog & leofinance.io
So Hive has been in a slow but steady downtrend since the big pump short after the hardfork happened. In anything, the blockchain and the tech itself is awesome and a joy to use as a regular user who wants a fast user experience without having to deal with ridiculous transaction fees. The token itself is in No Man's Land right now though as it doesn't serve enough of a purpose to trade at higher values and the blockchain still doesn't really know what it wants to be.
As a Blogging Platform, it kind of fails as the reward pool mechanism simply has a proven track record of multiple years not to work very well or provide much value for the token. Hive basically is a post2mine chain with constant inflation and selling pressure from users that use it mostly with a purpose to earn something.
As a Platform for developpers it all works, but what serious project is going to want to build on a chain ranked 173 on coinmarketcap while all is happening on Ethereum. 2nd layer solutions on Ethereum that will fix transaction speed and fees also won't help in this regard. The fact that we have Splinterlands which currently is the number 1 crypto game and the 2nd layer Hive-engine solution is great, but most other projects aren't all too impressive at the moment.
As a Crypto Investment for more serious passive investors it all makes little sense as you still buy tokens to curate getting part of the inflation and giving half of it away to content creators who will likely dump putting pressure on your investment.
Hive does feel really cheap at the moment though, especially for those who have been around since mid-2017 where the price of 1 Steem reached 6$+ after it traded for 0.12$ early in the year. The big question is if this scenario will play out all over again. I don't think it will to a similar extend since there is a lot more competition right now and I guess many who are drawn to these types of platforms already got in during the previous cycle while a lot of the token value goes toward projects that run on Hive. For most users, their value in the ecosystem is currently more into Splinterlands cards, LEO tokens, and so on instead of the Hive token. Regular users also don't have much incentive to buy Hive and it remains a question if new developers will come in building their product on this blockchain needing to buy a lot of Hive tokens to provide bandwidth for their transactions and users. I do think Hive will do well if the entire market sees a bull-run. I have a hard time seeing Hive getting more mainstream adoption though and think it's more likely it will just remain something for a niche audience.
Hive Price Prediction End 2021: ~0.82$
LEO from the LeoFinance.io platform which runs on Hive has stolen the show in 2020 showing how a tribe is properly developed reaping some great rewards for those that got in and believed in it and hodled early when the price was around 0.025$. Right now it is at a price of 0.4725$ which is almost a 20x with a marketcap of around 3Million $. When looking at the reports (Stats report | Ad Revenue report), all numbers continue to go up in number of users, posts, views, ...
However, the main thing I tend to look at which gives the LEO token value is the advertisement revenue which is used to burn tokens. In the last report, this was at around 700$ in a month while on a daily basis 7000 LEO new LEO tokens are being distributed. So even when putting the actual revenue at 1000$ monthly, it means ~3000$ daily (90k monthly) is being distributed at the current price levels. Posts in trending now on average get values between 30$-70$ and I can't help but see the price being overextended at the moment even when calculating possible future growth. The earnings compared to actual revenue are way off and the paid value for posts vs the economical value of the content is also at disproportional levels. I'm just looking at this from the angle of Leofinance being a blogging platform and it's very much possible that I'm missing something fundamental here. (please explain to me in the comments where I'm getting it wrong)
For as far as price prediction goes, I do expect a pullback at some point when buyers start to become sellers and not enough new money comes in to hold up the price and current post payouts. The upvote model is also very similar to that of Hive & Steemit which certainly isn't optimal. The development however is great and has proven to be moving forward. To put a number on it, I would say 0.75$ with both the number of users and the revenue going up during the year reaching a better balance. I hope I'm wrong though and it will be a lot more.
LEO Price Prediction End 2021: ~0.75$
In the next post, I will try to make some predictions for Splinterlands, Publish0x, Hive-Engine Tribe tokens, Steem, Scorum, ...
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