So, for a change of pace, today I'm not going to write anything particularly poignant or deep — or even deeply skeptical — but instead sharingt this just as a small mark to observe a small milestone reached.

My little account here reached 1,000 Hive Power today. Yay!

Cat on the move!

In the greater scheme of things that's not a whole lot, but it does at least feel like I get to have a sense of accomplishment here.

I was never too sure what we might do with this account... which was created primarily to explore the world of Second Layer ventures on Hive, actually going back all the way to the original Steem-Engine, on the original chain.

If there is anything I have learned during the intervening years, it would be that the "failure rate" is exceptionally high.

And I'm not even including the things that turned out to be outright scams or rugpulls.

The overarching theme does seem to be that "it's not as easy as it looks" to make a go of some idea, and to create a token/community/project with sustainable tokenomics.

It brings up the broader idea that crypto — and not just Hive and Hive-Engine — excessively labors under the illusion/delusion that simply "creating a token" is enough for an idea to "become."

My original hesitation with crypto — going back more than a decade, now — was always that "there is no business plan here."

A bit like printing some paper in the basement, standing on a street corner and declaring "Look! Curator Cat Dollars" and expecting anyone to give a sh1t.

And if there is no business plan, you're basically claiming that you get to "create money (value) out of thin air."

What's ironic about that is that it's merely a variation of the issue so many critics of fiat systems like to hone in on: Legacy monetary systems are just about turning on the money printing press and printing more.

And when you claim that what you're doing is "different"... how, exactly?

Blah, blah, blah, blockchain, blah, blah, blah, decentralization, blah, blah, blah...

Ah, so you're just "printing money" and putting a fancy wrapper around it, and declaring that it's "different" because there's a public ledger where you can SEE that you're printing money, instead of simply knowing that "printing money" is taking place in some secured government building.

But you're still printing money...

Now, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass here... but it doesn't look all that different from several decades ago when "we have a domain name and a web site" was widely marketed as a "business plan" and venture capitalists threw billions of dollars at such things.

Of course, history since shows that there were some who realized that the new invention could become a powerful vehicle to create something amazing, rather than just stating (metaphorically speaking) that you invented wheels without also giving people carts, trucks, bicycles or something else to DO with those wheels.

I liked Hive because there was an actual utility point here: Blogging and content creation. Something people could understand and use, without a degree in computer science.

I expect that in another ten years from now, history will show that the cryptos that still have value all will have practical applications in the real world.

And hopefully Hive will be among them...