As a community investor

As a speculator, I've been dealing with the financial market for years before crypto was even a thing, finding opportunities to profit from an uncertain market has been edged into my thoughts, as my motive, as my principal, as my ultimate goal. However, that changed back in the year of 2020 during the COVID lockdown. Every stock I owned goes down, some I needed to force sell to make ends meet. I know I have some crypto, but I wasn't too clever to hodl on to it, by the time crypto was rallying, I'm left with very little amount of USDT that technically doesn't move much since it's pegged by the dollar.

Until I met this gentlemen @justinparke in ASEAN Hive community. I learned from his post he and the family was stranded in Suriname due to the pandemic lockdown. I saw dedication from this man, and his family who run the ASEAN Hive community, the amount of time they poured in for running activities, contest, content curation, made me see beyond a speculator's eye. Not everyone of us are here solely for the profit. Its not that profit not important. I'm not that holy anyways, or I would have just made all my post decline payout. I mean there can be a flip side of how investment goes into the Blockchain, especially in this Hive ecosystem. I made a rather unusual decision by pulling back all my other vote selling delegation which grant me a handsome amount of curation rewards and kicked off my first delegation with 10,000hp to the ASEAN Hive community.

I remember there was a time, I was questioned by some senior Blockchain investors of the rationale of community delegation, and the suspicious of vote exchange. I am not exactly sure if those people really think it through, delegating 10k to a 50k community isn't going to make back my profit if I'm getting voted 100% each day 😂 my only motive was truly and undoubtedly only one, to help and grow the community. I don't think those whales even look back into their own wallet and reflect their actions when they powering down their HP, swap them with HBD and collect a handsome 20% APR(now 15%). Had I really looking for profit, I could have just powering down, change my entire amount of Hive to HBD, deposit then and earn interests, that probably worth way more than I write a damn post that takes me hours to author and publish.

Over the following years after my initial 10k delegations, I've been consistently adding cash, buying with my USDT, trading and swapping, and not forgetting my post payout accumulation, my share of delegation went from 10k to 20k, 30k and even 40k last year. At this point of time, I don't have any spare cash to invest anymore. For whatever I have in the exchange, I have already put into Hive. I have some HBD in hand which I got it from post payout, but I also decided this is the time where I need a small down payment for a new car in replace of my 15 years old JDM Suzuki, which the maintenance would cost me more than a Mercedes Benz for the most part of it. So, I hold back a little and decided to just keep some HBD and wait for the right time to buy a car.

I think, God already make a way for me. I saw an opportunity a couple of months back, the exchange rate between Hive and HBD was too good to miss, instead of down payment for a car, I bought HIVE with HBD 😂 so, I guess this is to prepare me to achieve 2025 goal, which is to increase my delegation to 50,000HP to ASEAN Hive community.

As a community investor, I believe it takes more than just a content contributor to grow the community, it needs to have a decent reward in order to nourish the soil. At times when I look back, have I ever regret to invest so much in terms of stake? I guess the answer is clear, and I hope with this little power I have, to help propel the community further, to grow bigger and stronger.

Note that I did not remove @tipu entirely. I wish to keep a small delegation there to keep my retroactive date active.

50k delegation to ASEAN Hive done ✅ it hurts my voting power as well. If you seen me voting only 10%, that's because I need to accumulate back my voting power, so don't go and speculate why am I only vote so small.