On reflection, an increasingly large part of why I started participating here — and continue to participate here — is quite simply that I enjoy writing/blogging and have for a couple of decades... and what sets Hive apart from other blogging venues is that the social aspect is much stronger than on Blogger, WordPress or wherever. Those sites are really pure blogging sites, as opposed to a social blogging site.

Do the rewards serve as an incentive? Absolutely! And perhaps the biggest thing the Hive ecosystem has going for it is that it's the easy way into crypto. In a sense, it's parallel to the "CoinStar" change machines at supermarkets that count your loose change...and allow people to buy Bitcoin. No "special education" is needed here, you have the potential to get crypto for doing something you already know how to do... participate on a social media venue.

Financially, this has always been a long term play for me... I see the possibility that we may be part of (at least) a step towards some future version of how people get money, as more and more of the tangible things humans "do" in the world get taken over by AI and automation, and we are simply not needed to run assembly lines, be diagnosticians, checkout clerks, warehouse stackers, etc... and yet we still are part of the greater thing known as the total economy. Again, though, we are looking at the 5, 10, 20 year time horizon. But is that really that long? I just checked my Facebook profile and it shows that I joined on 15 March 2007... 13 1/2 years ago. I'd love to think I can do a similar check on Hive, in 2030!