Power Up: What, Why, and How

If you've been posting for a while, you have already experienced claiming your post rewards. Half of it goes to your curators, half of what remains is your liquid reward and what remains goes directly to your Hive Power. It is up to you if you would want to withdraw your liquid Hive or if you would want to use it to Power up your account.

What is Powering Up?

Powering up is the act of staking your Hive Coins. This means that instead of directly converting your coins into fiat through crpyto exchanges, you choose to lock it into Hive ecosystem. Powering up is simply keeping it in your wallet while increasing your stakes.

Why you should power up

There are various reasons why powering up will be very beneficial for you. You can look at it from three points of view.

You as the account owner.
You can make activities in Hive when you have Resource Power which is directly related to your Hive Power. The higher your Hive Power, the more activities you can do like posting, commenting, upvoting. Furthermore, you earn through upvoting other contents in Hive. The higher your Hive Power, the higher your voting power, thus helping you earn curation rewards. Your Hive Power also earns an APR which is currently at 3.37%. The APR is the interest rate paid to you for keeping your Hive in your wallet in the form of Hive Power.
Other content creators
Other content creators benefit directly from your Hive Power through your upvotes. You can make a huge difference in their post payouts when your Hive Power is high. Your Hive Power can also help when you delegate to newly created accounts. Since all accounts need to have enough RC to become active, your extra Hive Power can be delegated.
Hive as a whole
Your Hive Power is also helpful in voting for witnesses. Witnesses are the people who manage the blockchain. We as users can vote for the witnesses we wish to put in the top 20. The amount of Hive Power you have determines the weight of your vote. So if you have witnesses that you want to remain in the top 20, you would want to make sure you power up so you can show more support to them.

How do you Power Up

To power up your account, you simply go to your wallet. If your coins will come from HBD, you will need first to convert them into Hive. To do this, click on the arrow right beside your Hive Dollars and select Market.

You will then be directed to the internal market where you can buy or sell Hive. For this purpose, you would want to Buy Hive.

Enter the amount you want to buy, and then click on the "BUY HIVE" button. You'll need your active key for this transaction.

You can now go back to your Hive wallet where you'll see the Hive you purchased. Click on the arrow right beside your Hive and select "Power Up". You would be asked for your active key again. This will automatically transfer your Hive to your Hive Power.

Please note that this article was written as a guide to our newbies on how to Power Up their liquid Hive and is not in any way a financial advice. For this tutorial purpose, the Power Up process was done through hive.blog but users may also use other frontends in converting and powering up their liquid Hive.