Like many of you, I am sure, I am in a bunch of Discord servers. When I have time to subject myself to the fire hose of messages, I dive into certain topics, often getting drawn into arguments.
In this case, I could have titled my post as "AITA".
Let me state clearly my position:
I don't see Hive as a currency
There, I said it.
I actually don't see MOST crypto as a currency.
WTF Chris?
Yeah, some of you will agree but I imagine 95% wondering what I am smoking.
The situation I see is
- People buying crypto to hodl for years.
- People buying to flip/day-trade/short-term speculation.
- People buying NFTs and they need to go via crypto to get them.
- People playing games or using Dapps where crypto is some part of it but only under the hood.
- ... and so on ...
Currency is Used to Buy and Sell Things
When did you last buy something or sell something with crypto that wasn't another token or coin?
I use digital cash to buy things all the time, just never crypto-based digital cash. While there HAVE been real-world transactions using crypto (famously someone buying a pizza with Bitcoin, making it probably the most expensive pizza ever), that is rare enough to be notable when it happens.
If PayPal, Apple Pay, etc used crypto under the hood that would overnight increase how often we transact with cryptocurrency, but they don't.
So What is Hive?
People say Bitcoin is akin to gold, a "store of value", but lately that premise has been shaken by the BTC dropping in parallel to overall economic moves.
My thought is Hive, and many other crypto, is more like World of Warcraft in-game gold, Canadian Tire money, or Airmiles points.
While you CAN trade them for fiat, the purpose and main use is to hold onto or trade for in-game stuff.
Yes, I think we are in a bubble. We are participating in games with their own rules.
Probably explains a lot of the hostility from the rest of the world too. They think we are deluded, willingly part of (or running) a scam, and if we are honest, that is sometimes true.