It’s been about a week since my last post. Although I’ve been around every day, reading and replying your posts, but life got a bit in the way of me sitting down to write something lengthy. It feels good to finally be back at the keyboard to talk about something that’s been bugging me for a few days now.
I want to talk about the 
I love Ecency.
It is one of the smoothest dapps on the Hive blockchain, especially for mobile users. But I stumbled upon something that feels really strange, almost like a contradiction to everything we stand for in the crypto world.
I was thinking to get a rough estimate that how much Hive/HBD can buy how many Ecency points. Naturally, my first instinct was to look for a "Buy with HIVE" or "Buy with HBD" button. I mean, we are literally on the Hive blockchain, right? It only makes sense to use our native currency to support the tools we use every day.
But instead, I found that if I want to buy points directly through the app, I have to go through the Google Play Store.
Source Tenor
This feels so weird to me. Here we are, talking about decentralization, financial freedom, and moving away from the "Big Tech" giants, yet to support a Hive dapp, I have to give a cut of that transaction to Google? It feels like we are hitting a Web2 wall in the middle of our Web3 journey.
I’m sure there are technical or legal reasons behind this. Maybe something to do with mobile store policies. But from a user perspective, it’s just frustrating. If I have HIVE/HBD sitting in my wallet, why can't I just "swap" it for points within the ecosystem? Having to pull out a credit card or use Play Store balance to buy points for a blockchain app feels like an extra, unnecessary step that takes us away from the "crypto-first" mindset.
Imagine how much more smooth the economy would be if we could use HIVE/HBD for everything within our favorite dapps. It would increase the utility of our tokens and keep the value circulating inside the Hive ecosystem instead of leaking out to third-party payment processors.
I really hope that in the future, the Ecency team (who are amazing, by the way) finds a way to bypass this or offer a direct Hive-payment alternative for mobile users. We want to support the platforms that make our lives easier, but we want to do it using the currency we earn and believe in!
What do you guys think? Has this ever bothered you, or am I just overthinking the convenience of the Play Store? Let’s talk about it in the comments!
