HIVE is a Low-Risk Trade

What? this makes no sense.

Long-term, the natural trend of HIVE (and STEEM for that matter) is downward, simply because of inflation.

Everyday, every new HIVE issued on the chain end up reducing the value of each individual token:

If today people bought HIVE for 1 USD and there were only 100 HIVE in circulation, each hive is valued at 1 USD.

Tomorrow, there will be 110 HIVE, with no new money entering the system, so now, each token is valued at 0,9 USD.

This is the natural progression the the Token Value, since there is no limit to how many tokens will be issued.

The only way to "fight back" the devaluation is making the token attractive, so more people want to buy the token to whatever reason they want to use it for.

This means create uses for the token.

While there is a lot of projects that are working and meeting some success (Like splinterlands), there is no guarantee that these projects will have lifetime or critical mass big enough to attract millions of people.

So, yeah, there is risk, and not a small one.

Sure, staking reduces this a bit, but is only a small portion of the inflation rate, like, if the inflation is 10%, the staking pay back 2-3%. Therefore, the long-term devaluation is still there.