The wild ride of decentralized social media began on 2016-09-17 03:50:48 4 long years ago (in crypto years this is an eternity). From initial investments to learning about curation strategies to navigating all of the platform changes and now being a more active financial blogger, there have sure been a lot of ups and downs.

I have had a long term investment interest in this platform where I can own my own data and earn based on my social engagements. The only power downs to date was out of the centralized Steemit cess pool into Hive Power where I was able to effectively double my interest in Hive for free (with some steem being spent on topping up various other cryptocurrencies... time will tell if I made a big mistake not buying even more Hive).

My greatest mistake to date was taking out a bitcoin loan on btcpop to buy steempower when steem was trading at $3. Fomo was real. Not only did I pay btc interest to cover this investment but I also lost 96% of value at one time and am still down 91% from that purchase. Assuming a continued HIVE power return of 10% from curation and dlease it will take 26.5 years just to cover this loss assuming the HIVE price does not change from $0.25. I still believe we will see incredible growth in value which is why I am still here curating and posting and look forward to the day when I can look back at the $3 purchase and say I missed the chance to buy even more :).

Thank you to everyone involved in creating HIVE and the continued work to make this place the success it is and will be.

P.S. Started one final power down to clear out the remaining 14 steem. I will not look at steemit again expect for one month from now (if I remember hah). As I close the steem door behind me the fun journey on HIVE continues. Long live HIVE!

Disclosure: I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. The information provided should NOT be considered advice. The topics discussed are risky and have the potential to lose a substantial amount. I am not an investment professional and therefore do not offer individual financial advice. Please do your own research before investing.