Hey Taraz,
First, I hope you'll come to KL for HiveFest 10 and we'll get to see each other again, 7 years after Krakow.

Second: you ARE missing something. Something BIG, probably the best chance we stand currently for a bull-bee on HIVE.

Let me try to add to the excellent explanations already offered by @meno and @ankapolo, this time from an economics perspective.

HIVE (the coin) is, from a banker's standpoint, a "virtual currency scheme". For the currency HIVE to function as such, it needs to be accepted by a community in exchange for goods and services. The matter at hand is the price of HIVE in fiat currencies such as the USD.

Simply put, for the desired bull-bee to start running, HIVE needs more people bringing USD in the (HIVE) currency scheme than people taking USD out of the (HIVE) currency scheme. When that happens, those promoting HIVE (us, the Hiveans) benefit because the net economic value brought into the Hive ecosystem is reflected into an increase of the price of HIVE.

As explained in an old theoretical report from the ECB (2012), there are two specific mechanisms to transfer value from the fiat economy to the Hive ecosystem:

• breakage - fiat which people use to buy and hold HIVE under any form - on an exchange, on the blockchain, or as HP
• float - the float is the time difference between the moment at which fiat is transferred into the system and the moment at which it is taken out of the system again. This mechanism is the most difficult to understand because we don't normally run into it every day. It is part and parcel of the business model of banks. You might know that banks do not actually have your money and that, if all the customers wanted to pull out their deposits, the bank would fail (the famous "bank run"). That is because banks use the "float" - the time between the moment you deposited money with them and the moment you actually use those money - to make more money.

Now let's look at this closer: we need more USD chasing for HIVE than HIVE wanting to be exchanged back to USD. That means that we need REASONS for people to want to buy HIVE and REASONS for people to want to remain invested in HIVE

I'll start with the latter. People remain invested in HIVE because of:

• the HP which provides two things:
  -- more HIVE via inflation and delegation returns
  -- participation in the governance
• the HBD and its 15% APR on staking
• the hope that the price of HIVE in USD will appreciate and they'll be able to get more USD back at a latter time (the float again)

But what motivates people to buy HIVE in the first place? Especially when those buying cryptocurrencies in general notice that, while other cryptos appreciate, HIVE stagnates?

First, we HAVE to observe that HIVE is not needed in order to use the blogging platform. One can blog and comment without buying HIVE and of course everybody can read posts without buying HIVE.

This is both a blessing (for usability) and a curse (for the value of HIVE). Once you think deeply about this, you realise HIVE, the virtual currency scheme, can be very cool in social terms, creating and fostering a community of people attached to free speech, blogging and interacting. But it has a big weakness in economic terms - using the MAIN applications, those for blogging and vlogging provides no reason to actually exchange USD for HIVE.

Subsequently, if we want HIVE to appreciate, we need additional applications that leverage the same infrastructure (both IT infrastructure and economic infrastucture, meaning HIVE, HP, HBD and transfer facilities) and provide outside people with reasons to want to buy HIVE with dollars. Splinterlands and other games on Hive that sell NFTs for dollars are such applications.

SpendHBD and Distriator are another, newer reason for people to buy HIVE. We are currently pushing hard with Innopay to have more shops accepting HBD as means of payment for real goods and services in the real world. This creates demand for HBD which is translated in demand for HIVE. Our Innopay users (which we attract thanks to Distriator) are new HIVE users that:

• buy HIVE on Binance using euros
• withdraw their freshly acquired HIVE to their wallets
• swap their HIVE for HBD
• buy their food and drinks using that HBD
• HBD with ends up staked up for the 15% APR, and thus stays in the HIVE currency scheme

It's important to note that these new users that buy HIVE that remains in the ecosystem are often not interested at all in either blogging or reading articles.

To conclude: if we want to see a bull bee on HIVE, Distriator is probably the best application currently, as it gives people a reason to buy HIVE with fiat and that economic value brought in tends to be sticky and stay in the HIVE ecosystem thanks to HBD, its acceptance by real world shops and its 15% APR