How can we be half way through 2021? Time seems to move differently in these strange days.

Hardfork 25

Hardfork 25 seemed to go pretty well with the blockchain not suffering any real outage. Some people did notice that they were not getting much in curation rewards. It seems there is some issue if a post gets votes either side of the hardfork with the later voters getting all the rewards. That will sort itself out after a week. I saw this post by @acidyo about it.

HPUD

Every month people are encouraged to do a power up for Hive Power Up Day. They should just do what they can afford. You can save up some rewards if you like. I was able to buy some more $HIVE via a friend. I did look at using my Wirex card to buy crypto for £, but they are not allowing you to transfer in fiat right now due to financial regulations. That makes it much less useful for me, but at least they do not charge a monthly fee now.

I also had some SWAP.HIVE on Hive Engine to use. I sell some of the tokens I earn to get that. Iŧ may not be the best strategy as some of them may offer a better return, but I want to get more HP. It would have been fun to get to 66666, but I did not have quite enough this time.

Rising Star

Rising Star is a cool Hive game based around music by @atomcollector. I have built up quite a collection of cards. There are well over 1000 active players now. It can earn you a nice amount if you are looking to sell the tokens, but I plough them back into the game. Every month some new cards are released as old ones reach their print limit. I bought a load of packs today and the developer has made some improvements as the packs were being minted much quicker than usual. Some of the top players buy hundreds of packs and it was previously taking all day for those to get properly issued. I got some of the new cards, but not this new legendary for @stickupboys.

Take care

I was sad to hear one of the musicians featured in Rising Star got scammed this week. There are some phishing comments around. If you see any that promise you some $HIVE for voting on a witness then do not follow the link. If you log into the site they will change your account keys and lock you out before draining your account. You can see what they have stolen in this wallet and this one that they are using. As they power down the accounts they will make thousands and due to the decentralised nature of Hive there is nothing much that can be done to stop them.

Do not trust your keys to random sites. Any legitimate dapp ought to be using Hivesigner or Hive Keychain so that they do not get your actual keys.

The phishing comments are likely to come from accounts the crooks have compromised, so even if it looks like it comes from a friend you should be cautious.

Pracice safe hex.