500M dollars frankly is small in the big scheme of things. We are still early, and even now many shit coins still are valued at hundreds of millions. If you really want to quote value, we can look at the Hive market cap. Hive market cap currently is

500M dollars is the market cap of Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds and others. It is not small - you are looking at it wrongly. These are businesses. Not only that, it is a decentralized business model, like the world hasn't had before. This is all new.

Oke first of all, it is nice that you can run a node, that's cool, but it doesn't stop for the consensus layer to be not centralized, it basically comes down to the 21 top witnesses. Do you agree?

This is the consensus layer, which is the way things get built. Users can and have affected this.

About the nodes, a different subject but relevant: are there incentives to run the node? Do I get paid when I run a node?

Depends on you. Also, it depends on what else you build. Plenty of people run nodes so they can better run their applications etc. This is business - there are many ways to get paid. If you start a business, do you expect it all to be funded by the government, or should you have to get some clients too?

If stake gets centralized to a few big curation guilds then those few curation guilds basically determine which content gets to be seen.

That would be the decision of the stake, something most stake won't make, since they don't have to and, can earn more voting manually if they choose. Your point is a non event.

While on traditional social media, it depends on the user.

Not it is not. It is based on centralized algorithms optimized for a pay-per-click model for advertising revenue.

This only demonstrates my point, hive is not something people want to hold because its economical broken, so they rather hold other crypto such as splinterlands.

No. This is not the case. Hive is built to house other crypto which is why SMTs (remember them) were a thing being built before I was here. They didn't eventuate, but there are many second-layer tokens moving across the Hive ecosystem, all of the SL assets being some of them. There are others too. Also, there are communities that are using their tokens to do other things, on and off Hive, like LEO/CUB.

The Hive blockchain doesn't fail, as it is just some code. Even if there was only Splinterlands it is in their best interest to keep using it, as it already works for them. It is absolutely economically sustainable.

So far, what you have mentioned sounds very much like someone who hasn't spent much time here and, someone who isn't actually interested in the future of the industry. Your entire focus of what value is , is money. That is fine, but it is hardly important to most people who are looking long on crypto, but it is very important to the people who want to hold more fiat.