This is something that I perceived to be valid for a while now, yet it is taking some time to manifest.
Those of us who are around this platform for any length of time are conditioned to thing about the Hive currency. It is what is paid from the reward pool each day and it is the currency of the platform. Most conflicts here revolve around the currency and its distribution. When people look for massive returns, they consider what the price of HIVE is. That is the main focus.
It is a sensible approach since, even today, it is by far the most valuable currency on Hive. At the same time, it had a monopoly for the longest time. Most who are highly active were around when HIVE (STEEM) was the only way payouts occurred. Everything revolved around that single currency.
We saw a change with the introduction of Hive-Engine about a year and a half ago. This started to open up the prospects of other tokens. This is something that came into being about a year ago with the introduction of Tribes.
Since that time, we saw many come and go. A lot of tokens were created for various reasons. The majority of them had little direction and even less support. They were issued, perhaps with some fanfare, only to drift away. Many did not even make the transition to Hive.
That said, there are some projects that are beginning to show their merits. What this is doing is causing people's holdings to spread out in a way that is providing them with holdings that outpace HIVE.
In the investing world, typically companies are looked at based upon their holdings. One of the things people watch is the cash on hand as well as cash equivalents. The later are assets held, usually in short-term funds, that can be liquidated very quickly. In other words, if the company needed money, it could sell the assets in a few days and turn it into cash.
Thus, we can look at all the Hive-Engine tokens (and NFTs) as Hive equivalents. While they are not in HIVE, they can be converted quickly.
In looking at a couple of accounts, I took some random people as an example.
Here is the account for 
Obviously, not very active on Hive. However, when looking at the Richlist on dex.leofinance.io, we see this individual is one of the largest holders of DEC. The account has over 3,700 worth of HIVE in this currency.
While the numbers from his holdings in LEO do not match that of HIVE, it is still a significant amount. His 148K LEO are worth more than 3,500 HIVE.
Here is another account, 
The 2,100 HIVE is eclipsed by holdings in CTP which amount to more than 3,300 HIVE.
Obviously, there would likely be some issues when trying to sell these tokens since there are some buy side liquidity issues with the H-E tokens at the moment. That is expected when the number of active participants is so few. Those platforms that game more users will find this issue reversed (as Leofinance is already seeing).
All this did not delve into the Splinterland card holdings or some of the games just being set up such as EXODE and Cryptobrewmaster. Nor did I delve into the players of DCity have in their accounts.
The point to all this is that, over time, we are seeing people holding some of their wealth in Hive-Equivalents. For many, what was an "add on token", something just piled on top of their Hive reward, is now amounting to some serious stake. With HIVE being the currency pair on the platform, looking at the totality of holdings in HIVE is a worthwhile endeavor. There are many ways to benefit on this platform, this showing just a few examples.
If we ever see SMTs, this is a concept that can grow even more. There will be thousands of different tokens to pursue in an effort to get rewarded for our activities. Understanding the Hive ecosystem and how it operates is a huge advantage going forward. Early adopters tend to benefit since the risk is much greater. Thus, those who are continually finding new projects that become successful can see their accounts grow rapidly.
Ultimately, we are going to see many people who have the equivalent holdings of whales in HIVE priced assets. This will radically change the dynamic as well as the narrative that we saw for so long. As the pursuit switched from exclusively HIVE, we will see growth coming from many different areas.
While a 1000x move is likely out of the question for HIVE, it could happen in other projects that are created on here. Thus, those who are fortunate enough to be involved in them might see a couple thousand HIVE turned into hundreds of thousands. This might only happen to one or two projects over the next decade but will result in some great wealth when it does happen.
In the end, a tiny Redfish might be the largest earner in the Hive ecosystem.
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