Hello everyone and welcome to another post of Hive Learner’s Newbies Initiative.
Today we will talk about the difference between Hive and Swap.Hive, tipping tokens, the abuses of the service, and some practical examples of how to obtain Swap.Hive and buy some tokens.
HIVE is a native cryptocurrency coin that is used on the Hive blockchain. It is designed for Web 3.0 and social media dApps, like Ecency and Peakd. All the posts created on such dApps are permanently stored on the blockchain itself.
Use cases:
HIVE can be used for staking (e.g. Hive Power) that allows you to upvote other authors’ posts and give them HIVE and HBD within 7 days from when the article (or post) is originally written. At the moment of writing, the APR (Annual Percentage Rate) is 2.961% which is an additional benefit of having the largest possible HP (Hive Power).
You can also use Hive to give a gift to someone, instead of buying a physical present.
HIVE can also be used for delegation, (after you have powered up your Hive and have some HP) where you temporarily lend your HIVE to another blockchain user and you get to earn Hive without posting or curating content on your own. It is a safe way to lend your money and get some interest on it, without the worry that you might not get it back since you can undelegate your Hive at any point and without asking for a permission of anyone. It may very well be considered as a method of passive investment.
You can also use it for the transfer of value. Imagine you have a family member or a friend leaving abroad, instead of using banks and their hefty fees in order to transfer fiat currencies, you can use to Hive blockchain to transfer the same amount with a very, very little transaction fee (making it a valuable and cost-effective alternative to the current money transfer system).
Another use case worth mentioning is that the rewards you receive on your posts are given to you in HIVE as well as HBD (Hive-Based Dollar). HBD is, in a way, very similar to a digital dollar you might have in your bank account, and you can transfer it to USD (United States Dollar) and use them for purchases. Hopefully, with time you will be able to use HBD to purchase the goods and services directly, without transferring it to USD. In the meanwhile, you can have it in the Savings on-chain where you get 20 % of the APR interest rate, something you can’t do in a savings account of any bank, not even if you buy and holds bonds. Given the current inflation in the world, it is a very good opportunity not only to keep your purchasing power but to increase it as well.
As mentioned previously, HIVE is the coin used on the Hive blockchain, while SWAP.HIVE is used for buying and selling HIVE for tokens built on the Hive blockchain (aka layer 2 or L2). To the best of my understanding, that is the main purpose of SWAP.HIVE (to swap it for something else).
There are many tokens built on the Hive blockchain, the list is extensive, so I will not go through all of it. I will, however, mention some of the tokens (L2) built on Hive that I like and that I am accumulating.
I personally like one relatively young project called VOCUP, because it does one thing I am mostly interested in when talking about crypto (a passive investment that is gradually increasing over time). Every month, based on the number of 
Another token I like very much is ALIVE, for more information about it you will need to check the end of the post (as it is described in more detail, in the section of the tipping tokens).
I will also show you the steps you need to make in order to transfer HIVE to SWAP.HIVE and buy a token in two ways:
I used USWAPin order to execute the transfer of Hive to Swap.Hive as at the moment of making the change it provided the best return (or in other words, I lost the least amount of Hive to obtain Swap.Hive).
Step 1 is to put your username in the first field where it says Wallet.
Once you have done this, it will automatically show you how much HIVE you have in your Wallet.
Step 2 is to decide in the center field where it says Conversion how much HIVE you would like to exchange for SWAP. HIVE. You will also see a preview of how much you will receive (and you need to make sure that there is enough of Swap.Hive on the exchange - you can see that in the 3rd field called "Available Liquidity" where there was 29.423 SWAP.HIVE when I was doing the exchange). I decided to SWAP 29 HIVE into 28.971 SWAP.HIVE in order to make all the purchases of tokens I want.
Step 3 is to confirm the transaction with Hive Keychain. Once it is confirmed you will receive the information of success in Hive Keychain and shortly after you will receive the confirmation in Ecency as well (that looks like the pictures below).
If you want to exchange SWAP. HIVE and get HIVE follow the 3 steps mentioned above just pay attention to switching the position of Hive and Swap.Hive (as shown in the red circle in the picture below) in order to get Hive. Remember when doing the conversion it's always the first field the one including what you have and the second field including what you want to get once the transaction is processed.
A market order is an order that is meant to be executed quickly, at the current price. For this example, we will use VOCUP, whose current price is 10 SWAP.HIVE (you can see the current price you check the yellow circles in the picture below). I will buy 0.5 VOCUP and spend 0.5 SWAP.HIVE. The transaction will be done within Hive Engine. Once you have selected the price, the number of tokens, and the total amount of Hive (keep in mind that here we are always seeing HIVE, but in reality it's SWAP.HIVE) we press on the red button (BUY) and confirm the transaction with Hive Keychain.
Unlike market order where you are buying the tokens at the current price, with limit order you can set any price that you want to purchase or sell any token. For this example, we will use ALIVE.
1st - we will select the price at which we would like to buy the tokens (0.037), and the number of tokens (200), which amounts to 7.4 HIVE.
2nd - we confirm the order with Hive KeyChain
3rd - we can see in the Hive Engine our "Open Order" that will remain open until someone buys and sells their ALIVE tokens at that price to us, which can happen sooner or later, depending on the market fluctuation.
They are tokens built on the Hive blockchain that is used for giving a tip (or a gift) to other users for writing quality posts or comments. Like any other tokens, they can be swapped, bought, and sold on the exchange. In the same way, we did in the examples above. One should keep in mind that there are certain rules that affect the tipping system. For example, different tokens have different minimum amounts you should have staked in order to be able to use the bot with the symbol “!” or “$”. Also, there is a maximum daily amount of tips (gifts) you can give to other users.
One of the abuses can be considered self-tipping. In other words, leave comments on your posts to get the tips. It matters little if you have two accounts and you do it in that way or you have only one account and leave yourself comments with tips included.
Another abuse of the tipping tokens can be considered over usage, leaving tips in every comment you make, surpassing the limit set by the tipping service.
ALIVE - is one of the tokens I am accumulating in order to be able to tip other users and I like to see when other users tip me in this token. In order to be able to tip others, you need to have at least 1000 ALIVE tokens staked (that will give you an opportunity to tip 10 times a day). For 2.500 ALIVE tokens, you can tip 20 times a day. For 20.000 ALIVE tokens, you can tip 30 times a day. The maximum is 40 tips per day, but for that, you need to have 100.000 ALIVE tokens staked. That might be a plan for the next year or the one after 🙂 Every time someone tips you with the token you get 0.1 ALIVE.
What I like about ALIVE is that it’s both a tipping token as well as a tribe token, which means you can get it when other users tip you or when you use the tag #aliveandthriving in your posts (which I often use). Another way to get some ALIVE tokens is to curate the content in the tribe (https://www.wearealiveand.social/) by posting, commenting, and upvoting. And the best of all is that when you stake ALIVE within your wallet, you get other tokens like LOLZ, PGM, DHEDGE, and BRO. That is a quality passive investment strategy.
Another cool way to get some ALIVE is to participate in the weekly contest organized by 
LOLZ - is another tipping token that I have seen often and that I have received from other users.
It’s both a tipping token as well as a tribe token (like ALIVE). In order to start tipping you need to have 16 LOLZ staked (that will allow you 1 tip per day). The maximum amount of tips you can leave to others is 10 (for that you need to have 1024 tokens staked). Every time someone leaves you a tip in LOLZ, you get 1 token.
You need to know that you can tip one person a maximum of two times per day, the rest of LOLZ you need to distribute among other users.
I like LOLZ and I am halfway toward being able to tip other users. Can’t wait to start.
I hope you enjoyed this extensive post and that you learned something new and that you will use it in your exploration of the Hive ecosystem.
If not otherwise stated, all the photos and images used in this post are my own, or I have the license to use them, and/or my own derivative creations with images, photos, vectors, icons, or else that are licensed as free to use for commercial purposes from websites like Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash, Freepik, Canva or similar.
Pixabay - https://pixabay.com/
Pexels - https://www.pexels.com/
Freepik - https://www.freepik.com/
Canva - https://www.canva.com/
The dividers used in the text are the property of thepeakstudio
The screenshots of the processes are taken from the respective websites for educational purposes only. There is no investment advice of any kind, only a methodology of how things can be done. Before investing in any project, please do your own research.
