I keep on seeing posts in my feed lamenting the market price of HIVE being allegedly low and comparing it to the price of other cryptocurrencies.
These posts both completely miss the point of HIVE and also get the economics wrong.
I don't see the HIVE market price as relevant measure of value of the HIVE blockchain or anything much at all.
Proof of Brain (Not AI Slop)
Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, HIVE was never intended to be an investment instrument. Long term Store of Value was never an important part of the rationale for HIVE. It is completely unlike Bitcoin in this respect.
The purpose of Hive was "Proof of Brain" - to distribute a token widely to people who could prove they cared and had a brain by producing content good enough to be rewarded by the community that would form.
And interestingly, while most online platforms have been taken over by AI Slop, HIVE hasn't. It still functions as a place for human interaction and the humans of HIVE have said NO to AI Slop and been able to enforce this rule pretty effectively.
[Image created by Grok AI from my prompt ]
Functions of the HIVE Blockchain
The HIVE blockchain today performs many important functions:
- Community - It provides the basis for a community, one of the most active ones in crypto and the only one where community interaction happens mainly on the chain itself.
This is a very important, rarely talked about, feature because it provides an independent communications channel that can't be blocked. It is the reason HIVE was able to successfully fork from the legacy chain. Justin Sun would have blocked centralised channels of communication and community organisation and resistance if he could have.
- Decentralised Content Platform - a decentralised, censorship resistant, hugely redundant & essentially free place to blog & share content.
When I write a blog post I want to know that a copy of it will still exist decades hence and that no one can censor it. I also don't want to have to pay to keep my content up on the internet, accessible to all. I also don't want the hassle & cost of running my own web server.
There is no where else on the internet that provides this essential combination for people who want to post their content online.
- Decentralised, permissionless, massively redundant central database for developers & AI agents. The concept of a decentralised central database, accessible by all but controllable by none, massively redundant and very cheap is a very powerful one that far too few developers know exists.
But those that do, like @Splinterlands, @podping and others know the power of this concept. As far as I know it doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet.
While human developers have been slow to adopt it, one day AI agents & AI developers will discover it and it will spread like wildfire. We need to be ready.
- The ONLY surviving algorithmic stablecoin. Stablecoins are becoming more important, especially in this era of AI agents. But pretty much all other algorithmic stablecoins have died because they were built on blockchains for which the stablecoin was the only real use case of the blockchain and were thus subject to attack.
HBD is different because it is sustained by a blockchain with a wide range of use cases and a strong community. It is far better protected from attack and thus has survived. Survival itself in this space is a huge achievement and sets HBD up for an important future role.
- a medium of exchange for humans & AI agents While this medium of exchange function has been a relatively small part of HIVE over the years, it is about to become more important because of AI micropayments.
AI Agents can't open bank accounts or pass KYC, so decentralised crypto is going to be the way they interact financially with each other.
Micropayments was one of the key proposed advantages of cryptocurrency over the traditional financial system. But it never took off because humans spent too much time deliberating over tiny amounts and were too slow.
But for AI agents, crypto micropayments will be the standard transaction method.
AIs will prefer the stability of a stablecoin, but centralised stablecoins run on blockchains with not insignificant fees, which is a real issue for micropayments. They are also heavily regulated and AI agents will end-run regulation that gets in their way.
Once you have a small amount of HIVE staked, HBD transactions become essentially free. This is going to be very valuable for AI agents.
The micropayments space is about to go hyperbolic and HIVE & particularly HBD are primed for the AI Era.
The True Function of the HIVE price
The only thing the HIVE price needs to do is be high enough to make being a top 20 witness profitable. We are an order of magnitude off that threshold. The costs of running a witness node are dropping all the time, faster than HIVE price has been dropping.
Economics of HIVE as an investment
As I stated from the beginning, HIVE is not intended to be a long term investment.
But even analysed as an investment, the focus on price is completely wrong headed.
HIVE is a high inflation crypto that the holders of which earn an income return on their holding. This is both via the rewards pool and other mechanisms, including access to the blockchain for all the above listed functions.
This is completely unlike Bitcoin or most other cryptocurrencies, which are like Gold. The only return is capital appreciation.
In any economic system an income producing asset will not have as high capital appreciation as a non-income producing one.
Total return is what counts and focussing on the HIVE price all the time ignores the income aspect of the equation and makes HIVE's performance as an investment look worse than it actually is.
So focussing on the HIVE price vs the legacy chain or any other misses what HIVE is really about.
Pointless focus on HIVE's price also risks you missing the huge opportunities incoming for HIVE in the AI Era.
[All text 100% Made by Human]
