The News

There is not much to say about the $HIVE price. It is down to around 30c now. That may be a good thing if you are buying. I bought some more via Transak for #hpud. You can access that via the Peakd wallet page, but it may not be available in all countries due to local regulations. I tried to buy mine with Google Pay, but that did not work and I had to do a direct bank transfer instead.

I hope you follow @lordbutterfly. As well as producing the Freechain documentary (which won a festival audience award and working with the Hive rally car he is also launching a new Hive music contest with nice prizes. The hope is to get more musicians to join Hive.

I have been advocating this too. If some artists join and bring their fans then it could make a big difference. The fans can support the musicians whilst earning themselves. We can build an economy around music here. Music fans tend to be dedicated (well it is short for fanatic) and we need that sort of dedication.

Friday Follows

• I mentioned the Hive rally car above. If you are a fan of that sport then you should follow the driver @ssekulji for his insights.
• I just heard about @retzark that is a card game based on Hive. They were involved in the Town Hall this week that had lots of Hive game projects involved. It is great to hear people discussing ideas. With the Hive community being so small we need cooperation to progress.
• @coldbeetrootsoup are running a contest on Twitter with $HIVE to be won.
• @leighscotford is back on Hive with updates on his garden design business and his car racing project.

These folk get a share of the post rewards.

The Dog House

I use the Ecency app on my phone to have access the Hive. They have their own microblogging service called Waves. You get a feed of all that is posted there and I have to say it is mostly pretty low quality with people saying 'good morning', sharing food photos and selfies. As with Threads there is potential to share useful news as well as actually entertaining people. I do give some small votes there on things I enjoy. I think there is wasted potential for this to be a more compelling service.

That was not my main issue of complaint this time as I saw someone ask there whether it was worth posting on Hive as the curators get 50% of the rewards. Well you will make nothing if you do not post and you will get a smaller share on other platforms that use advertising. This person had been around for a while, so they ought to know how Hive works.

There has to be some incentive for people to curate here. The 50% they get will be shared between all those who vote up a post. In order to earn something you need to be prepared to lock away your funds for up to 13 weeks. By curating you can something (I get around 9% APR), but you could make more elsewhere, e.g. HBD savings or swap pools. Everyone wants those whale votes, but would they be prepared to build a stake themselves?

I have not seen anything else online that offers such a potential to earn fairly well just from posting your thoughts online. Some other platforms may require you to build a large following before you get anything, but on Hive you can earn from your first post. If you can stake (power up) at least some of your rewards then you can earn from curation too. Whilst some keep complaining the system is 'not fair' others just get on with it.

It is not a perfect system, but it offers opportunities.

The End

We are already into February. That means I have another #BritList post coming up. @michelmake is doing his own version for the Netherlands using some of my code, which he has enhanced. It would be great to see this done for more countries. Get in touch if you need help with it.

The man behind:

@tenkminnows: Helping good Hivers level up @proofofbrian: A bot that checks for tag typos #BritList: A monthly list of Hivers in the UK