Welcome

I did consider calling this The $64,000 Question, although I have never seen that old game show. It seems there was a UK version 30 years ago. My selling of other crypto last week got me there a little ahead of schedule. I hope to get well past 70k this year.

It was another bumpy week for $HIVE with 'the other coin' worth about twice as much now for no logical reason. $DOGE continues to ride a wave of hype, but I would expect a lot of people are reaping nice profits from that. I have accumulated a nice amount of $BAT thanks to using the Brave browser and that is on the up.

Follow-worthies

I have been doing this #FollowFriday thing for many years. I used to do it on Tsu and continued with St--m until I moved to Hive. That must amount to many hundreds of people I have featured, but I have not kept count. Maybe I need to write a script to make a list. I know some have been included a few times. Some of the rewards on this post will be shared with these people:

• @zedcell is a writer in the UK who has been putting out some little 'freewrites'.
• @ryzeonline is new one Hive, but has managed to write an amazing two part guide to Hive that is a fun read.
• @thetimminator is a guitarist from the Netherlands who likes 'the heavy stuff'. He is putting out some great videos of songs he like.
• @drwatson has been posting more updates on the fine Ithaca horror comic. I bought a printed edition of the first book.
• @ambrosechappel is a British artist who just joined Hive. He does work with @stickupboys

The Doghouse

Again this week I am not going to name names, but I think there needs to be more discussion of self-votes. I stopped doing this a long time ago as it felt wrong. I can give about $2 in a vote now and I think it should go to others. I see people saying 'I am proud of my post and it deserves more', but it should really be up to the community to decide that.

If you make cents on a post and your vote gives you a slight increase then I will not criticise you, but there are plenty who make tens of dollars even before they add their own vote. It may just be one of the ten votes they can give out each day, but it would make a bigger difference for someone who is not doing so well despite having good content.

There is a category of people who are self-voting themselves for the majority of their rewards as they get little community support. If they are doing something of value to Hive then they should be marketing it to build a supportive following. If you are giving yourself more than one or two votes per day then I consider that excessive.

The rewards pool is finite. When you vote you are not giving a specific amount. You are shifting the distribution. If you make more then others make less. If you vote for others then you still earn from curation, so that ought to be reward enough, especially if you do well from your posts.

By the way, where I see people setting someone as beneficiary to get a vote from them then is a form of self-vote. Earn your votes with good content and not from 'favours'. Hive will be the better for it. Pumping out derivative posts that add nothing of value makes us look bad.

I know some refuse to see the bad in others, but wherever money is involved there will be those who only take.

I feel better for getting that out there. Now hit me with your criticism!

The End

We are over a third through 2021 and I hope there are better times ahead for Hive and the world in general. Hive can improve lives, so we should be trying to make it succeed and not just out for personal gain.

Hive five!