Greetings Felines and Hoomans of Hivelandia!

On occasion, I'm sure we've all run into the discussions of how and when certain Hive posts are considered "overvalued" and whether or not they should get downvotes accordingly.

The "Value" Dilemma

Now, I'm not going to philosophize about the merits (or lack thereof) of what some people may — or may not — consider "quality content"... that's not what I'm intending this post to be about.

In the world of cryptocurrency — and specifically here in the crypto social world of Hive — we often look at rewards as a metric.

So let's consider this:

We have a random and arbitrary post that has the figure ”10.00” next to it. That's what the post is "worth," according to the users who engaged with it.

What makes life a little confusing is that when you use the Hive.blog front end there's a "$" sign; when you used @peakd like I do, there's no "$" sign.

Are you paying attention?

Crypto Values Are not Static!

Regardless, that 10.00 is typically the result of some number of community members giving the post an upvote, the weight of which is based on their staked Hive. For most, that's easy enough to understand.

But let's say the price of Hive quadruples.

If I understand correctly how things work, when the exact same set of upvotes were cast for that post the number that was before 10.00 would now read ”40.00,” or some number a good bit higher than 10.00.

Even though nothing has changed except the fiat value of Hive, some people might now argue that the post is ”overvalued.”

But is it really?

Or are we just saying that because our mindset is locked into viewing the concept of value in terms of Fiat rather than in terms of Hive? And, moreover, does that mean that in spite of our seeming efforts to get the world to "think in terms of crypto" rather than fiat... we are actually failing to do so, ourselves?

Consider this: the "amount" of the reward is generated by exactly the same amount of staked Hive (or "Vests," if you prefer) regardless of whether the fiat price of Hive is $0.30 or $3.00. If I give you a 100% upvote that's worth "0.10" that's still 0.10 Hive rewards, regardless of the price!

If you look closely at your rewards using a front end such as PeakD, you'll notice the little pop up (example at left, taken from my most recent post) actually tells us that the post is earning ”Hive Rewards,” not Dollars.

So what's my point here?

"Rewards" are a somewhat ambiguous thing, in the Hive ecosystem. Specifically, what I find both puzzling and amusing is the fact that the entire notion of "disagreement with rewards" is — on one hand — based on how someone feels about the fiat dollar amount a post is being rewarded... while — on the other hand — we are all so busy persuading the world that "crypto is the answer" to the future of decentralized finance.

But wait... I'm just giving you an upvote that's a consistent amount of HIVE! Why should I be making fiat based decisions with my votes?

Pardon me for being cynical, but that sounds like a case of "pick a lane, ANY lane, and stay IN it!"

I bring this up in part because some of Hive's "maximalists" occasionally like to punt around the idea of "$100 Hive." I'm not going to speculate on how much, but do the math and it would make some people get a LOT of money for their posts... but only if our metric is fiat. They'd still be getting the same number of HIVE.

When/if that actually happens, we have to ask ourselves whether any given post is "worth" some upvoted amount in HIVE or some amount in FIAT.

Not claiming to have an answer here, just putting the idea out there!

=^..^=

Curator Cat 15-AUG-2022