Three Years on Hive/Steem

Hi Everyone,

A few days ago, I reached three years on Hive/Steem. Today, I completed my final main power down on Steem; I still have about 500 SP from what I have earned over the past 4 weeks.. This is both an exciting and sad moment at the same time. I am excited about what Hive has to offer but I am sad to have ended my journey with Steem.

I have chosen to invest both time and money into Hive rather than Steem. With everything that has happened over the past few months, Hive appears to be the better choice for both content creation and investment. I have explained my choice in my posts It’s Hive Time and What does the death of Steem mean for cryptocurrency?. I am very grateful to all the people that worked together to create Hive by hard forking Steem. To pull-off the hardfork so quickly and effectively was a great accomplishment. Without the hardfork, we would have been stuck in a long stalemate, which eventually would have still resulted in Steemit gaining full control of Steem as it has done now. I am very excited about Hive and I intend to be around on Hive for many years to come.

Thanks for the support over the years

Source: PeakD

Source: Hive Supply

Since creating my account in 2017, I have consistently posted on Steem and now on Hive. Steemians and now Hivians/Hivers have been a big reason for my continued creation of content as well as investment. I am very grateful to my regular upvoters and even more so to those that take the time to comment on my content. A big thank you to @jossediccus, @steemflow, @blazing, @chireerocks, @slobberchops, @angryman, @organduo, @kaminchan, @crpto.piotr, and @alokkumar121 for taking the time to read and comment on my content.

Thanks for creating great content

Source: PeakD

Creating content is only one aspect of being part of the Hive ecosystem. Another aspect is reading, enjoying and rewarding other people’s content. I do most of my upvoting manually. I very quickly skim through most of the posts I upvote but occasionally I read or listen to the full content. I have a few favourite content creators I would like to mention. These content creators are:

All of you are doing a really great job with your content. Keep up the great work.

At the beginning

Before I joined Steem, I did not know much about cryptocurrency and almost nothing about blockchains. I had heard of Bitcoin but to me it was just some electronic currency, which looked like a possible scam or just an electronic fiat currency. Steem introduced me to cryptocurrency and opened my eyes to the potential of blockchain technology. I now believe the blockchain is one of the greatest inventions of this century so far.

I did not come looking for Steem but stumbled across it accidentally. I was watching a ‘We are change’ video on YouTube. As part of that video Luke Rudkowski, the host of that channel, mentioned supporting his content on Steemit. I was curious, so I went to Steemit to see what it was all about. It was a fairly simple looking blogging platform but it offered the opportunity to earn money (i.e. Steem). On the trending page, several content creators were earning $100 plus a post. Therefore, I decided to give it go. I started by sharing several of my YouTube videos and included some short descriptions. Most of my shared content reaped close to zero rewards but occasionally, I would earn a nice big payout. At the time, I was confused why some posts could get such high rewards and others nothing. Later, I found out about @curie and stake weighted voting.

In the early days, it was quite a struggle to earn rewards or be noticed. Having almost no stake made that even more difficult. I was fortunate to get to know @sweetsssj, who offered support and some good advice that helped keep me going. She was also one of the reasons I started to buy Steem and become a more serious investor.

My sister (@vegoutt-travel) joined Steem in September 2017. She writes travel blogs. She is mostly a part time content creator on Hive but she has consistently put out a travel blog every few weeks. She does not have as much time as I have to contribute content but the work she puts out is of a very high quality and she consistently earns good rewards to back up the quality work she creates.

My content on Hive

I have discussed my plans for the direction I am taking my content for this year in my posts 2020 Vision and 500 Posts on Steem/Hive. So far, I have managed to keep on track. A few things have happened that have caused me to change direction slightly. I created a short series about Covid-19 and I have written a few post about the Steemit take over. The focus of my account has mostly remained on economics. I have brought back my ‘Buying and Selling Game’, which requires some basic knowledge of economics. This series is aimed at attracting more users to my account for the benefit of some of my other content as well as to generate some interest for my next economics challenge series.

Quest to Reputation 70

I had aimed to reach reputation 70 in my first 3 years on Steem/Hive. I am currently slightly short of 70 with a reputation of 69.50. Reputation lost some of its meaning on Steem when vote buying took over and reputations were artificially inflated. I bought votes for a few months at the end of 2017 and early 2018. The bought votes lifted my reputation from in the fifties into the low sixties. Since vote buying ended, reputation has regained some of the meaning it had before the bid-bots appeared on the scene.

Final words for Steem and Steemit

I will always be fond of Steem for all I have gained over the years. However, I am disappointed with Steemit and the direction it has decided to take. Steemit’s actions have destroyed most of the key benefits of the Steem blockchain (i.e. decentralisation, censorship resistance, and security of funds). I see very little incentive to invest in Steem, as keeping funds in your own wallet is no longer safe as they can be removed as part of a hardfork. I see very little incentive to post on Steem, as content can be censored if Steemit disagrees with the content presented. I wish those who remain on Steem the best of luck. I know there are still a few good content creators that have chosen to remain with Steem. We all need to decide for ourselves where we post and/or invest.

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.