HBD Transfers Statistics - Hive Sucre - Full Summary of 2024
Introduction
For those unfamiliar with the topic, Sucre is a small city in Venezuela which has the largest and most active Hive community, proportionate to population, of anywhere in the world. Using this established community as a starting off point, in 2023 they began a merchant on-boarding project to get people using HBD as a currency. The goal is to start a small circular economy where the use of HBD is normalized, and from there, HBD usage can spread further.
Using a list of onboarded merchant accounts, we can see a variety of statistics relating to the use of HBD as a currency in the city.
In 2024 the project continued, with the introduction of #distriator as well as the #spendhbd campaign. This post is a summary of the statistics for 2024 as well as a comparison to 2023.
Year | Active Merchant Accounts | Active Customers | Total Purchases | Total Value of Purchases |
---|---|---|---|---|
2024 | 29 | 178 | 3331 | 22894.227 |
2023 | 44 | 117 | 1624 | 12066.50 |
Count of Purchases Per Week
As mentioned above, there were a total of 3331 purchases made to HBD-accepting merchants in Sucre over the full year of 2024. That's up 105% from the 1624 purchases made in 2023.
Our first chart shows the number of HBD transfers made by users to merchant accounts, each week over the year of 2024. The red line is the 13 week moving average.
Here is how purchases per week in 2024 compared with 2023.
Value Transferred Per Week
Over the full year of 2024, Hivers in Sucre spent 22,894 HBD with participating merchants. That's up 90% from 12,066 HBD in 2023.
The first chart in this section shows the dollar value transferred to merchant accounts each week. The red line is the 13 week moving average.
The second chart shows value transferred per week again, but with 2023 added in red for comparison.
Another way of looking at it is the cumulative value transferred so far each year.
Number of Active Customers Per Week
In 2024 there were 178 users on Hive who actively purchased goods and services using HBD from merchants in Sucre. That's up 52% from the 117 active customers in 2023.
The following chart shows weekly active customers, with a 13 week moving average in red.
And below is a comparison of weekly active customers in 2023 and 2024.
Number of Active Merchants
There were 29 active merchants who accepted a HBD transfer in 2024. That's down 34% from 44 in 2023.
Here is that on a weekly basis, again with a 13 week moving average.
And finally, here is weekly active merchants with a comparison to 2023.
Conclusion
Although Hive Sucre no longer has the kind of rapid week on week growth that was seen in 2023, it still grew overall compared to the previous full year, and is starting 2025 with a larger base than ever. It needs also be noted that most of 2024 was a bear market for Hive, with only the final month and a half showing a sudden rise in price. Support for HBD adoption is also less targeted than in 2024, with #spendHBD support existing for merchants anywhere in the world, and we've seen growing HBD adoption outside of Venezuela for the first time. While this is good, it means users and merchants have more competition to receive support (in an area that necessarily must be subsidized in the beginning, due to the disadvantage HBD has in network effects).
@hivesucre, if there have been any merchants recently added, I can revise these statistics, in case my list is out of date.
So merchants down, but trade up. I assume the merchants can trade for fiat for transactions outside Hive. The improved $HIVE price may allow people to earn more and may encourage others to get involved. If the local inflation is high then $HBD gives them more stability.
Yes, but another way of looking at it is that almost all of the improvement in 2024 vs. 2023 is in the first half of the years, and for 2023 that represents the very start of the project. There isn't much improvement with the second half of last year.
Still, we have a stable baseline and the last few weeks have been improving as the price of Hive rose.
It is a pleasure to see more attempts at creating circular economies. Wikipedia says Sucre has a population of 896,921. We have a long way to go from 178 users. What matters is that these users repeat using HBD for payments. Retention is as important as onboarding.
LEO Merchants could end up helping to spread the acceptance of HBD. The short version is that it allows anyone to pay with or get paid__ in any cryptocurrency supported by https://leodex.io through @mayaprotocol.
HBD purchases were higher in 2024 than in 2023, and are expected to be even higher in 2025.