Breaking my balls, Hive!

So the new moon came and wiped away all the gains... again.
Every time it happens I chuckle.
I almost shorted it but I haven't been trading recently.

As far as the alt-market is concerned we find ourselves in a bit of a danger zone. Hive has fallen below rank #400 on the market cap which is pretty demoralizing to be honest. The more things change the more they stay the same. Although it is nice that there are some rock-bottom signals here that point to an eventual turnaround. Just year 3 in the cycle doing year-3 things like always.

Defending The Quarter!

On December 22, 2022 I wrote this post predicting that 25 cents could be a pretty good place to hold the line. Shocking that I had predicted the exact bottom, of course nobody knew that at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20.

The price action was very similar back then as it is today... which is almost even more demoralizing when we consider that Bitcoin went from $16k to all-time-highs during that period and we are still stuck back at rock bottom. These things happen. Lower caps are wholly unpredictable in both directions. Whether this is an opportunity or a period of tribulation is entirely dependent on personal portfolio allocations and perspective.

Obviously anyone buying during a time like this is loving the low price. At the same time there aren't a lot of buyers. There are a lot of small sellers and a few big buyers, but most people are just in HODL mode which is pretty standard in crypto. The inflation mechanism of the chain seems to create these ebbs and flows in which newly printed money puts constant downward pressure on the price. The demand to buy, however, is ceaselessly mired in choppy waters.

Naturally this leads to some thinking we should change the way inflation works, which would almost certainly make the problem even worse. Being wishy washy with economic policy based on where we are in the cycle is just the absolute best way to instill no-confidence. This is also just a super ironic way of thinking because if anyone actually wanted to change the way Hive works then they should be buying stake... because stake-weighted votes control everything. And if you're buying stake you should be happy that the price is so low and tokens are basically just being given away compared to where we'll be in 2025. Of course nothing is guaranteed but "this time is different" logic doesn't seem to age well in crypto... which is exactly how we got here in the first place I might add.

What does Hive really need?

Two things that I can think of off the top of my head. The first is liquidity. It was never super easy to buy Hive without a (fiat ramp) Coinbase listing, and now with Bittrex being vaporized and Binance being cut off to USA and Mandala closing and Blocktrades avoiding regulatory overreach... yikes! So much yikes. We've been cut off pretty hard and it stings. The only way forward at this point are connections to decentralized exchanges that aren't going to buckle. These solutions are already in the works and the goal is to create strong/permanent liquidity with BTC.

The other thing Hive needs is higher demand to use blockspace. How this is actually accomplished is another matter entirely; the definition of easier-said-than-done. At the end of the day it is a bit of an infrastructure issue. Hive isn't the easiest chain to build on and the learning curve can be a bit steep, even if the benefits are worth the effort. Again this is something being worked on from a couple of different angles and tends to be a waiting game.

400 sats for 1 Hive!

What a deal! Of course when we measure against Bitcoin it assumes we have Bitcoin to trade into it. I think this is one of the biggest problems with Hive honestly. Our community doesn't have enough respect for BTC and credit is not given where credit is due. If I had actually positioned myself correctly during 2021 like I knew I should have I would have quite a bit of BTC right now and I'd be able to rotate into the assets I'd like to rotate into. Instead like many others I feel a bit stuck in HODL mode trying to to wait out this uncomfortable epoch. These things happen.

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Of course being reliant on some other token is also not a great place to be, even if that token is the original gangster that sets the tone for the entire ecosystem.

$72k $72k $72k $72k $72k

Taking a look at the OG paints a relatively bullish picture. We avoided the primary death cross and now the moving averages are acting as support as we continue to get swatted down by $72k resistance. We're far beyond the dreaded "double top" at this point. Volatility is calming which means a big move is coming soon. I'm still quite certain September will be disappointing as always but we still have the entire summer left to see what happens.

Obviously another retrace to $58k would be a screaming buy and potentially even a good place to put in an aggressive long. A move like this would absolutely decimate alts so it might even be smarter to just buy alts during a move like that to capitalize on the guaranteed fear and absurd dominance of BTC. Anything within the $58k to $72k band is totally expected and barely noteworthy. Wake me up when we can sustain above $72k.

All this being said if Hive gets back to that 250-300 sats per Hive range I'll definitely throw in a revenge trade. Thinking something like 0.1 BTC. 10M sats will be good for 33k-40k Hive. Will definitely be a bittersweet moment knowing it could have been x10 that had I have played my cards the way I knew I should have played them. Oh well. Maybe next time. Every cycle does seem to play out the same after all.

Conclusion

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.