Lock it Up

I am looking at the HIVE chart from the corner of my eye whist working, trying to predict when I should pull the trigger and buyback what I sold-off yesterday during the pump. I was a bit annoyed that it went up again so fast, as I had no liquids available at the time, but as expected, it has indeed dropped back quickly, hovering around 63 cents the last few hours, after the high of 97 cents yesterday.

If I pull the trigger now, it will be a gain of about 30% token volume in 24 hours, which is decent, but it is also annoying if the price then drops down further, because 50% is obviously better. My head is telling me to be patient and ride it out to a lower value, my heart is saying;

Lock it up!!

Normally, I let my heart win, but I am going to try to use my head on this and see if I am able to fight temptation. Either way, even if I miss the buy-in again, I am okay with that for now, as this Hive was token I bought to trade, not stake, so I am already up on it 80-90% in terms of dollar value.

However, looking at the BTC and ETH charts, I feel like we are due on of those 10-20% drop days, pulling ETH back to 1200ish and BTC to 20Kish. That would likely see the alts suffer a drop of around 20-30% which brings HIVE to around the 45 cent mark from here, which seems like a decent consolidation point to regroup and build some energy. But, I also think that rebuild for the market is going to take a couple months, so it might move sideways for awhile.

As I am not a trader, this speculation is more speculative than most, because I am literally guessing based on my own experiences and looking at the very basic lines of the charts. So if you are one of those people who likes to follow the financial advice from strangers on the internet - find another stranger. Firstly, this isn't advice, it is just my own thoughts on it and secondly, why would you?

I was conversing with a new colleague this morning who is coming in from a financial advisor background for household customers, and we were discussing how things have changed in the sector and the reducing demand for planners.

In my opinion, one of the biggest changes that has taken place is that more people who are interested in investing, are financially literate or feel that they can get enough information over the internet to make the moves for themselves. This has been coupled and empowered by the change in financial services too, where there are many apps with many options that allow people to self manage their portfolio, rather than use an advisor. As a result, the types of customers who are using advisors are the ones who are totally illiterate or, those who have a lot of money.

It is similar to what has happened with technology and consumer goods in general, where the availability of the internet means that people don't need to be sold a product, because they do all of the research themselves, once they feel there is a need. This doesn't necessarily mean that they buy off the internet directly, because they might still go into a store and "ask an expert" to confirm their decisions through a blend of social proofing and authority mechanisms.

With the changing of content from centralized to decentralized (even on the centralized platforms) through user-sourced creation, there is now a very broad spectrum of information that can cater to all kinds of product groups and perhaps one of the last bastions to crumble, is the financial sector, but it is eroding fast.

In the past, we were made to feel we couldn't trust ourselves with our own money, but increasingly we are learning that one of the things that has been holding us back, is entrusting others to work in our best interest with our money. It was never going to work, was it? Especially at scale, because the larger and impersonal it became, the more business-orientated and less consequence there was to face. It become institutionalized profit-seeking for the benefit of the organization, not the individual who employed them. There was a loss of liability.

But, this has also trained some people to be more accustomed to looking after themselves, making them more comfortable taking the responsibility for their own financial wellbeing atop their own shoulders. This was further driven by the lockdowns, where people still wanted to invest, but were not able to get into contact with face-to-face financial services. And, it all is on-demand.

This productizes financial services for a retail consumer and makes the supporting material a consumable on-demand item, like Netflix has done for shows and movies. This also allows for all kinds of people to purport authority online, with people having to do their own due diligence and take the burden of responsibility on themselves, with varying degrees of success.

We could look at an internet example from a few years ago to illustrate this, where there were video clips circulating to say that you could charge an iPhone in the microwave. Some people did and it of course killed their phone. But, if that advice had been given by a sales assistant in an electronics store, they would have been fired, the phone would have been replaced and, there might have been criminal negligence due to safety violations and duty of care involved.

The world of information has changed, so has the way we interact and use it. Instead of having to rely on the centralized narrative like we did in the past in regards to things like reading scripture, we can read for ourselves, form our own opinions and have tools available to enable us to act on what we believe. This means that we are able to think and act for ourselves, but it also leaves us less protected, even if the "protection" we had earlier was far less protective than we were led to believe.

And, what we end up having to learn is that because we are largely by ourselves in this, we need to take that responsibility of our actions, even if they stem from the material of others. No one forces us to watch a YouTube video on market analysis, no one forces us to act on it, but, we are forced to live with the consequences of our behavior, like it or not - win or lose.

We might all be aiming for the win, but the losses, the bad decisions, the missteps and miscalculations - they are part of it too. If we don't get used to facing our outcomes, it makes it incredibly hard to do anything for ourselves at all, because each time we fail to learn, we build a little more fear. There is the fear of missing out, there is also the fear of loss and if you get trapped in the middle of the two, it becomes a freezing point, knowing there is opportunity, but not being able to do anything to take it. When we feel unable to move, we lose agency and our power to affect our lives.

Yet, we have to make sure that we don't become "too active" and chase everything and especially, believe everything we consume, because when there is value on the table, we can tend to become greedy, missing the warning signs, trusting people we should, getting burned at our own expense, by people who have nothing to lose, no skin in our game.

HIVE is back at 60 cents - 20% down from here is 48. Seems reasonable.

Is it?

It all comes down to at which price people are willing to lock it up.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]