You captured this really nice and would have embraced you fully had it been that it is real life. I have always been loud about the roles that Hive has played and still plays in the lives of folks from developing countries like myself. I am a good example of everything you said in this post.
I joined hive during the steem days in 2017 and the rest is history. Even though I had a job back then, the salary could hardly feed my family for half of a month. I supplemented my finances with the proceeds from hive until late last year when I lost the job completely. Even though I still do a bit of freelancing here and there, I can say that more than 70% of my finances now depend on hive - directly and indirectly. I will explain.
My dependence on hive goes beyond just writing content and cashing out. I try to profit from the price fluctuation in a rather cautious manner and this has been paying off relatively. Since I lost my job, I have been trying to raise funds to start a small business down here so that my dependence on hive can, at least, come down significantly.
I really want to get to a stage where I can power up all my earnings and grow my stake like many users in the developed world. Even though I try not to let the parasite label gets at me, I am but a human. I believe that hive users will respect me more if I have a relatively bigger stake instead of powering down at intervals to support real-life issues.
In all honesty, many users really do not know the huge role that hive is playing in the life of people like us. I just try not to be overly emotional with it. I try my best to create value for the platform because I genuinely believe that this is the only way I can pay back every individual that has put their hard-earned funds into buying hive and powering it up to reward content creators.
The good part for every user who thinks users from developing countries are parasites, there is a user that thinks otherwise. This is why whales like @acidyo, @theycallmedan, @blocktrades, and many others will always have my utmost respect.
My respect for people comes from the quality of their comments, who they support, and in a broader sense how they live their life so you’ve already earned it as far as I’m concerned.
I try to see things from as many perspectives as I can. People can only do their best, and feeding their family should come before worrying about the price of hive. I only hope that most people powering down can stop once they have other sources of income and I hope that you sell at high prices so you can get the maximum benefits of those random pumps.
We have bumped into each other a few times already but I’m glad to finally know your situation.
I wrote this post, in part to help people see possibilities and for people to see both sides, but also for people like you, because I understand the worry of investors in more financially stable countries, and I want to encourage solutions that make everyone feel welcome
Thank you for holding out for people like us. Hive has become a repo for different contents. Many are yet to realized the full extent of what we are building here. Take the community and the contents away and what we are going to have is just some meme coins. People will always be at the bottom of the pyramid no matter how anyone wants to look at it. Take away content creators that live off hive and bigger investors will still look down on smaller investors as parasites. We all need each other.
I really do not need more the basic things. I'm a minimalist that won't take beyond what I need. I always dream of buying and powering up a significant amount of hive one day, so much so that curation reward would be enough for me to live on if need be. The dream is still on anyway.
I've seen you around for while as well and I'm really glad to read this kind of content from you.