HPUD, Labour Day and Tax Year End all in one !

It's the First of May ! That means HPUD - Hive Power Up Day.

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

I've powered up 20 HP, which is all the Liquid HIVE I could afford right now. But every bit helps !

The nice thing is that I've just tipped over the 12K HP mark, roughly 20% of the way to going from dolphin to orca. At this rate of growth, I should tip over to being an orca some time around my 120th birthday.....

Meanwhile, it's also effectively the end of the tax year. Technically it happens on 6th April.

There is logic to this seemingly-peculiar date ! Prior to 1752 the United Kingdom used the Julian Calendar, and the New Year was considered to start on the first day of spring, which was 25th March. When the Gregorian Calendar was adopted, it pushed the date forward 11 days.

But HMRC accepts that businesses tend to work to calendar months, as splitting a month across two years would be an administrative and accounting nightmare. So they accept a year end of 30th April.

Now I've gone through all that, I thought I'd look at my Hive earnings for the last tax year. This spreadsheet summarises it...

There are (inevitably) some comments.

• First, that I've only looked at Hive Engine tokens I'm interested in and hold a decent amount of. I've ignored all the low-value dust !
• It's only relatively recently that I've started focusing on BBH and BBHO, so I expect it to take time to start really delivering earnings. Plus the figures for BBH don't capture drips paid to other tokens.
• The values are shown in British Pounds (GBP). At the start of May 2024, the GBP/USD exchange rate was 1.25 dollars to the pound. At the end of April 2025, it's 1.33.
• I've calculated all figures by working out the token values first, and only then converting the final value multiplied the the GBP/USD exchange rate.
• Prices for HIVE and HBD were taken from COinGecko, prices for Hive Engine tokens from BeeSwap.
  *The basic formula in each case is that tokens earned equals the closing balance, minus the opening balance, minus tokens bought, plus tokens sold.
• From a tax perspective, all of these Hive earnings are unrealised gains until the point where I cash out (if I ever do).

In terms of trends, it's clear that HBD interest and author rewards are very much the engine which powers my earnings. I've been consistently building it up as a deliberate strategy, and it basically just sits there making money.

That's a lot less work than the constant round of posting and upvoting needed to earn HP. But the reality is that I post, upvote and comment because I enjoy it, rather than seeing it as a significant source of income. It would be nice to earn more, but that's mainly because doing that would open up more ways to support my fellow Hive friends.

The reality of Hive is that most of the earnings go to the top 20 witnesses and people with the coding skills and support to get funds from the DHF. I'm fine with that; it would be nice to have a more balanced distribution, but Hive is a side-hustle to me, not my main source of income.

Finally, it's Labour Day in many countries around the world. If yours is one of the ones celebrating, Happy Labour Day !

Here in the UK, we have a Bank Holiday, but it's May Day and more of a traditional spring celebration.

But Labour Day always reminds me of an anecdote from many years ago, when I was a motorcycle courier.

I had to drop a visa application off to the embassy of an African country (which shall remain nameless, except to say it was one of the Francophone ones). Our customer was desperate to get it back as quickly as possible. So I arrived at the embassy, where I had to sit in a very nice wood-pannelled room while a senior member of the embassy staff sat behind a table the size of a small continent with a 10 time life size portrait of their president behind him, and considered the application.

Finally, he told me to come back on the Tuesday, because Monday was (as he put it) "Labordee". His accent was so heavy that he had to repeat it to me three times before I understood what he meant.

I want back on the Tuesday as instructed, to find the embassy closed.

So I went back again the day after, and it was open. I sat in the same room. But it had scorch marks and smelled of fire. The wood panelling was gone, the massive wooden leather-topped desk had been replaced by a plastic table with a different man sitting behind it, and the ten time life size portrait of the president had been replaced by a ten times life size portrait of a different preseident. Apparently they'd had a coup, and some internal disagreements among the embassy staff.....

So now, every time Labour Day comes around, I can't help but think of that poor country and all it has been through, and hope that maybe crypto will help create a fairer world.

Happy Labour Day !

Posted using The BBH Project