Earlier today, I watched our Hive token dip to another new all-time low at $0.04193, and found myself contemplating the question of whether we were getting near some kind of bottom or whether we should expect to be in free fall forever.

Since its original billing has always been that you can "earn rewards for creating content on Hive," our community has had a built-in problem which is that people have come here to earn rewards. The mere suggestion that you're going to "get a reward" comes with the automatic reality assumption that you're going to get a reward and you're going to take that and consider it money and use it to do things like buy pizza and pay your electric bill.

If we don't recognize this reality, we'd be right up there with a company that says "we'll pay you $20 an hour to work here, but we expect you to never cash your paycheck!" Any takers?

Consequently, the entire Hive premise lives and dies by this simple equation, which is also a matter of economics, in the sense that there will always be more people wanting to sell than there are people wanting to hold on or even buy.

So why am I talking about a turning point?

Well from my perspective, at least, the notion that I'm going to earn reward has pretty much fallen by the wayside, given the token price development, this year. If I consider that if I make a post I might end up with 40 cents worth of liquid rewards, that is ultimately — in a practical sort of sense — a reality in which I would need to write 12 posts in order to have enough money to get a large latte from my local espresso drive-thru!

Sit with that, for a moment.

Extrapolating that a little bit further, there is no fantasy world in the universe in which I consider writing 12 blog posts in exchange for one coffee to constitute earning rewards or — more specifically — "making money online." The amount of the rewards has become so small as to be meaningless, at least from an economic perspective.

But here's the deal: I still enjoy blogging and plan to continue doing so, regardless.

But thanks to the constantly declining token price I no longer have much of an incentive to turn my liquid rewards into Fiat currency that I can buy stuff with because the amounts are so insignificant. Consequently I have — at least personally — reached the "turning point" at which the diminishing marginal returns are such that nothing I earn here will go out. Instead I'm just going to power it up or possibly throw it at Hive-Engine tokens that represent second layer Hive projects that I'd like to see succeed.

Now, maybe my perspective on the situation is not Universal and other people would see it differently, but what if a lot of other people did see the current situation in a similar fashion? What if other people have reached the point at which selling their Hive from liquid rewards simply is not worthwhile anymore?

Moreover, what if we have reached the point at which ordinary non-whale content creators (such as myself) might be able to buy substantial stake for just $10 or $20 and add to their Hive holdings... thereby gradually shifting the financial makeup of the entire community from being so top heavy towards something having a more substantial and influential group of participants more towards the middle?

And if that were the case, would it even serve to substantially change the nature of how things work on Hive and perhaps get away from our community being purely a way to get pocket money, and instead actually focus a little bit more on being a creative community?

Finally, is it possible that we're discovering what worthy content is actually worth, in today's social media market? After all, a dollar or two per 1000 page views is not unusual... and we don't host that many posts that get seen thousands of times.

One of the fundamental truths of nature is that "water finds its own level" and maybe that's the process we're experiencing...

Of course, this is all purely speculative.

Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!

As always, a 10% @commentrewarder bonus is active on this post!

=^..^=