Hello fellow Hivians,
So when I joined HIVE in January 2022, I came here to play Splinterlands. I played it on the app store first and then found my way on HIVE and was greeted/onboarded by this interesting crypto community called PIZZA. I did not have "much" money then. Most my income came from working. I made most my money later by getting into the MSTR trade early. MSTR did a stock split and then I started selling covered calls on my position. I had been doing covered calls before this but my capital was pretty low so I didn't make that much money in $s prior to MSTR. I do lose money all the time trading options and stocks. I make more than I lose but I do lose money. I lost money last week. On % basis I do pretty well on my returns but I don't talk about that and never will unless you are Whale 😉 (the Whale part is a joke 🙄). My first big win in covered calls was AMD stock back when it was distressed. I sold that stock a long time ago. Sometimes when we don't HODL, we regret it lol... AMD has gone up a lot recently. Now I mentioned call options so I want to stop here for a sec. There are 2 important rules I tell people when it comes to options and futures trading. Rule #1 - Don't trade options or futures. Rule #2 - Don't trade options or futures. This is somewhat of a joke but also, read my posts. Understand who you are trading against. I am not by any means the smartest person in these trades. There is always a bigger fish. There is always a smarter fish. You need to be very careful when trading options and futures. You should know your place in that space. You will lose money trading options. I lose money trading options all the time. Options are zero sum trades and there is 1 winner and 1 loser. There is a lot that goes into options and futures trading. I do not recommend it.
Now PIZZA never said this to me; what I am about to say. Other people on HIVE told me this; what I am about to say. Not PIZZA people, but other people told me this, "HIVE is a Cabal" 😱. Opps! I said the thing! 😅 And to be clear, people were saying this to me back in 2022.
Now I used to kind of believe this Whale cabal story because soooo many people said it. Like, it is hard not to believe something when you are constantly being fed a narrative. Brainwashing and gaslighting does work if enough people are doing it to you. Overtime I took a step back and asked myself..... did I ever look into this cabal theory? I did not, I just believed it. So first I did my best to ignore the bias that had been impressed on me. Then I looked up the definition of a cabal.
Cabal Definitions:
1) The contrived schemes of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cabal
2) A small group of secret plotters, as against a government or person in authority.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cabal
When I saw the definition for a cabal I was less convinced. Mainly because Whales are super disorganized here. Like Whale fights are well documented and they still happen. That is one reason my first move out the gate when powering up was showing deference to the other Whales. I got better things to do then argue with some "rich" person on the Internet. And I have a feeling they have better things to do too. We can still disagree on the reward pool and I think those disagreements between Whales are healthy. A part of being a big stakeholder is you are naturally more protective of the reward pool. Are people making money off HIVE? Are people being good stakeholders and staying invested in the ecosystem? Are people using the rewards they get for good? I think all 3 of these things probably need to happen for HIVE to achieve long-term success. If we only make money and do not do good, we are no better than Wall Street or the big banks that are actually somewhat of a cabal.
So I personally think there is no clear on chain evidence there is a cabal of Whales. I am not sure why people think the Whales want most of the HIVE either. HIVE is more valuable the more distributed it is. But if the majority of our current users are dumping, and HIVE still seems cheap to me, I am going to buy it. Now if people are talking about Steem when they say cabal, I literally could not tell you if that was true then. And like I have said on multiple blog posts, I am so tired of people using Steem to justify their feelings today. Look, I can appreciate that the Steem fork was brutal. I am assuming people got legit medical problems from it. I would naturally assume a few people died from the stress. Stress is terrible for your health.
So I think most people think HIVE is a cabal because it is a projection. Like clearly, in the real world there are cabals. But HIVE is literally a blockchain. If there was a cabal today on a blockchain, you would think there would be clear evidence.
Now one thing I see a lot is, people point to delegations as a scam. This is absolute nonsense. Delegations are transparent and legitimate. I should be able to delegate HP to whoever I want and I do not have to explain myself to you. You do not need to explain your delegations to me. Now when people delegate to another account and upvote themselves with a delegated account that seems odd. Like what is the goal there? Now I know maybe some Whales do this. I know for a fact a lot of minnows do it. I see it all the time when I do anti abuse. If someone wants me to start posting blogs about corruption at the minnow level on chain I won't do it because I want users to stay. I do not want other Whales getting involved in my anti abuse efforts and running other people off chain for a minnow doing something shady. I want users to have the opportunity to adjust to whatever the standard is today. I believe the standard for what the reward pool is used for will change in the future because it seems like it has changed many times. When it comes to anti abuse, I downvote people and let them lobby for the downvote to be removed, but only on chain; no lobbying in discord with me. Usually people lobby me to remove my downvote by telling me they are selling HIVE for food. Like how can I even validate that? Can the whole chain afford to do this? Are most people dumping HIVE for living expenses? If I start selling all my rewards for food will people be ok with this? Or am I not allowed to buy food with my stake because I have too much money by your definition?
So circling back, I think the cabal belief possibly may have something to do with Steem before downvotes existed. That ninja mine has some cabal vibes to it obviously. I think people who were from the Steem days have a legitimate reason to be suspicious. I think anything crypto related, you should be suspicious. I think anything that involves money in some capacity, you should be super careful and trust people as little as you need to. Trusting people with money, on average, is very expensive. But HIVE is very transparent. You do not even need some complicated tool to see what people are doing. You can just look at activities on Peakd and look at people's wallet to see incoming and outgoing transactions and see who they are sending money to. A lot of people just dump their rewards on exchanges right now.
So, I do not believe there is a cabal of Whales on HIVE today. I believe people at all levels of stake talk off chain on some type of app. Not everyone does, but a lot of people do.
If there is evidence of a cabal, please provide the evidence. Let's hash it out. You should be able to point to actual transactions today. This is a blockchain and you are not revealing anything when you show what people are doing on chain. It is a ledger! That is the whole point of blockchain. Transparency.
I do not want people to stop saying HIVE is a Cabal if they truly believe it. But I will point you to this post if you say it.
Sincerely,
Hurt
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