On being a perpetual panfish
Yesterday I had the express joy of inserting myself into a discussion I had no business being in. I then proceeded to place my foot about as far into my mouth as it would go as the icing on the top of the cake.
The details aren't important, but needless to say, this put me in a very humble and reflective state of mind. In fact, it will probably be one of those moments you just wish you could forget, but you replay over and over in your mind even thirty years on from the incident.
Part of my reflection included taking a dive into some of the larger accounts on Hive/Leo. I know it isn't about comparing, but there are some really staggering numbers out there. I mean, knock you to the floor when you realize how big the accounts are and how much of each token they are pulling in each day from posting/engagement/curation.
The recent price jump (with a slight drop) in Hive had me feeling pretty good about my account. Add to that the fact that I am getting close to my 25K Hive Power goal and things were looking pretty rosy.
But now...
I am sure I am not alone when I say I feel like I am always trying to play catch up. I often get this impression I am always arriving just a little late to the party on this project, that project, this token, or that token. It makes me wonder if I am destined to always be a minnow, or maybe just a small panfish swimming around in a much larger body of water than I belong.
Obviously, these are all fleeting thoughts, I am still here writing this post right? With everything that is currently being developed and promised, it gives even a little fish hope that one day they can be swimming with the whales.
Is that realistic though?
I have recently taken a pretty big (for me) dive into the NFT space. There are some people who are making a ton of money in the NFT markets via collectibles and games. The kicker is, they are putting a lot of money into these projects up front.
Take for example some of the large accounts on Hive and Leo. Sure, a good portion of their HP/LP is from posting, but they likely also took a gamble at the right time, investing a decent sum of money into the token and/or miners.
I have zero excuse besides lack of funds. I knew about Leo when it launched, the opportunity was right there in front of me. Instead, here I am a year later, late to the party again.
DeFi is another great example of continually being at the level where you can't quite swim with the big fish no matter how hard you try. Sure, it is still early for me to get in, but the $100 that I might be able to spare to put into some liquidity pool is almost pointless (as some have told me).
And to some people $100 is a lot of money!
If that relegates me to being a perpetual panfish, where does that leave the majority of other people?
Sadly, I don't have a solution. I wish I did. Besides just continuing to hustle and hoping that one of those $100 investments I can make pays off big time for me, I will just keep swimming around in these vast waters.
I remember how long I worked to hit Dolphin level on Hive and almost as soon as I got there I was reading about how Orca was the new Dolphin. It's like we are chasing a finish line that is always moving. Where does that leave us except tired and hopeless?
Forgive my funk, I am sure tomorrow I will feel totally differently about the whole thing. Have you ever felt this way though? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
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https://twitter.com/JayBosworth5/status/1362010988636119040
I think you're in a good position to make observations and decisions that the "big players" can't.
A lot of people don't have privilege in our current social system, so can't buy their way into these markets. This leads me to think about what markets are emerging that don't bias existing privilege.
A tricky problem, but one that a lot of people are working toward: as you say, there's a lot of people who simply can't participate right now because the value of these assets is so high among people with lots of US dollars available to them.
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Yeah, I totally understand what you are saying. I always feel a little guilty talking about investing $100 like it is a small amount. I know that many people would be lucky to have that much free money to put into something like crypto. For those outside of the so called "first world countries", the inroads to crypto are even fewer.
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In my view of things, that means I pretty much have an obligation to build those inroads. I don't want this to be a playground for the elites, and... on a global scale, just by virtue of being present here, I'm demonstrating, I'm in a pretty elite group.
I've been looking for projects that I think might help move blockchain technology this way. I think it's a tricky problem, because computers and Internet access are already so expensive, but I can't really do anything to innovate how we make computers. But I've been poor (by Western standards) and on the Web for a long time - maybe I can do something to innovate the spaces that these people will find access to, hopefully, in the coming years.
That sounds like a very wholesome goal to have! Best of luck with that!
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Yes, I know the feeling well. The trick is to just keep your head down and do the little things you can control every day that move you closer to your goal. There will always be people ahead of you. You'll never be first (unless you start your own project). But, look how far you've come and take some pride in it. Remember, you're "complaining" about being late to the party and there are many people who can only dream about getting to the level you're at now. You need to make sure you're a positive influence on the people coming into this platform. It only helps us all, right?
I DO understand the constant feeling of playing "catch-up" though. It's human nature to always want to be further, higher, faster than we are. The key is to enjoy the journey.
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Yeah, I get it is all a bit relative and my feeling of being behind is actually miles ahead of some others. I just get in the occasional funk about the whole thing sometimes!
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Oh yes ! Very relatable !
Bitcoin ? I’m running after and the more USD I add into it, the less fraction of BTC I get as the price increases faster than I invest. Not sure it makes sense but you got the idea.
DeFi ? I’ve started to put a couple of thousands in last October, been adding even more in BSC DeFi and still I’m running after small profit. As you said 100$ is a damn amount for some ! But still I’m stuck as a panfish as you said.
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Sounds like you have some really sound pieces in place! I'd have to pull a mighty large number of strings with my wife to get the okay to invest thousands in anything! I really want to get into this DeFi thing. I just don't know as though $100 is worth it.
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Well I removed the “wife” from the decision equation haha.
Actually 100$ could be invested in BSC DeFi and you would pay around 2% in fees if I’m not wrong.
I’d go for 250$ to reduce the percentage of fees tho. Currently on autofarm I’m adding more to the pool as soon as I have 200$.
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Okay, I am going to have to check that out. I just learned about AutoFarm the other day. Now to find a way to get my ETH moved into BNB or something like that.
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This highlights a perfectly negative issue about the whole space for me in so much as it is just money going to money just as it does in the traditional world. Whilst not being particularly left-leaning, I was rather hoping that blockchain and crypto would even the balance just a little and create a world of opportunity for those without huge swathes of spare cash to invest.
Its partially achieves that, but as your delve discovered, there are many here earning huge sums daily who did not come by it all from working from the bottom up!
It is what it is I guess and I certainly feel your pain at backing the wrong horses at the wrong time and being late to the parties but as a tiny fish, I know we can't cover all of the bases all of the time hoping for the big win.
Perhaps @aggroed's new Paperdolls project might be worth a punt? lol.....and now I've just said that in a rather scornful manner, I'm shitting myself in case it is and the FOMO is kicking in !!
https://hive.blog/paperdolls/@aggroed/paper-dolls
Hope you and the missus are well and surviving these challenging time mate and best wishes to you both :-)
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I hope you are doing well too. Yeah, it is definitely set up no different than traditional markets in that the rich just continue to get richer in many aspects. I think there are some bottom fish that actually do benefit. People from places like Venezuela can certainly attest to that. I think this may be another case where the middle class is just getting swallowed up.
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Totally, almost everyday, but I realize my competition isn't others but bettering my previous achievement, I'd be dishonest to say that I was better off Financially before joining in on hive, an improvement since I've joined, now , that's my competition, beating that.. and I just read a post where someone coined the word "coopetition" obviously a combination of the words "cooperation and competition" ..
We get better with time and effort..and if you feel thus, imagine how I must feel, I'm probably a tadpole 🤡...
Cheers buddy !
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It definitely helps if you have a community of individuals to help you grow. I'm not really interested in competing with other people, but I would like to know that I made a smart move at the right time for once. It just takes that one win to put you in a place where you can be a bigger fish in some of these other projects.
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Thanks for this information..
I trust someday soon you'd, trust your instincts.. nothing to lose..
Cheers!
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Rather than worrying about the money I think it's more important to have some integrity on here, which you've got, and just enjoy the experience - OK Fine, have half an eye on chasing the money and write to the audience for votes, that's part of the game, so nothing wrong with that!
Just keep doing what you're doing and keep stacking.
I frequently wonder if this place wouldn't be better without everyone's financial details being in your damn face all the time.
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Thanks! Yeah, the transparency probably doesn't help. Even on the NFT side of things I still feel like a small fish. I might pick up like five packs of something and feel like I did pretty good. Then you hear about people that bought 100's of packs and you suddenly realize how small you are.
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More info why you see this.
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Thank you!
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A long time ago I came to peace with the fact that I wasn't going to be a rich man. I'm a working man, and big money just wasn't going to follow me around. The biggest part of the whole soul searching ordeal was that "I'm OK with that". If I am destined to be a perch I'll just be the best perch I can be. No more, no less.
Right this minute my Hive account is worth very nearly double what I have put into it. To me, that makes me a success. If the only measurement that is viable around here is the number of commas you have in your total then I'm out of here never to return.
You write stuff that I like to read and have some depth and understanding that I'll never have. In my world that makes you a success, too.
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I am still working on getting there. I don't necessarily want to be rich, I just want to be comfortable. I feel like I do a pretty good job with our finances, but stuff is so expensive these days and there are still those months where we just manage to squeak by. Granted, we are not living paycheck to paycheck like some, but I want to be able to splurge whenever I want and not feel guilty about it. My hope is that crypto will one day put me in that position.
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Congrats, you were upvoted from this account because you were in Top 25 engagers yesterday on LeoFinance .
You made a total of 91 comments and talked to 49 different authors .
For more details about this project please read here - link to announcement post
You can also delegate and get weekly payouts.
Thank you!
You are most welcome @bozz . You were at the top today .
Maybe from tomorrow I will display the rank too in the reply comment you just got .
Rank , Number of comments , Number of authors you talked to .
Do you need more ?
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No, that is cool. I was really gunning for it yesterday. I am not sure I can go that hard every day!
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Well to be honest you have put in so much comments that average users take a week , as long as you can catch up with all the replies / good posts on leofinance once in 3-4 days I don't think it is a problem :)
All I can say is ( by looking at the data ) you are doing amazing :)
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Thanks again. Yeah, I am an over achiever like that! This is a cool project that you have going.
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This post is so on point, I hear you @bozz I really do. Like you, I thought I'd finally found out about a project early enough when I learned about Leofinance last Spring. Wasn't the price like 3 cents or something? So I started buying tokens and miners.
In the Fall, I really started posting and commenting, when the first of two issues hit me. Someone posted about cutting support of anybody who still had "Steem" as their recovery account. Id never known anything about it and quickly created a new account to replace it, but the change takes 30 days to finalize, so likely lost some support there.
The next thing was just as I was at 735 LEO and contemplating writing my first Orca post, the bottom fell out of my financial world. I live on my own as the responsible member in a family full of addicts and grifters, I'm the one they all come to when things need fixing. And here I was "early" for a change, yet now was faced with a choice of selling my crypto or being out in the streets.
I still recall reading a comment by a whale who said he was ending his upvotes for a newer tribe member because he had sold a miner. I think the quote was "I'm not supporting that!" before he cut the person off. So while making 100 comments a week, my choice was to power down LEO and HIVE and risk losing the support of people like that, or keeping my crypto and not having a roof over my head. I sold and I'll never forget how hard it was to let go of those LEO miners that I'd picked up so cheap in the Spring. Knowing all of the exciting new changes coming to the platform and that the price was likely to increase (as it ended up doing) I had to sell when it was between 0.20 and 0.25. I even had to give up my internet access and post at free hotspots.
All that support I had? Gone, almost completely.
Even after I got on and explained what happened. As they say, no one owes you an upvote, but I think at times, people are too quick to pull the trigger without knowing the full story. I could've gotten a job stocking shelves at Walmart, where many workers weren't wearing masks and risk COVID or I could sell. I made the safer choice. People get hired there and then have to leave because of the virus, the turnover is alarming.
My finances finally came back a few weeks ago and I know what it must look like to some people: "he just came in to sell" NOPE. Last thing I wanted to do. I have no intention of giving up, though. When I heard about Leofinance, I thought it was wise to have a place focused on the world of finance and would be a good niche in which to contribute. And like you, I'd finally arrived early enough to possibly make an impact. But just like you bozz, I realize you've got to come out of the gate with a significant enough investment in order to have a worthwhile upvote. I was so close to 800 LP!
I may never win over the skeptics when I say I sold because I had to, but that's ok. We'll begin again.
BTW, I looked at your account on HiveStats and thought YOU were the Whale! :) Hang in there man, perspective is everything, isn't it?
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That sucks, I am sorry you had to go through that. I can't even imagine. Yeah, it is that I initial investment that really gets you. If you don't have thousands up front to put into something, you may as well forget it. For me a couple thousand bucks is just too much to risk on a gamble. You never really know if a project is going to do well or not.
I am later so hoping that helps you feel better :D
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Thanks!
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