Hey Jessientrepreneurs
As a millennial, I think I am a product of the hustle culture; as our money continues to get debased, we continue to see people trying to make up the shortfall with side hustles, freelancing, investing and even gambling. The corruption of money has seen society compensate in weird ways, one of them being hustle culture.
I started a business 5 years ago; I've dedicated 80 hour weeks for many of those years to try and get my business off the ground. It's not been easy, and I've failed at it many times, I've lost money, I've had customers not pay me, I've lost clients, I've had to absorb losses for poor decisions I made, and it's NOT a straight line to financial gain.
It's bloody nose after bloody nose, and I feel you have to be delusional to look at all the odds you need to face and keep going, but I do, lol, but I am a wack job.
I know first-hand how toxic and addictive hustle culture can be; you are your own boss, you make your hours, and your input dictates the value you receive at the end of each month.
As I busted my arse each month, saved, reinvested to grow my business, I found that I was working harder and harder to remain in the same place, and it was frustrating.
I was out looking for answers on the internet and stumbled across this thing called Bitcoin.
Along came to Bitcoin
Sound money, disgusted as a Ponzi scheme. It was something that rewarded savers, all you had to do was buy and HODL and back then sell at the right time, and you could make up a few years worth of income in a few months. It was crazy, and I was hooked, the more I learned and the more it grew, the more I grew with it.
Bitcoin has helped me store my wealth, and as it grows along with my conviction, I've learned to slow down. To not work relentlessly but to work more efficiently to look at how much I can keep each month, not only how much I can make each month.
It's started to rewire my thinking, and I've had to drop many ideas I once held and ways I see the world to move towards a Bitcoin standard.
To me, Bitcoin is about preserving purchasing power over space and time. It's not about the fiat value but about how you can deploy this asset in the future.
Altcoins appeal to hustle culture
Altcoins USP is all about the rehypothecation of money, the idea you can put some money in and take loads of money out. Throughout human civilization, we've fallen for alchemists, and crypto is the latest alchemy test.
It plays perfectly to hustle culture that you can strike it rich; the harder you work, the more projects you invest in, the more risk you take, the more lavish your life will be in the short term.
As long as there is a steady stream of people besotted by Instagram fame and material wealth, there will be a sucker lining up to buy the next cheap hot cryptocurrency.
The hustler's dilemma
In today age, it's all about hustling; we glamorise it, hustle so you can spend big. We vilify the saver; that's why I think Bitcoin gets so much flack; it's a savers ultimate tool; it's not for the hustler.
The problem with hustling and hustle culture is that it doesn't take into consideration opportunity cost. You are so focused on acquiring wealth in the shortest amount of time; you don't look at risk; you don't look at the burnout and stress you put on yourself.
You make decisions for now, which is more often than not a misallocation of capital. Hustlers demand instant gratification for their contribution; savers demand better for themselves.
There is nothing wrong with hustling; I think auditing your hustle activities could make all the difference. It's time we hustle smarter and not harder.
Have your say
What do you good people of HIVE think?
So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, "I am a Jessie."
Let's connect
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Crypto and more specifically Hive started out as a hustle for me, but now it is more of a hobby. I quickly realized none of this was going to bring me life changing wealth (at least for the foreseeable future). Changing my mindset made it all much more enjoyable.
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I think if you take that mindset you are way better off then it’s all about exploring and learning and okay you have a little bit of a score board to keep you motivated
I more try out the different offerings and see how they work and then share my learnings! Might not always be whay those in it want to hear but I want to be as honest and objective as I can about what’s I see in crypto
Bitcoin is my savings and the rest is just for fun!
Yeah, that sounds about right.
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Very true. We need to act smart than act fast. I don’t like the idea of following some famous person and investing into something as soon as that person tweet about something. This is crazy.
People are willing to take bigger risk these days because they want to get rich 🤑 as soon as possible, which is a dangerous game.
I would go slow and steady than fast, bumpy and dangerous.
Lol the thing with slow and steady is you need conviction and that’s not easy you will constantly be tested and tempted! You hodl BTC todya tomorrow everyone is screaming about how awesome ETH two is or this new coin so you chase the gains
It’s not just those chasing tweet hype there’s a lot of things testing your conviction
I think in this respect cryptos like steem and hive are different.
For most of (or all) the others, you buy and hope they are going to go up so you can sell and pocket a profit. There's not much else to do anyway, "being active" on the respective blockchains requires one to spend those cryptos in tx fees, which runs contrary to the very reason one bought those alts.
In contrast, steem and hive are powering real applications, such as these blogging platforms on which I come, I find and read a post like yours and it makes me reflect and react: these are the resorts of economic value creation. I don't need to buy steem nor hive, I can earn them by interacting productively with the others. And I don't have to spend steem nor hive in order to interact. These things make a huge difference. Because the price of steem/hive is so low, they remain somewhat of a hustle though. Aside perhaps from tarazkp, not sure other people can live from their writing here
But with steem or hive at $4 or more, these blockchains can sustain real economic activity as we saw it in the era of the revolutionary Utopian.io Then we will be speaking about a wholly new economy and people will be able to "get a job" on these blockchains, they will be able to perform here their main gainful activity. It would not be a hustle anymore.
I do like the tech of the distributed text but I think the platform would be so much better if they removed the token all together, I think the gamification and issuance of the tokens are a net negative
I would use the service even without the tokens, and was thinking what if BTC was used instead I think it would be better.
The site generates traffic and views that should generate income which could go into a DOA and is redistributed based on certain metrics like those who get the most views and unique engagement
To me it's a better model and you're using an asset more people know about and want to hold
Not sure I follow your reasoning here.
If there was no token at all then this platfrom would be no different from a thousand others which exist already, like Medium or Quora or Blogspot. There would be no point, it could as well fold. Otherwise the operators would need to invent a business model and aside from subscriptions (Medium), ads (Quora) or cross-subsidies (Blogspot), no one has been able to come up with anything .... until the blockchain and the token came along ...
If the platform was to distribute BTC that BTC would have to come from somewhere ... where would it come from ? Who and why would provide a continuous stream of BTC to sponsor the participants on a no-own-token platform?
On the contrary, I am convinced these tokens, steem and hive, are "the real deal", the real advanced cryptocurrencies which can facilitate and support new economic activity which would otherwise not take place
Lol you compare it to platforms that are widely successful like thats a bad thing!
This "experiment" has been going for what? 5 years? In that time how many other projects where all you can do is buy and hold it have surpassed the amount of users here? Probably the vast majority of them
Like I said you monetize the traffic, work with brands, charger for storage of file, pay walls and other monetisation features!
Have tipping and have a lighting node to route payments, allow for eCommerce through Bitcoin theres plenty of ways a platform can generate BTC from engagement on the site
You'll also be appealing to a much wider audience then the 10 or 20k people here!
I'd much rather see 1 million Bitcoiners using a platform and "earn" less for myself and have a busing ecosystem that has a future
What is a "bas thing" is that these platforms are ALREADY there and wildly successful! The business model is very hard to pull through, it's not like you are selling oil. There's probably not enough money in this business for 2 successful platforms. How do you out -compete Medium or Quora with their business model, on their turf, at their own game ?
That this experiment is not as successful as it could have been is a fact. But that doesn't mean the any and all explanations are equally good.
You seem to think that "someone" (who ? this is a decentralized, leaderless platform that strongly rejects leadership) should start doing things to bring it more in line with existing platform by monetizing visits and views (how? you need to steal user data like Facebook and Google do, otherwise your ad rates will be very low) and then with that ad money pay for the infrastructure (witnesses), pay for development, pay for marketing, pay the investors AND with what's left buu some BTC and distribute BTC tips to the writers ... it works on paper as long as you don't put actual figures down. It just doesn't add up.
Nobody is happy with the current state. That doesn't mean that there is an easy fix such as "just monetize visits and views and pay contributors with BTC"
So you shot down my solution, what’s your solution?
I like that reply ! 😄
There is one thing which is highly relevant un what you wrote: "work with brands". True! No matter whether for advertising or for having buyers of hive, "work with brands/companies" is central. But who could do that, in practice?
Who could contact a company / a brand on behalf of Hive and say "Look, I represent this distributed text platform, we generate traffic and views, come work with us - either by placing ads or by buying our token to use it as loyalty points or whatever"
The answer is ... NO ONE ! This is a major drawback of "decentralization " - there is no leader, no one feels empowered to make decisions on behalf of the others, on behalf of the platform. No one is in charge. No one is responsible of drawing up a plan and then following through.
Failing that, then what?
I see no silver bullet. It will be a grind
It can be "grassroots" - starting small like Bitcoin did, having regular dolphins and orcas use the platform as their backend and investing small amounts.
Or it could be a bigger brand who by chance discovers the power of this platform and decides to try ot out and ends up making it work for them.
None of us are expected to come, all by ourselves, with a solution on behalf of the community. It's "decentralized ". None of us can, all by ourselves. We can be a part of a solution, but the solution, if it ever materialises, will involve a lot of luck and "aligned stars"
That's a great position to shift to.
I couldn't agree more except, being a Boomer, rather than a Millenial my time is a bit more limited! 😂
and
I don't identify with that at all. Too lazy. 😂
I've got to a point where I know that money/things can't make me happy In fact they drag me down (the things I mean). I stopped buying luxury/fickle stuff years and years ago but I still have way too much sentimental clutter. Not to mention digital clutter.
I did think about starting a decluttering community but found, as we many things, I couldn't be assed. 😂
But, never say never!
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I couldn't be arsed about a lot of the shiny things all I want is more time for myself to enjoy my hobbies and work on things I enjoy. I understand it's not like there are much people here to make a community I've sort of grown tired of how stagnant it has become I thought in the bull run people would flock here again like they did in 2017 but it looks like that's not happening
Yeah. I know what you mean. It's mostly the same old stuff over and over again on Leo, not including your posts of course. 😁 There are sooooo many Splinterlands and Rising Star ones.
I'm really enjoying the life story posts out of Suriname, Venezuela, Myanmar etc. though. It's very educational to hear what it's like in other countries first hand. Makes me feel very appreciative of and grateful for my personal situation.
I was one of the newbies who flocked to Steem in 2017 and was very active. Were you around before that?
I never made the transition to hive as an author.
!ENGAGE 30
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Yeah, and to be honest, apart from some bright sparks, the comments on posts are also pretty manufactured and just designed for an upvote and no real engagement its just pop a comment hope for an upvote.
I do enjoy the real hobbies and stories, which are cool, but they are drowned out by shilling and self-promotion and basically just content farming. The travel posts are often really interesting too, I like those, but other than that, I can't see why I'd bring anyone here. I've recruited at least 10 people, and I don't blame them for not staying.
I came in around 2016, but I was still a teeny account begging for upvotes lol my first 50 posts got zero rewards or engagement.
I felt like I'd give it till the next bull run to see if it caught on and now we here and well doesn't look like much is happening, no salt on HIVE i mean even steem or any of these other social projects haven't done much either.
I will probably start to blog less here soon and find something else I want to pursue
Oh no. I learn so much from you! 😂
Maybe when CUB/Hive goes to the moon, as mentioned in a couple of posts, you'll be tempted to stay! 😂
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Lol it depends if moon brings more people to engage with that would be cool, if everything is the same apart from the price that’s not fun!
I actually came here from medium I used to blog there and my blog was monetisable but I didn’t choose to enable the pay wall but engagement still dropped and then I found this place which was hopping at the time
Lol don’t worry I’ll always share my learnings online for free!
Good point. That's what happened on Steemit. Way before Justin Cun arrived. It was really buzzy when I first arrived and the, as the price went down, more and more people left. As you say, without engagement it's not a lot of fun. That's one of the reasons why I didn't transition to Hive.
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ENGAGEtokens.I kind of agree that people need to act smarter with their money. By using the money and having them grow over time, your wealth increases. It may start off small but it transforms into a large amount in the future. If your hustling to create investment opportunities in the future, I see no issue.
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I don't see a problem with hustling I just think this culture of taking in as much risk as possible isn't hustling it's gambling to me hustling is going out and creating value and being rewarded
What value are you creating shilling a shitcoin trying to dump it on others
*disguised
Bitcoin has certainly had this peculiar effect on most of us, I remember buying my first bit worth 50$ when Bitcoin hit 25k, I thought I was late, at 60k, I couldn’t be happier, There’s certainly a thing called ‘hodl culture’, it sticks the more one understands Bitcoin more. Someone said you can’t save your way to wealth, I agree because they aren’t saving it into Bitcoin
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Definately a culture of HODL'ing but now this culture has been misappropriated by other tokens to get noobs to hodl and become bag holders for dumpers I see it all the time
I do agree you can never save your way to wealth in fiat, saving in Bitcoin life gets cheaper every year
I love the draw downs the cheaper BTC is the better for small guys like me
Sadly I agree....and crypto people wonder why bitcoiners are so salty when they hear about meme coins. I was having a discussion with a friend recently about memecoins, he was in support and was blatantly defending them. It has caused a dent on our friendship and I can’t look at him the same way I used to anymore.
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I understand I’ve also had a few friends yolo into doge and other meme coins!
Bitcoiners have seen it all but I think that we do ourselves a disservice by trying to tell others what to do, the best way to learn is to get burned sadly
I try to put out content on my thoughts and I can see how it triggers other people but that just shows how insecure you are and deep down you know what you holding is dog shit
When I realised that everyone will get the price they deserve for you it clicked at 20k for others it will click at 200, eveyeones has their own path let them walk it and be there when they are ready and be willing to help but for now I keep quiet in the debates
I don’t give my take on coins friends own I simply say I’m happy that you making money
Honestly! I stopped talking when shiba did almost 500% one time, right after doge went as high as 0.7$.
I totally agree, like you said, as long as you’re making money I’m happy for you....eventually they will receive the laser eyes lol
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