As far as big purchases are concerned I started getting a real taste for that once I breached into the 6-figure range. There comes a certain point where a user has so much powered up that all of a sudden the entire network notices them. Like people are directly asking me for a proposal or witness vote. The higher echelon comes with a lot of political power.
Also "speculation" is a very broad category. The entire stock market is speculation and nobody questions it. How many stock enjoyooors actually cast votes with their stock? And I would argue that the momentary policies of stocks are even more whimsical than crypto a lot of the time.
Hahaha, enjoyoooors.
Do you think people know that 6-figure Hive Power carries a lot of weight and power? I honestly didn't know that until you mentioned it so I'm not sure if its a big motivating factor for people to buy a ton of Hive... or maybe it is? I honestly have no idea. I know the dApps probably buy a bit for the resource credits, but I don't think that explains the total amount of Hive purchased each day.
I'd agree with the speculation of stocks. I've been diving deep into Tesla specifically and the stock price market cap is not at all supported by the reality of the company financials and their assets. It's all hype and vibes at the moment.
Now that you mention it they might not.
Unit bias might be getting in the way I know that before I reached that level I thought an account would have to have like a million tokens before they got network-wide attention.
However if we look at something like proposals it would only take like 100 people with my level of stake to vote somethin in to get funded... so it's a pretty huge vote in that regard and I'm always trying to get more.