Do you still have some Christmas presents left to buy for somebody? Unsure about what to get for them? Why not consider the gift that keeps on giving, and which can also significantly help us grow this amazing blockchain? Why not give someone HIVE for Christmas this year?
Four years ago, I wrote what quickly became a popular post titled Why I bought my brother STEEM for Christmas and how you can do the same! (It's also interesting to be looking back at a time where receiving 336 genuine comments was not uncommon ...). In it, I made the case for why giving someone STEEM for Christmas could have tremendous value for our chain, as well as a suggested step-by-step guide for how to do it.
I believe that most of the points made in the article for why doing so can greatly benefit our chain are just as true today as they were then. So if there is one thing that we as a community and developers could do right now to help the price of HIVE continue going up, then it would be to make it easy, secure, fun, and popular to give HIVE as a Christmas gift.
Let's have a look at why.
Now is a good time to introduce people to Hive
Hive is currently in a more exciting place than it has been in quite some time (if not ever). This thanks to a growing number of successful on-chain projects ranging from Splinterlands, Hivepunks and Dcity, to alternative communities like LeoFinance. There's simply put a lot to explore and have fun with while potentially earning some crypto.
I know that for many, the idea of onboarding friends and family to Hive may have seemed improbable due to the simple fact that they could not picture them blogging. With more alternative things to get involved with, Hive should make an appeal to more users, and thus be more likely to work well as a gift.
It is a great way to promote Hive
For several weeks after Christmas, the most common topic of discussion that people will have with friends and others in their network will be what gifts they got for Christmas. Whether it is your friends, family members, hairdresser or dentist asking out of curiosity, or just small talk with colleagues. More uncommon gifts, or gifts that may make the receiver feel a bit cool or tech savvy such as getting crypto, are of course most likely to be mentioned. Thus, giving people HIVE for Christmas will not only introduce it to them, but likely also to several of their connections.
Should HIVE also go on to increase in value following the new year, it will become an even greater talking point for the persons who have been given the HIVE. Will they start talking about how the Christmas present they got is suddenly worth twice as much a month or two after Christmas?
Introducing more "non-bloggers" to Hive
A lot of people talk about how the network effect will make HIVE go viral. If I may be honest, I don't see that happening at the moment. Very few people I've come to know here have told anyone about it or tried to on-board new users. In the cases where they have, the outcome has usually been quite poor. When I ask people why the answer is always the same: "My friends would not want to write articles or blogs".
But we really need more than just bloggers here. We need consumers. When you give someone HIVE for Christmas, it does not matter whether they go on to blog or become active on Splinterlands. I gave my brother HIVE 4 years ago, and it is still sitting in his wallet @trygve where he is just HODLing it. Similarly, you should just tell them to hold on to their account keys like they would for a Bitcoin wallet. If they grow more curious over time about how they can make more HIVE by being active on the blockchain, or simply want to explore it further, then they can always do that later.
An added network effect
As mentioned, chances are good that they will tell some of their friends and family when asked “what did you get for Christmas?” that they received some crypto-currency, and perhaps with some luck even remember that the name HIVE. More so, throughout the year whenever Bitcoin or other crypto currencies comes up as a small-talk topic at their workplace or in their social circles (which is likely seeing how much it dominates the news at the moment), they will be able to proudly brag about how they own some cryptocurrency themselves! And when asked which token they have, they’ll of course say HIVE! If they are then asked “what the hell is HIVE?” Their answer could be along the lines of “oh it’s this new social media thing where users can earn crypto currency. I don’t know much about it but my friend/son/cousin Bob says it will go to the moon”. While they themselves might not have been interested in blogging, perhaps this will get somesome of their friends interested!
Let us make this a thing!
So I would like to submit this idea as a great way to do something small to help boost the value of HIVE and thus make you richer yourself in the process. Think about it: You are going to spend some money on a Christmas present for the person anyway, why not buy some HIVE and thus help increase its value? If the person just wants to hold it, fine, now we’ve locked up some supply, which is only good. Furthermore, if they do want to go on to blog, now they’ve got the perfect story for their introduction post! One I am sure many existing users and curators will love to hear.
I would therefore like to encourage as many of you as possible to try and give any amount of HIVE to somebody this year. It is the season after all!
How can we make giving Hive more easy, secure, fun, and popular?
While there are many ways to give someone HIVE as a gift, we as stakeholders, developers and community should also look at how we can contribute. In short, I believe we should look at any ways to make it easy, safe, fun, and popular for people to give others HIVE as a gift. Whether it's for Christmas or any other event throughout the year.
Easy
As always, there is a need for account creation to be as easy and smooth as possible. There should be a one-stop service for those looking to give someone Hive that handles account creation, token purchase, and gift card selection and retrieval.
It really must be as simple as selecting an amount of either HIVE tokens or fiat equivalents that you want to give, then an option for creating a Hive account (perhaps some may want to create a holding account whose keys they give away for the recipient to then make their own account, or another alternative where the recipient can create an account first, and then claim the tokens held on the gift card), and finally pick a fitting gift card that can be printed out locally.
Safe
Introducing STEEM Gift Cards – A fun way to give someone STEEM for the holidays!), we found it quite easy to set up a simple webpage to handle transferring the liquid HIVE tokens that one would give as a gift etc to the new account. However, there's also the need for it to handle the purchaser's Active Key properly, as well as make sure that the generated account and/or purchased tokens are held safe until it is received by the recipient.Needless to say, it must also be safe. When @howo and I made a simple and quick service following my post 4 years ago (see
I could use some input on this point on how we could have a service that handles this well.
Fun
One thing is to make a service that works, another thing is to make people want to use it. Giving someone HIVE should be a fun thing to do. Perhaps we could make use of our pool of talented artists to have a library of fun Hive-inspired gift cards that purchasers may choose from? Or perhaps we could be even more clever with some cool integrations with other aspects of our chain? Never underestimate the importance of it being fun!
Popular
Finally, we need to help make this a thing! And it should be one of the competitive advantages our blockchain has that we have a community with the perfect tools and incentives to help make positive things like this work. Perhaps we should have an annual challenge to see how many different people we manage to give HIVE to each year? Maybe we could compile all the new users onboarded after Christmas in a "Hive Giftcards newcomers" post with links to help existing community members find them and help curate them? Or perhaps it's enough to simply contribute to making a culture of giving HIVE as a present by making posts about it when/if we do it ourselves? After all, not only is it a gift that can help make HIVE more valuable, you could likely earn back the cost of the gift with a well-made post about it.
Outro
My only regret is that I did not make this post 1 month earlier. I really think that we could have organized well and made an initiative like this a success. But I wanted to share the idea and the arguments now while I had it and while people can see the relevance of it. But maybe for some of you who still have a Christmas present left to buy for someone, this may have given you an idea :) if so, I would love to see it!
A while back I created accounts for my kids, delegated to them and set them following the @tenkminnows trail. They are building up a nice stake that they can use as they want. So far they have not used the accounts themselves, but I will educate them on what is possible. I think we need as many active accounts as possible.
Great idea! I decided to place the tokens I bought for my Brother in his savings account. But with it having been there now for 4 years it could have been better if it was trailing.
People may get a better return from savings than curation and I think that could be a bad thing if it discourages the latter. I want to help people, but some will focus primarily on their own income. There are other options (e.g. Splinterlands) that may tempt people away from staking their HIVE to curate, but I consider that to be one of the most innovative aspects of this blockchain.
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BEER.BEERHey @fredrikaa, here is a little bit of from @steevc for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.That's actually a really good idea @fredrikaa!
I've got a number of account vouchers just sitting there, and I could give one (with some Hive) to all the people I know on Farcebook who keep telling me how SICK of Facebook!!! they are.
"Here you go! Have a Hive account with 100 Hive! Have fun!"
Yeah, maybe you could have been "earlier," but why not just roll this over into "resolutions and plans for 2022?" It's still the gift that keeps giving...
Very nice text. The most important keyword is "non blogger", I guess. Hive is more than just blogging, even if I must admit that I regularly forget that myself (I belong to those who like writing and reading).
On the side note, I was actually considering creating an account for my goddaughter as a Christmas present. She is now getting old enough to be able to understand how it works (and may actually like it).
Enjoy your holidays!
I've tried a few times in recent weeks to get some people interested. I haven't had any luck yet sadly but it's always something I'm trying to get into. The hard part for me is the pitch. I've tried a few ways to pitch it and each of those ways iterates to them that there is zero risk for getting involved, no need to buy anything. Haven't had any takers on it yet sadly! Hoping that I can get someone into it at least once lol
This is amazing. I would consider gifting someone Hive for Christmas, they would love it.
lol ya ya ya frederika did this with steem gave steem christmas cards
oh wait its you lol
yeah man we need to just have wax style vouchers, sucks no oneon hive has even figured out a simple way to not have to pay 3 hive for tyhat
i mean i used to to use @steeminvite but i never see anyone talking about a @hiveinvite or id be using it, i paid for liek thousands of steem invites butneevr got to use em lol oh well
i tried, but look what happens when u try to help steem / hive u just get scammed lol
so where can i even use hive invite style voucher system so i can hand write a code on a holiday card ?
It's never late friend but the truth is that a month ago would have been great, the more people know about the #Hive project, the better our earnings will be in the near future. Giving this Christmas will be the perfect gift.
That's a great idea
I’m looking at getting them each 100 hbd. 12% APR… plus they already have accounts. I’ve been trying to push them to post here and there but sadly it hasn’t worked. Oh well, they are still earning HP following my votes.
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Woww. such a beautiful writeup. I totally agree with you friend. We should share this thing with more and more people around us and contribute towards a more better community! :)
Merry Christmas 🌲🎅🤶🎁⛄🌲🎅🙏🙏🙏