Andrew Carnegie's Advice: Be A Hive Maximalist?

This is a take on an article that appeared regarding Bitcoin in Hackernoon. As we will see, it applies to Hive rather than Bitcoin.

Andrew Carnegie had this advice more than a century ago.

Source

This obviously is a different take on the diversification idea that the financial services industry promotes. It is also a marked changed from the ICO days when people were "investing" in 30 or 40 ICOs.

Carnegie is certainly a colorful figure in history. However, there is little doubt about his business knowledge and ability to generate wealth. His tactics are open for debate yet the results are clear.

For years I railed against the idea of diversification. It is not a path to riches. Looking at the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, most of the people on there are identified with a particular company (or at least industry). They did not reach that level by diversifying.

This, however, is not an investing article. Rather, it is one about technology. Here is where Hive enters the picture.

Maximalism

The above linked article discusses the Carnegie idea and ties it to cryptocurrency. Specifically, since the author is a Bitcoin maximalist, it is tilted to the oldest and largest coin.

Here is a quote from the article:

I often hear some people say that you should diversify your investments in cryptocurrencies, just in case Bitcoin fails. As I repeat, if Bitcoin fails, the entire industry will fail. Without Bitcoin, no cryptocurrency will survive. Period.

Even thought it is emphatically stated, this is an opinion and not fact. It is possible this is a correct assessment. However, we have to be mindful that history is littered with technologies where the earliest and first dominant player did not survive. This is also true for monetary history.

It is at this point that some things go off the rails. While the place of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency might be up for debate, we get more clarity when we view things from this angle.

When you are convinced that a specific technology has everything it takes to revolutionize the world of the future, you must be a maximalist.

You can’t waste time supporting competing technologies that don’t offer the same potential. Not doing so would be dangerous for your future.

Satoshi Nakamoto introduced something revolutionary. The idea of an electronic cash network that solved the double spend problem in a decentralized manner was a breakthrough. It opened up a door to a future that is completely different from the past. To downplay Bitcoin's place in history is a mistake.

That said, we have to be careful about extrapolating that into the future. Bitcoin is supposedly revolutionary money that is not even capable of operating as a medium of exchange at the base layer. This has to be outsourced to the second layer or to sidechains.

As a technology, it is already lagging.

All In On Hive Technology

Hive is a permissionless, decentralized text database. Like Bitcoin (and most other blockchains), it solves the double spend problem. However, this technology brings so much more to the table.

The last couple articles covered the fact that the most overlooked fact is that Hive is a decentralized database. This opens up a host of possibilities for projects to incorporate into their business models. While many focus upon price, the ability to build is before us.

A few of us on here are old enough to remember the early days of the Internet. There were many players that were dominant and growing at a nice rate. One such entity was Yahoo. They were leaders in both search and email. Of course, we know Google eclipsed them completely.

During the dotcom bubble, Yahoo reached a price of $475 per share, a level it would never even come close to seeing again.

That is not to say that BTC will not make new highs. It most certainly can. When it comes to market activity, anything can happen. However, if we are going to focus on technology, Bitcoin is lagging greatly. While many are optimistic about Taproot, the reality is the clock is ticking and other projects are advancing forward from a technological angle.

One of those networks is Hive.

What do we have that makes it stand out?

• As mentioned, this is a decentralized text database. This means that anyone can store text data on-chain, without permission required. It can be the basis for many businesses.

• When it comes to the world of finance, settlement is key. Hive has one block irreversibility. That means most financial transactions are settled regardless of where people are in the world in about 1.6 seconds.

• Recurrent payments which allows people to automate this activity. The Internet is full of subscription based models, something that is not presently possible on the Bitcoin network.

• No transaction fees. This is huge when it comes to Web 3.0 activities that are not directly financial. While these fees are common in finance, in other areas that is not the case. For example, do you want to pay a transaction fee for placing an order with Amazon? How about engaging in social media activity?

• Hive Application Framework (HAF): a layer 2 network being developed by the core development team that will allow for developers to integrate their applications without having to access the blockchain directly to pull the data. Personalized databases can be constructed by the devs to fulfill their applications' needs.

• Merging of finance and social media.

The last point is something to consider. Elon Musk made his point perfectly clear with Twitter. Since he took that over, other social media entities started to incorporate some of the same ideas.

Musk drilled the idea of the "Everything App". This means we are not going to see a separation of the two fields. Social media is going to have finance integrated throughout. Whether Musk can pull it off to the degree he desires is up to debate. The idea of Hive pulling it off is not.

Twitter is still a Web 2.0 company. The business model is such that it cannot make a full transition. Hive does not have this problem since it was established as a Web 3.0 ecosystem. The foundation is already being laid.

Cryptocurrency offers the ability to monetize platforms in a completely different manner. We will see how much of that is placed in Web 2.0. The real challenge there is the ownership breakdown. We know that Musk did not spend $40+ billion to simply give ownership away.

Blockchain ensures sovereignty. This is something that few care about in the social media world. However, when it comes to their wallets, it will certainly hit close if their accounts are wiped out, taking the assets with it.

It is very difficult (if not impossible) for Web 2.0 to get around this issue.

As for the rest of the blockchain world, who has the technology to merge this together. Look at the list of technological feature already present on Hive and name one blockchain that has it. Consider the user experience coupled with the settlement time. Those are two big factors.

Therefore, when applying Carnegie's wisdom to blockchain technology, is it Hive or Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is light years ahead in terms of market action. However, when it comes to technology, things shift greatly.

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