RE: The Brit List: August 2025
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
Thanks for the update ! I keep thinking about ways we can grow UK users. Interesting content is definitely a part of it, but I actually think that steering the conversation away from crypto and towards the social side and apps is the way to go.
Most of the people I've spoken with are incredibly wary of anything linked to crypto, not helped by the very anti-crypto stance of organisations like HMRC, the FCA, Bank of England etc.
I've been quite inspired by the adoption of Distriator in places like Nigeria and Venezuela, but I think doing that in the UK would be tough to et rolling. It might need all the shops in something like a tourist retail centre (somewhere like the Elsacar Heritage Centre) to come on board all at once. Or maybe run some kind of hobby-type event or small cosplay convention where HBD was set up as the favoured payment method (perhaps with Distriator-style cashbacks).
I think that communities are part of the answer, especially as other platforms get worse with crap algorithms and ads. I don't know what issues there are for businesses taking crypto, but there are some in the UK. It's still a very niche sector for now.
!BEER
Whenever I've talked to my customers, the feedback is that websites taking payment in crypto lose credibility. Many of my customers are in the 50-70 age range, and tend to take the (uneducated) view that any business involved in crypto is at the best slightly shady.
That's why I think an event or (even better) series of events where HBD is gamified might build traction. If paying by HBD got an HBD cashback, event prizes were in HBD, and there was a push to educate visitors what else was in the Hive ecosystem so they knew they could still use their wallets afterwards it might help grow the UK user base. I know a chap who periodically runs Warhammer 40K tournaments, so I might have a chat with him and see what the response is....
I guess you haven't been inspired by Liketu, which is created and run in Britain? Or inspired by the fact that Britain has had exactly 1 whale in for the last 5 years (me) and next person down is no where near.
And I guess by adoption, you mean you're impressed at 131 weekly users and i suppose not 381?
The cashback thing is fine, but you know what would be even better? If people just earned more in the first place and that can only happen by building sustainable cryptonomics which help drift the price upwards and not perpetually down.
We can talk about how successful something is, but at some longer time frame shouldn't we also ask, to what extent if any, it is actually bringing 'value' as expressed by price back up? Or are we past the point where we care about it and its just a race to the bottom, and everything is just one big vacuous exit strategy now?
I'm not against liketu, but it may not fit my style of posts. I do think we need a variety of options for that. Distriator seems to aim for something different. Getting people actually spending crypto ought to help adoption.
We have to be realistic about how tiny Hive is. There are FB groups with more activity and plenty of people out there with more active followers on other platforms.
I think it's great that we have a whale on the list. There are only 39 in total, so I wonder where they are concentrated. I suspect a few are in the USA. I've met some of them.
Yes, I get what you're saying.
The way I see it is, social media absolutely works better when there is a broader attention base. The value behind most of the incumbent giants of social media are not their slick front-ends, but the entrenched number of users that they managed to acquire by being early or first to market.
I think twitter has had many 'clones' arguably offering better experiences from a UX perspective, Bluesky but to name one, but what is missing? The 200 or 300 million people on Twitter who refuse to use anything else.
As a protocol, we do have something pretty unique and we can absolutely refine it. But as you say, the user base is tiny, and sadly, that is quite literally what makes Hive (not) valuable at this present time. Hive is nothing without the demographics on it. The blockchain tech, whilst novel, is not especially conducive to growing a health ecosystem.
What's more frightening, is a large swath of people appear to treat Hive as some kind of charity, and bringing more people in seems to be less important for fear of their share of the ever shrinking pie, getting even smaller.
I point out the above in context to my original post, that we constantly frame things about Hive, often excluding certain elements of it to make a rather moot point, which would have even been a stronger point had Liketu been mentioned and not Distriator.
We can debate all day about which brings more value, but i broadly think of adoption in two ways:
All of which we have very high metrics of, and at literally zero cost to Hive compared with the majority of our peers.
YET, people choose to exclude us while highlighting the merits of other platform "adoption"? Why? Cause I don't call people out for gaslighting? Are we not fighting for the same future success? Are we not on the same team? Why treat us like enemies then? Its not like we're competing for the same scarcity that my success means the failure of yours (not yours specifically)?
My ego is not above acknowledging the merits elsewhere on Hive where deserved, and I have frequently supported projects in the past that have nothing to do with us, including several on the graphic I posted above. This, while being a large stakeholder and the DHF quite literally being drained for no evidence of benefit. People can atleast chuck us a bone for having an ounce of fucking morality and not jumping on the dhf gravy train. Having a modicum of moral fibre goes a long way and trust me, I read between the lines, there isn't much of it here.