Brand Partner ContentIT CAN BE DIFFICULT to stay on top of the rapidly changing cryptocurrency space. New projects seem to bloom and fade in the span of weeks or months, and the fortunes of existing ones can change on a dime. Few seem to put in the effort to build a successful and sustainable ecosystem.
Hive Investments is one of those few. Expanding into the nascent “Decentralized Finance as a Service” or DaaS space, Hive is the brainchild of a team of serial entrepreneurs and crypto celebrities. Boasting a star-studded executive team ranging from former government risk analysts to Wall St. professionals, this project is the latest to offer innovative advances in the crypto space. It seems poised to be the latest crypto darling to make investors extremely wealthy, attracting the attention of various crypto investment advisors and luminaries in the space. Furthermore, much buzz has been made of the team being joined by Colin (otherwise known as Loki), the project lead for the successful Thor Nodes, which peaked at a $200 million dollar market cap since its inception last year.
Building on the ‘nodes’ concept pioneered by other projects, Hive Investments is improving upon the existing infrastructure by allowing investors to keep their capital liquid via NFT technology. Typical node projects require a certain buy-in, which is permanently locked in exchange for a ‘node’ which produces passive income over time. This is a risky proposition for your average investor–your money is immediately gone, but it takes time to breakeven, let alone make a profit. If the project tanks or even doesn’t last long enough, you have no recourse. Thus, Hive is pioneering ‘NFTs as nodes’. In doing so, they’re riding the wave of two huge megatrends, NFTs and DeFi, each of which is individually growing massively. NFTs were all the rage last year, and the hype surrounding them has continued unabated. While a few projects have used the technology to create nodes that are technically NFTs, Hive is the first to take full advantage of it and make each and every NFT its own work of art. In doing so, they are also liquid; they can be sold both to the NFT crowd for their aesthetic value, as well as to the DeFi crowd for the consistent income they provide.
The best part? They’re environmentally conscious, having chosen to build on Polygon, a proof-of-stake blockchain that doesn’t require the use of large amounts of energy or computation to run. Despite being new to the space, they’ve already begun their charitable branch, Hive Conservation. This wing of the organization serves to funnel a chunk of their profits into various environmental charities, with a special focus on pollinators (like bees!) and keeping our flowers blooming and our food growing. It says a lot about them that this is a focus from the start; many teams lack the vision to think beyond the immediate future, but Hive is creating an entire ‘beecosystem’, which includes multiple uses for their native token beyond strictly selling it. From speaking with the team, they plan on expanding to be a sort of ‘one-stop shop’, offering investor education, an NFT marketplace, and numerous other avenues for people to spend their profits without needing to sell the token. This helps to diminish sell pressure, keeping the token value high.
The first of these utilities for the token is Hexagon, their NFT marketplace. As the major NFT marketplaces are on the Ethereum blockchain, this allows them some breathing space to grow without fierce and immediate competition. Their marketplace offers a few differences from the usual–the first of which being the ability to sell for $HNY, the token which a Hive NFT pays you in daily, and pay entirely zero fees. Other NFT marketplaces take a percentage fee of each sale, which can be thousands of dollars on a large sale. Hive has decided to incentivize people to sell their NFTs on the platform by not taking any cut at all; all use of the HNY token is beneficial for the protocol itself.
The next is Hive Academy, which is being billed as an ‘investor education portal’. Likely to launch in the next week, it will contain a range of classes, starting with extremely basic ‘Intro to Cryptocurrency’ courses for the newcomer looking to wrap their mind around how crypto works, and progressing all the way to detailed investment analysis courses taught directly by their investment team–which I was assured had “decades of experience on Wall Street and a strong understanding of fundamental analysis”. While the beginner courses will be free for anyone to peruse, the more advanced courses will be paid for in $HNY tokens.
Despite being extremely new to the crypto scene, Hive Investments has already been performing admirably. While they launch later this month, they have already raised over $2.4 million from investors who strongly believe in the long-term success of the project. The raises were completed at a $375 token price, several times the planned launch price of $100 per token… Which should say something about how these investors see Hive performing. It also says something about how Hive is trying to allow everyone to join in; while we can’t all afford $375 just to buy a single $HNY token, $100 is much more affordable for the average American. And it’s more affordable abroad, too–the team has already announced “Hive International”, and released full translations of their articles as well as a Chinese-language twitter that reposts all official information to be accessible to the Chinese market.
In preparation for their much-anticipated launch at the end of March, they’ve also completed a know-your-customer screening with AssureDeFi, one of the largest names in the space. This prevents malicious behavior by the team via keeping their identities ‘in reserve’, ready to be spread (and prosecuted) if any funny business happens. Hive has also commissioned Certik, the leading audit provider in DeFi, to complete a full look-through of their code, hunting for any possible bugs or mistakes that could put investors at risk. I recently spoke with the CEO, who assured me of Hive’s commitment to go the distance. As with anything in cryptocurrency, there’s risk inherent to the project. But I, for one, will be watching this one closely.
Experience the buzz for yourself at:
Website: hive.investments
Twitter: @HiveInvestments
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