Ok, before you rush to tell me that HEX is a scam, or the man behind it (Richard Heart) is a scammer, note that no matter how much faith you have in either of those, it's worth assessing and understanding.

Of course, the actual mechanics of HEX are VERY hard to understand.  Not just the minting and destruction involved in the staking (which alters the circulation numbers), but also the referral system that not just gave a bonus to the referrer when claiming free HEX (now ended) but also if you bought HEX through the "lobby" or "adoption amplifier" (also now closed).

Plus the secret referral HEX that was sent to some mystery address every time HEX was minted, only seen if you inspect the ETH transaction closely.  Note that I never denied that it was a scam!

However, scam or not, I did make some money on it.  My free claim (mandatory lock until day 350) expires tomorrow since I for some reason chose a few days extra, and I'll make a few dollars that otherwise I would not.  No risk there except ETH gas costs.  I also made a few dollars because I bought and staked a little hex at the beginning, and the price did indeed multiply well over 10x.

I had been preaching that there would be an exit scam the day before the "BigPayDay" event when the claiming ended and all unclaimed HEX was distributed to stakers.  I was wrong about that luckily.  All throughout the first year that looked like everyone would get a 3x multiplier, but that indeed was a false carrot.  Before we get to the actual number, note that the price of HEX did indeed take a pretty good trip.

Not to oversimplify things, but it looks like if I had sold a week before the BigPayDay, I'd have made twice as much.  Sadly, even though I emergency unstaked and planned to sell, I thought it might still go up for another few days (and sold for half as much instead).  The emergency unstake still turned out to be worth it.

So why would I give up all of my interest after the halfway point, PLUS this 3x multiplier on the BigPayDay?  Simple, I figured the price would tank more than that gain.  It turns out I was half right - the price dipped but not too much, but the BigPayDay multipler went from 3x to ~50%!  Why?  All the free HEX suddenly became staked and the percentage distributed just tanked.

So would I buy more HEX now?  No.  Will I emergency unstake the microscopic amount I have staked until years 3 and 4?  Nope, maybe I'll get lucky and it'll moon.  Either way I don't have enough at stake to be too sad if the price collapses now that the BigPayDay carrot is no longer looming.

So in summary, I was wrong about HEX disappearing right before the BigPayDay, and while I don't really understand any long term utility other than "make money", it doesn't seem to be collapsing now that the training wheels are off.