Back in the olden days of Steem @streetstyle came up with Steem Power Up Day (SPUD) which happened on the first of each month to encourage people to increase their voting stake to show confidence in the platform and allow them to give bigger votes to others. Of course there have since been a series of big SPDDs (Steem power down days) due to the platform turning to shit, but this has allowed a lot of people to have a bigger Hive stake.

Now we have Hive Power Up Day, which does not make for such a neat acronym. @traciyork has [posted](https://peakd.com/hivepud/@traciyork/welcome-to-streetstyle-s-hivepud-hive-power-up-day-for-july-1st-2020) details of a contest based around HivePUD. There are prizes to be won based on your percentage Hive Power increase. I am ineligible due to my reputation score and HP, but I felt like powering up anyway. I had some Litecoin that I had bought with Steem and was keeping in case I wanted to buy stuff, but I do not really need anything right now, so it can go into HP instead.

![Power up](https://images.ecency.com/DQmZws2n47NPSjPo7QJ5jy4sSo4iiEGB5UUuXqn7K4KNCHa/image.png)

I converted it using the @blocktrades [service](https://blocktrades.us/). They allow you  to convert various crypto coins directly to Hive Power. You can also lease it for 90 days. It looks like I would have got about ten times as much extra HP on a lease, but I would rather own more of it.

![Blocktrades](https://images.ecency.com/DQmRHpZgbzpiUYkvmWJ9hZG9Ai6J6yHTKG7tSyXnfcvV5Cq/image.png)

If you still hold some Steem you can convert it directly to Hive using the @swap.app service that has a very low fee.

Thanks to selling most of my Steem for Hive I am now close to 48k HP. I have hopes of reaching orca status this year. That is based on vests rather than Hive and I think I need to get to about 51,500 at the current exchange rate.

By the same calculation a minnow now needs about 515 HP. I have been supporting a number of small accounts via the @tenkminnows project. They get automatic votes from that account which has delegations from myself and others. More people follow the voting trail. According to the stats published by @arcange we have been losing minnows since the fork to Hive, so we need to boost those numbers.

![Stats](https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://arcange.eu/hive-images/2020-06-29-Levels-EN.png)

Instead of trying to optimise your curation rewards or self-voting, how about sending more votes to those who struggle to make even one dollar on a post? Of course your voting should be based on post quality, but there is quality to be found from all levels of account. We need to encourage good people to stick around and build their accounts up. Not all of them can afford to invest their money in Hive, but they can still earn it.

Hive five!