Why is Genesis selling one of their mines? Why not keep it for themselves? Seems like a really generous thing to allow mom and pop investors exposure to crypto for no good reason... HIVE shouldn't need to go public.

Money is a shared belief which allows the exchange of goods or services and has been an integral part of human civilization.

In fact, you could make the argument that humans were not civilized until we created this shared belief system. You could live a life without money, but it would be a solitary existence as it would exclude anything which involves exchanging goods or services with someone else. Which, when you think about it, means you would have to make you own clothes, kill your own food, build your own house, engineer your own vehicle. Few individuals could certainly live like this, and they do. But as a whole, society itself cannot function in this way. As a civilization, we are better off having a shared belief system that facilities our interactions and enhances our lives.

If the price had reduced volatility in the short run, and increased volatility in the long run. Absolutely, it would be more popular. You want the price of an asset to rise steadily by orders of magnitude over years or decades not days. This shows stable growth in the underlying economics of the asset, which implies increased user adoption and trust - over time this will create a positive feedback loop as network effects take over the popularity would increase at an exponential rate. The price would approximately reflect its popularity.