Other witnesses such as @smooth (and others, just can't recall which right now) have been the driving force behind the idea of increasing interest payments on HBD as a "DeFi" play, so you may want to check some of their posts and comments. But my take on it is that "DeFi is hot right now, and Hive has had DeFi capability in the form of staking for interest for years, so let's make it competitive".