Looks like I got my first HBD interest payout the other day. It's not much, but it's nice to see it working.
Some of you might be thinking, why does that matter? It's only 3% APY. You could get a much better deal using USDC or USDT on Compound. For one, this is an experiment by the consensus witnesses. It goes along with getting HBD to its supposed peg.
In places like Compound, you'd still pay exorbitant fees to lend your stable coins. That's the downside of Ethereum. That 10% looks great until you realize you need to put in a good amount of money in there to make it worth it. Even with $10,000 vested, you could lose several months of interests moving it with the current prices. If you are a whale, none of this matters.
For "poorer" folks like you and me, having HBD working "as intended" is a good thing. This doesn't mean that HBD has to blow every other existing stable coins out of the water. But, imagine HBD at its peg and interest is around 5-7%+, it'd become an attractive option. Unlike other lending utilities, HBD interests is part of the base layer of Hive. Remember, USDC and USDT don't give you yield by default.
Don't have $10,000+ to make lending worth it on other platforms? Well, try out HBD on Hive! There are no fees. The chain will auto-distribute it to you every 30 days. Are there not enough HBDs in circulation? Looks like it'd be possible to convert HIVE to HBD in the future. Wouldn't this also create demand for HIVE?
At the end of the day, this is the vision. Whether or not the current efforts will ever stabilize HBD, time will tell. This isn't about "whales keeping you down" like some bygone writer claims. I find it funny how some people still looks up to him. That's short-term thinking. That's living from bull cycle to bull cycle. If you want your stable coin pump, go back to Steem.
This is about making the "currency" you hold worth something no matter what part of the market cycle it's in. At least, worth something more than a placeholder for dumping into fiat or other coins.
Is it too little too late? Who knows? By this point, the community and those at the helm needs to try all possible options. In the "free market", you either adapt or die. We may not all agree with the methods, but do nothing is definitely not an option for this platform.
