First of all:
Thank you for the witness votes.
I have climbed some ranks since my last update.
It helps me and I appreciate it.
Recently, under an earlier update, 
The majority of the top 20 witnesses agree on 12%.
(btw: This is wrongfully labelled as APR on peakd. I will make a separate post about the effects of the compound interest of HBD.)
I have always signalled 4%.
When HBD was oversold and Hive prices were low, a lot of high rank witnesses agreed that a high interest rate would inflate HBD and put more pressure on its price.
So they signalled 0%.
I always thought that logic was flawed;
When there is no interest on it at all, it means there is no reason to hold onto it, which means most HBD will be moved to the exchanges, which increases the supply and decreases its value.
There was another reason at the time...
But things have changed since then. Now you get interest on HBD only when you put it into savings.
Since the hot wallets of exchanges can (should) not stake their coins, exchanges do not generate interest on their HBD holdings. That was a valid reason to not give high interest rates, or any at all.
I am still for 4%.
12% interest rates (not even considering compound interest by monthly payouts) means from 1,000,000 HBD you get 120,000 HBD anually.
That is insane.
Imagine it as a credit: If you lend someone 1,000,000$ and expect him to reliably pay you back 1,120,000$ a year later, cosidering the current economy: you are out of your mind.
Now the argument from earlier is valid: That is just too high of an inflation and puts too much pressure on the price.
4% means, from moving 1,000,000$ into savings, you generate 40,000$ yearly income.
That is still more than most people get paid from working full-time.
Most people in the world could comfortably live from 40k.
I have no calculations to back any of this up.
It's just what feels right;
At less than 4% I understand that there would be too little incentive to hold onto HBD, at more than 4% we are entering unfair teritorry: How would this not inflate the coin?
12%? It would mean that I could sell all my HIVE, move it to HBD, put 100k into savings and get 1000$ each month.
And you know who would pay for those interest rates? All Hive-holders.
HBD is backed up by Hive.
Hive is the main coin and witnesses should protect its value.
I am ready for a debate and shitstorm in the comments.
Give it your best shot! 🙃
