I read the article and then reread it because the topic is interesting to me. I think there may be one piece of the puzzle missing, at least from how leasing works in practice.

This is a sub-account off my main account which I use specifically to experiment with leasing HP from Hive-Engine and see what kind of return is possible.

For example, right now I have 1000 HP leased to this account. I pay 2.5 SWAP.HIVE per week, and I pay that in advance. If I wanted to lease 1000 HP for two years the math would look like this:

52 weeks × 2 years × 2.5 SWAP.HIVE = 260 SWAP.HIVE

So effectively I have 4× the HP on this account for those two years.

However, after those two years if I haven't made 260 HIVE back in curation rewards, then the experiment loses money.

Because of that, I have to make sure the account is actively curating good posts so the curation rewards build up. This account follows a curation trail to help with that. The typical returns I see are around 8–10%, Hive says it could go up to 13% but I've never seen that. Maybe it means 10% + the 3% interest paid on Hive. Haven't figured that out yet.

The important detail is that those rewards are still paid in HIVE, so whether the price of HIVE goes up or down the percentage return is roughly the same.

In my case:

I have 1000 HP leased

I’m paying about 8.99% (according to Hive-Engine, my math says its more)

So if my curation returns are:

8% → I lose about 1%

10% → I gain about 1%

So the margin is actually quite small.

What the article made me think of instead would be something closer to a Hive futures contract. For example, if someone could lock in buying HIVE two years from now at today's price of $0.065, then:

If HIVE rises → big win
If HIVE falls → big loss

But as far as I know, Hive doesn’t currently have futures contracts available, so leasing doesn’t really work that way.

Still, it was an interesting article and it got me thinking about the mechanics behind leasing and curation returns.

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Honestly this account hasn't broken even yet on what it has paid out in Swap.Hive. I think I paid out 10 Swap.Hive and got back 8 or 9. I only did it because I actively upvote friends. I figure if I spend 10 and get 8 back myself AND they get 8.. Then my HIVE was well spent :)

If you are curious I leased HP for a month. Paid 10 Swap.Hive and in a month I'll be checking exactly how much I got back in curation rewards. I'm hoping for more than 10 but time will tell for certain. :)