But what if, when we lower this percentage, people cash out their HBD on Hive and withdraw their money from the ecosystem? Would this benefit us or harm us?

It would be harmful on the short-term, and neutral/slightly positive on the long-term. Because in the end, HBD interest does print extra inflation. But the times to reduce it is when times are good and when to increase it is when times are bad. We've been doing the opposite, we made Hive interest rate 20% when times were good, and started cutting it as times get bad.

We want to get people to buy Hive off exchanges and lock it up as debt at the moment. But we should also reign in the other spending like DHF for this to succeed.

And when the price recovers some-what we can gradually decrease the interest, and not this current let's cut the interest rate by 5% shenanigans.

Also as a large HBD holder, all this talk about HBD interest made me stop bringing in new cash to save in HBD.