An opinion post that doesn't need to get paid. None of this is financial advice. If you haven't read about Deathwing's post Decreasing HBD APR and Posting Rewards and Increasing the Importance of Hive Power (HP), you may need to read that first before proceeding to read further about my ramblings on the suggested changes. One of the shortest posts I made for the year.
Decreasing the 20% APR on HBD seems like a good move, considering this amount of return for a stable coin seems too good to be true.
If you're not an active shitposter, you're missing out on the Hive inflation as this favors the active authors from the author reward pool. You can get around 10-11% APR from automated curation in HP but what does that even mean when the price of Hive sits at 0.288$ (at the time of this writing). That's like 0.028$ worth of Hive per year per Hive (hypothetically).
If you had 1 HBD staked, you get 0.2$ per year. So in order to get even with these rates, you need around 3.472 Hive for every HBD just to match the income generated by passively staking HBD. If the price of Hive gets to 0.15$ per Hive, you would need 6.667 Hive just to beat the returns 1 HBD gives at 20% APR.
There was a mention about decreasing author rewards with 10% going to Hive's inflation. Authors get 10% less for their content and that sounds like it sucks but 10% is a small change for those earning with an average of 1$ posts (50% goes to curators), the ones that would really see a marked changed in their income would be users that rake in 2 digit income on average.
Well that sucks because that would reduce the number of enthusiastic authors to share their content here. But how much value is the content of an average person contribute for the general ecosystem? I know my shitposts don't entice people off the platform to sign up and join Hive.
I'm pretty sure if I made an review post, or talk my travels, no one else outside the platform would give a fuck. But if I started writing about NFTgames and how it generates income here and people can earn extra for shitposting about those games, then there's a better chance that people outside can get motivated to sign up.
12% APR on HBD is still good despite the decrease. For people dependent on their Hive income living in developing countries and struggling with inflation, this is an advantage having a Hive wallet. My country's inflation rate hovers around 4.7% versus the USD, and if HBD is pegged to USD, I'm really getting more returns but this is just me thinking over possibilities that haven't yet been implemented.
Also stressing the importance of using stake HP for governance. These changes are decided by the top 20 witnesses people voted to make the calls where this blockchain is heading. If you like or dislike the changings, perhaps consider casting your votes because it matters.
Why would people want to buy Hive when they can get it for free?
The question that keeps popping up whenever I think about author rewards. If you got an take on the question quoted above, share them under the comment section.
If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.