I would like to see better contoured and clarified the vision for HBD and its further development and roadmap (this could include marketing, market cap, and number of users-related milestones, for example) to reflect that.
20% APR in Savings
The 20% APR in savings has gotten many people on Hive excited about the potential of a passive and stable wealth-preserving option. Certainly beating inflation of all developed countries and even many less developed ones, as far as I know. So people started to think of it as a way of saving while protecting against the rampant inflation in the US (we refer to it since HBD is soft-pegged to USD).
HBD is almost a blessing when people also have hyperinflation in their own country with their national currency.
Ok, that makes sense. But is this the main purpose of HBD? As a protection mechanism against inflation that exists worldwide, and possibly beating it by a margin and compounding over time?
Commerce
What about commerce? Is this a purpose for us with HBD, to be integrated with various businesses?
At first hand, people would say yes. I would say that too.
But let's take a step back. What does the 20% APR on savings incentivize? Yep, saving. Which means not spending.
Given the option of spending 10 USD or 10 HBD, if a person has both currencies, which would he or she spend? I'd say the 10 USD, because that loses him or her money, while HBD earns money through savings.
So, if we want commerce to be the main purpose of HBD, let's cut the APR for HBD, right? Wrong! There are a little over 12m HBD in circulation if we disregard what the DHF holds and which will not come into the market directly. The 12m HBD includes both HBD in savings and liquid HBD (including on exchanges or on Hive-Engine). I haven't looked into the details, but we are most likely talking about a few million HBD which might be available if their holders would be interested in commerce. That's way too insufficient HBD! And APR on savings is, along with conversions and author rewards the most common way to add to the numbers of HBD (conversions can also reduce their numbers).
If commerce is a priority, we need more HBD! And, in my opinion, although I haven't found a way to do it that isn't exploitable, spending HBD should be incentivized, to become a better alternative than holding it in savings.
Something else about HBD and commerce. While this is not on the base layer, we still don't have the option to buy/sell tokens in SWAP.HBD on Hive Engine. The potential to set stable prices (compared to USD) could go a long way for small businesses on Hive.
Financial Activity
Financial activity that is not commerce is much larger as a volume than commerce. That includes 20% APR in savings but would go much deeper than that.
If our main purpose is to build financial activity around HBD, then, besides the 20% APR we need more options.
We need those long-term locking mechanisms with different APRs, the bonds to go with them on the second layer that Taskmaster was talking about (will need a smart contract platform, most likely), deeper pools and more derivatives, and more links to the outside that allows for an easy flow of capital.
Something else?
None of the above? Do you see a different option? I haven't included DHF in the list since it is a special case, and frankly, if the main purpose of HBD would be to fund DHF we might as well remove HBD.