The value of HBD comes from HIVE. This is easy to prove because HBD was holding its peg before the the raise in the interest rate.
Yes, the HBD price tends to be slightly lower than $1.00. The easiest way to raise the HBD price to $1 would be to change the conversion formula so that it generated $1.01 in HIVE.
Originally the haircut hit at 10%. So, we just crossed the original haircut.
Implementing the 20% return on HBD enabled investors to achieve ROI without deranging curation,
That's what people thought would happen when they raised the rate.
The price of HIVE has been in steady decline since the decision.
HBD Interest Crashed HIVE-Engine
It is easy to prove that the 20% interest on HBD accelerated the decline of HIVE Engine.
If you look at the history of honey-swap; you would see that a large number of players pulled their funds from HE and put the funds into HBD. You will also see that 20% interest on HBD reduced the flow of funds into HE.
The 20% interest on HBD failed to bring in new investors. It managed to "derange" the curation of both HIVE and HE coins which is shown in the deep decline of the coins ever since.
!WINE
I'm not saying these things didn't happen. I point out that the oligarchy can only maintain it's plutocratic control of Hive as long as it doesn't incite outside financial interest from relatively small investors, like Sun Yuchen. Trying to maintain the oligarchy on Hive requires a delicate balancing act, because they need to maintain ROI without facing hostile takeover. That seems to require a shrinking userbase and declining token price, because sharks are circling, looking for ROI.
HBD's 20% return offers a way for sharks to invest in Hive without changing it's paradigm, to prevent Hive from suffering Steem's fate and the extant oligarchy from losing control of governance, IMHO. This is your real problem with 20% interest on HBD, that it works to attract that stake and dampens ambition, as it is implemented to do. The DHF transforms the Damoclean sword of the Founder's stake into a mechanism to redistribute that stake to the remaining oligarchy through proposals, such as HBD Stabilizer, Valuplan, HW, SPL, and etc, that may promote growth rhetorically, but do not threaten it in actuality.
Actual growth is no less an axe poised above Hive's neck than was the Founder's stake, as Steem shows.
Edit: I am confident that any mechanism that potentiates growth without facilitating the subsumation of Hive by BlackRock or lesser stakes would be eagerly adopted by extant stakeholders. What would you propose?