You made a great observation about the mechanics of the internal market. To be honest, I seldom use it. I usually rely on Ecency's Swap or Keychain Swap to exchange Hive-HBD both ways, which I believe is costing me some Hive/HBD in the process. However, I still find it tolerable due to the convenience. I just remind myself that it should be fine as long as I profit when Hive's price increases. :D
That said, I’ll look into using the internal market more often since Hive’s price surge has caused my HBD rewards to drop significantly. I’m hoping that better pricing in the internal market will help offset some of my losses.
The beauty of an internal exchange lies in the ability to set limit orders. This means you choose the price at which the exchange will occur. You place an order at specific price levels and forget about it for a while, focusing on other things. As soon as the price reaches the specified level, the order is executed, and you receive exactly what you planned to get when you placed the order.
HIVE is a very technical tool, no matter what anyone says. If you ignore the chart after 2022 and draw horizontal levels based on data from the chart up to 2022, you’ll see how the price respects these levels throughout 2022–2024. There are nuances with the internal exchange in this regard due to the price of HBD, but liquidity on the internal exchange is lower than, for example, on Binance. As a result, price squeezes and slippages often occur, which can be leveraged.
I very rarely use market orders, as exchanges are essentially market orders. With market orders, especially for significant volumes, you can face serious price slippage due to insufficient liquidity in the order book. At the same time, delayed exchanges with a 3-day wait operate directly with the blockchain and are unrelated to the internal exchange, as I understand it, though I might be mistaken since I don’t use them myself.