3.5 days plus 5% fee? isnt that much? converting is quite a risky thing since the price can move in those 3.5 days and since everyone does it it usually means that suddenly a large supply of the other would appear on the market changing the price by demand supply. hence i dont always convert the moment it seems profitable
the median price is also moving much more now in hive since we dont have any sockpuppets giving wrong median price. back in steem it was much more profitable to convert.
having a hive to hbd conversion could lower inflation of hive, so it can be beneficial to hoddlers
The 3.5 days isn't so risky, because it cuts both ways: it can work to your advantage as well as to your disavantage. Savvy traders have long recognized this, and realize that on average they can rely on the mechanism working reasonable over time.
During the time before the launch of Hive, I'm not aware of anyone successfully manipulating the median price of SBD on Steem used for conversions. I have no idea about how the mechanism has fared since that time, as I don't really monitor it any more.
There haven't been any issues with the price feed since the fork either. Not sure what the other comment was talking about.