Great post!
Love that you brought up the centralization of certain coins. I think it's easy to assume something is "defi" or exploit-proof, especially to newcomers.
When I dove back into crypto a couple years ago, there was a lot of new stuff. I got a bit overly excited, thinking blockchains had hit a exponentially higher level of efficiency. I honestly thought we finally hit a time where we could have immutable websites, or updates in a game. I thought that DAOs had finally discovered a way to automatically apply voted changed, created scripts using programs or AI. I thought that P2E games were held entirely on chain, and that finally programs could be stored on the blockchain.
Well... I was a bit too optimistic, because none of that is really true. DAOs and Governance Protocols still don't accurately represent majority opinion, nor differentiate between an involved, educated user, and one that's not. Programs don't really exist on chain, we have smart contracts, but they're just a fancier version of a something like a BASH script at the end of the day.
I had actually had a bit of hope for NFTs too, I thought that they finally managed to create a way to store them on chain effectively (the data exists, it was done on ETH in 2016 or 2017, I believe) but alas, they opted to store images on IPFS and call upon them with a single line of text. Not that it really matters, but it's interesting.
Back to stablecoins, it's easy to assume that such an established service, such as USDT, would be decentralized or at least have more restrictions against printing money out of thin air, but it isn't.
I can say though, I'm not particularly fond of tokens tracking the US dollar so hard, what if that itself crashes? Assuming USDT or USDC always stay solvent, would 50K USDC still be worth 50K in 40 years? Will any kind of APR on saving stablecoins actually combat inflation?
It would be nice to see more stablecoins paired against multiple FIATs, such as US DOLLAR, EURO, YUAN, PESO. Or perhaps, see more paired to real world assets, like gold, iron, etc.. used in IT. Really, the sky's the limit on what you can pair a token too, and I'd love to see more.
For HBD, I really like the system of pairing it with HIVE. It makes me feel good about aiming for a 50/50 spread of HBD/HIVE in terms of savings. In addition, fluctuation prevents catastrophic failure in my eyes. For USDT, if it dropped to $0.90 we'd have a bloodbath on our hands, for HBD, seeing it at $0.85 or $1.15 is normal, and you can take advantage of these fluctuations so you desire.
Personally, I see HBD as a better, more realistic approach to algorithmic stablecoin category.