Ad 2) That is sort of a confirmation bias - you see active people around, not those who only have HBD staked to Savings. Check on the HBD Savings rich list, you may be surprised :)
Ad 4) People keep withdrawing Hive and dumping it. But that's not the same as using HBD as a currency.
I will check more the Ad 2)
HBD has a potential for currency and it is used in some countries (Venezuela is one of them, not sure if there is another) I am not sure if the APR could affect the usage as a currency. There is so much other things in front of that that avoid the usage now in most countries that Hive should solve it. Right now the platform has bigger concerns compared to HBD's APR. Hive needs to be more used. I saw a big project speculating the usage of Farcaster for example...I wanted to know why Hive is still unknown in big crypto discussions. People are still "pegged" to ethereum network or even bsc network.
The only thing that I criticized a lot about the HBD APR right now is that it isn't too much democratic the decision, I am a witness for example, I can set the APR but it doesn't matter if I add 0% or 50% hehe the top decision makers ( the top 21 witnesses) usually don't consult the community.
The last bit of not making it a democratic decision is keen - that's a very poor example of self-governance :/