I totally respect your opinion but I see in a different way, just to rebuke your reasons
- We shouldn't be afraid about a high APR, unless the APR is doing some harm that is making Hive lose the value because of that it isn't bad. I wrote some articles concerning that. Many tokens that are around the top 20 most negotiated tokens in CMC had high APR for staking , ow but they aren't stable coins...is HBD a real stable coin? it is a hybrid since is hive backed not USD.
2.Driving Users From Active Participation on Hive -> I don't see that, if you see most of the hive users aren't using HBD savings as main investment in Hive. And people like my self what we do is bringing money that we wouldn't put into hive blockchain since it is a money more dedicated in less risky investments (not saying that HBD is low risk but for sure much lower risk than Hive) is coming to the blockchain. People aren't saving everything that they would add to their HP. I see people saving sometimes a part of it but still doing their power ups.
3.Loosening the Bonds : Again the answer to number 2 is the same here...people are still powering up.
4.Hindering HBD's Adoption as a Currency -> I don't see that, people who need to use Hive as an income they are still withdrawing and the savings is a great opportunity for them to save money, like we do with our fiat...do you save all your fiat ? It is impossible.
I will finish my comment with a quote from a post that I read yesterday that probably you know:
Our current debt ratio hovers around 7%. That’s amazing compared to any country. However, countries may not be the best to compare with. It was their rigged fiat economies, where high mandatory spending must end with generating debts and printing more money, that brought many people into crypto. Unlike most countries, we have a threshold that should protect us from over-indebting – at the debt ratio of 30%, the network would cease emitting HBD as rewards, and replace it with liquid Hive instead. But that is an emergency brake.
It is an almost perfect quote .... We can't compare hive to a country , not even to a financial institute. Unless the ecossystem is broken because of the APR than we should change...take a look into Cosmos, they reduce their stacking apr to reduce their inflation which was getting crazy. 20% to 13.5% to go to an inflation of 14% to 10%... Hive isn't there =)
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 :/