So, I tried this experiement. Given that the price of HBD at the time, was $0.95 USD according to Coingecko, and the price of Hive was $0.19 and given that the price didn't devalue by any significant amount. I was expecting to make a tiny return.
I ended up with enough Hive to buy slightly less than what I put in to begin with and that is part of the risk, and feel certain that someone who skims rather than reads will explain this to me in the comments. I already know and accept that risk. However, while the Hive dollar remains more than two cents below one US dollar, converting didn't result in a profit.
Hive has fallen since the conversion operation but by only 1%. So this is strange to me that it wouldn't be profitable.
Another thing is Coin Gecko reports a Hive price of 0.188 USD / Hive while the internal market reports 0.188 HBD / Hive! So in a real sense Coin-Gecko is indicating that the HBD is at par with the USD to the tenth of a cent but at the same time telling me it is 0.974 USD/HBD.
Imagine if I have an old car with bald tires and you agree to buy it for $500. Would the price you would pay change if it were impounded due to parking tickets and the only way to get it out was to pay a fine? Of course it would. Centralized exchanges are like impound lots, they normally charge you some amount to retreive your own car -- money, so even with the Goxxing risk, your 1 HBD on Upbit is not really worth a whole 1 HBD.
CoinGecko uses Upbit's price feed to determine the value of HBD but uses no other sources. There may be KYC concerns, liquidity issues, large withdraw fees or a lack of trust for these centralized exchanges. The trust score is two stars out of five. Why doesn't @PeakD use Hive-Engine's price feed for the Hive Dollar price? It seems to me the value of HBD on Upbit is rather more like a cost-risk score, where 1.00 would be the best risk and lowest cost and 0 would be the worst possible risk and highest cost.
In the end, we should ignore the Coin Gecko price (unless you're already trading on it). I have been Goxxed enough times that I won't try to take advantage of this centralized exchange even though just looking at the numbers, you would earn 2% every three days by trading there(1), but that is assuming the exchange doesn't Gox you in which case you lose 100% once. They could even legally Gox you by asking you to KYC in a process that doesn't work.
It is not just Upbit that undervalues HBD, but any service that uses Upbit, CoinGecko, CoinLore, CoinMarketcap, to evaluate how much to credit a HBD. Since all of these services relies on theses aggregators and all of the aggregator relies on a single exchange Upbit is dictating a price for services that use them. In the end the internal market, the Hive-Engine market price of Hive, and conversion methods provide you with low risk ways to get Hive out of HBD (or vice versa). I will no longer use HBD to pay services that use CoinGecko's price feed, when I can trade it for free into Hive and pay with Hive instead.
@leprechaun #hive #exchanges #HBD
(1) In order profit insanely: First, you would buy $1.02 worth of HBD on Upbit with $1 worth of Hive. Then you withdraw the HBD, and convert. After three days, you will have $1.02 worth of Hive, and you could repeat the cycle and get exponential growth. Start with $1, and get Goxxed by only $1. It's cheaper to learn that way. It has been years of tech saavy people knowing about this and nobody has done trade-convert long enough to bring the Upbit price into alignment with reality. That says something!
I've never tried that game, but I have sold HBD when it was significantly above $1.00. It was at a time when HIVE was also high. Most of that profit was lost when HIVE dropped in value. I could have sheltered that HIVE price by buying back HBD at $1.00 before it tanked.
This is why I don't play that game.