That is true that the witnesses can raise the APR on savings. They can do the same with the bond.
The difference is that HBD created through savings is still a threat to the system since it is basically liquid.
With the bond, there is a lock up, creating more HBD yet not having as a threat to the stability of Hive.
As for trading bonds, you might be right. That would be a layer 2 solution that would be technically outside of Hive. Would it drive more people to speculate and get involved, I dont know. Nevertheless, the base layer still operates the same with or without that step: lock up HBD and get an increased return.
All interesting ideas and there is the flexibility being built in. For example, the witnesses, if they desired, could push the bond to 50% and savings to 30% (or whatever numbers they choose) based upon the success of pulling money in versus not.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hmm, don't we want to create more liquid HBD instead of locked up HBD? What would the value of locked up HBD be? People can't use it to buy and sell things.
And why does more HBD pose a threat? If it does pose a threat, then locking up the threat just postpones it a year or more, so the threat is pushed into the future but the time will come when the HBD will become liquid, and then what would happen? I would be unsettled holding my money in a network that has huge future debt.
Maybe we can find a way to mitigate the threat (If there is one) in the present time instead of pushing it into the future.
The blockchain has the haircut rule which stops printing HBD once a debt threshold is reached, and to me this sounds like a good preventive mechanism - if we go above the haircut, no new HBD is printed, so the only way to print new HBD would be to increase the price of Hive or to reduce the HBD supply. From your proposal, though, I am guessing you don't think the haircut serves as enough of a protection against creating too much HBD that can't be paid back in Hive.
The haircut rule does provide the buffer. This actually enhances that since there is more HBD out there yet cannot be used as an attack vector since it cant immediately be converted.
That is true, if the dynamics stayed the same over time. However, since they change, we would not be in the same situation. For example, there demand for HIVE is likely to start increasing over time as more applications and games start to be developed here. Hence, the delayed period might have different ratios as compared the first time period.
Ultimately, you will end up creating more liquid HBD. As more people get involved, the amount in the "bond fund" will grow, throwing out more HBD. This will come out as liquid, which people than can decide what to do with after they receive it.
The biggest difference is what comes after the introduction of this. What innovation follows suit? There is still the liquid option in the savings (well 3 day lockup technically) and one that is longer term. The witnesses set the rates and can adjust them.
However, from an investment perspective, I cant lock in anything in savings. If it is 12% today and the witnesses move it to 10%, then as soon as I claim my rewards, I am at the new rate. With this, people can lock in their rate for a year.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I of course also see a lot of increased demand for Hive in the future but to create huge oustanding debt, betting on a large increased demand is another thing altogether. There could be crypto winters, all sorts of impacts from regulation, geopolitical events, unknown security vulnerabilities discovered, who knows what. What if the bonds are very successful and we have e.g. $100 million or more in outstanding debt? People will expect the HBD to become liquid after 2-3-5 years (or however many), at which point it could be converted to Hive and sold, which would push Hive's price down. So we'd have a situation where the price of Hive is expected to potentially go down significantly as the HBD becomes liquid - not a stable situation, in my view. We need stability if many apps are to be built here.
Sure, if the bond interest rate is fixed and not changeable by the witnesses. But such a fixed rate will probably create another vulnerabilities. In addition, the savings locks up my money for 3 days only, so if witnesses move the interest rate down, I can just pull my money out and put it somewhere that suits me better. The bond locks up my money such that I can't reallocate it to great new opportunities, which there are many of in crypto.
Savings has all the advantages of the bonds but without the disadvantages. Am I missing something? The main disadvantage of savings you mentioned was that the HBD is locked only for 3 days so it can be taken out and potentially create instability if people rush to convert all that liquid HBD for Hive. So maybe we can look more carefully at the protection the haircut rule creates and whether we consider it sufficient. I guess you are going for enhancing the haircut rule by locking up the HBD for long. Maybe we can enhance it in some other way that doesn't have the abovementioned disadvantages.
I guess we are both talking about increasing the inflation of the virtual supply (Hive + HBD), which can result in a downward pressure on the price of Hive if people come in with capital, reap the interest and sell it. You want to counteract this tendency by locking up their capital for years, so there wouldn't be much downward price pressure on Hive except coming from the interest, and betting that in the future the demand for Hive will be greater so the unlocking of the HBD would not be a problem. Well, what if instead we thought of a way where people can put their capital here and reap a big interest, but as they do so they immediately help the ecosystem. In other words, instead of locking people's capital in order to prevent them from simply harvesting and selling the increased inflation, which creates a benefit for them at the expense of the network, how could we put their capital to work for the benefit of the network? This way there is a win-win instead of sucking value out of the network. Any existing financial instruments that create a substantial use case and benefit from people bringing in their capital?