I've been converting Hive into HBD. I had been attempting to write a perfect post about it and someone else beat me to it. This is to be expected when one tries to write a "perfect post".
I started to pull my HBD out of savings, and took the 48 HBD I had on hand with me and bought Hive with it for 0.45 HBD/Hive. I then took the 105 Hive I got from the sale and did a borrow operation of 22 HBD with 103 Hive as collateral. This gave me 22 HBD. I then decided I would sell the 22 HBD to Hive. Now, I'm using borrowed money to secure another loan. I feel like I'm in the fiat world. The 22 HBD was sold for 53 Hive. I borrowed about 12 HBD with that. Then I sold the 12 HBD into Hive. I continued this way until I borrowed 3.6 HBD. It was getting ridiculous.
On Proof of Brain, the convert rate reported is what you get, with the percentage fee taken off the exchange rate for you. Using this metric, the convert rate and the buy price for Hive was often only two cents apart. In the end I found I almost made no money in spite of the HBD price being at $1.27 USD. PeakD will report a different value, it will show you the value before the fee is applied.
It turns out the rising price of Hive and it's convert rate rising with it saved my investment from loss. I made money by getting out of HBD. I could have done the same gains by converting to Hive.
Over the last week the disparity between the Hive buy price on the internal market and the convert price has been about 4 cents. That's a nice profit. You get a profit if the buy price today is lower than convert rate in three and a half days hence. I have to demand a certain margin because should that gap shrink, I could lose money converting or be stuck with Hive after the price has crashed.
I find a spreadsheet can help in the decision making process. You can play whatif and judge the risks.
Right now, the buy price of Hive and the convert rate are too close. The Hive price is also too high.
I am looking at Hive at a price of 58¢ and I ask myself whether this price is going to be so high in 3.5 days. I don't have a crystal ball. All I have is fundamentals, chart analysis and the knowledge that the market can be irrational. The fundamentals from Splinterlands could be pushing Hive up, and the speculation that comes on to an asset that is already rising could be a big part of that price. I think we're in a bubble here.
(remember this?)
I'm going to just hope in the next four days, the price holds. To protect myself from volatility I separated my conversions into once a day. This borrow conversion game is like I'm trying to steer the Titanic with with a 3.5 day delay here. I will sell part of my Hive daily into HBD. I believe this is a good strategy. I will wait for the price of Hive to figure itself out and for the gap to increase. Until both of these happen, I feel it is rather unwise to continue.