The Hive stablecoin, or more accurately soft pegged dollar coin, has been around for a long time. More than seven years when we include the previous version. Since the creation of the Hive chain, March 2020, it has been continuously improved and tweaked. Some core features still remain though, like the haircut, meaning there is a cap on the amount of HBD the chain can support and in extremely bad market conditions HBD can lose its dollar peg.
Let’s see how HBD did in the last period.
HBD is being created and burned in multiple ways. Like many things on Hive, it has nuances. The main mechanics for expanding and contracting the supply are the conversions, but there are also the author rewards, proposal DHF payouts, interest payouts etc.
For better visibility we will be categorizing the HBD created/burned in the following manner:
The HBD in the DHF is treated differently than the rest of the HBD. HBD in the DHF is not considered as freely available HBD on the market, so it is excluded from debt calculations and similar.
The focus here will be on freely circulating HBD, excluding the HBD in the DHF.
We will be looking at the different HBD allocations here as well.
The period that we will be looking at is 2016 – 2025, with a focus on the last year.
HBD Added in Circulation
HBD enters circulation via multiple ways, like author rewards, DHF payouts and interest to HBD held in savings. HBD is added in the DHF as a share of the inflation, but we will be looking at the HBD that only leaves the Decentralized Hive Fund, the DHF payouts.
Here is the chart.
The chart includes the following:
- Author rewards
- DHF Payouts
- Interest
As we can see the authors’ rewards are the number one source for HBD created, but in the last years the other ways have been growing faster.
HBD in theory can be created through conversions as well, but conversions can be both positive and negative depending on market conditions. Here we will be looking at the data for conversions under the HBD removed section.
A 34.8M HBD was created as an author reward from the very beginning. A 11.7M as payouts from the DHF, and 4.5M HBD as interest. These are all cumulative numbers from 2016 to now.
We can notice that in the first years, all the HBD creation was due to author rewards, but this has changed in the last years and now the DHF is at the first spot, followed by the author rewards and then the interest rewards.
HBD Removed from Circulation
Now let’s take a look at HBD removed. Here is the chart.
We can see that up to the start of the stabilizer, the main way to destroy HBD was conversions to HIVE. Since the launch of the stabilizer, it has played a major role in the decrease in the HBD supply. In the last years it has been the main method for removing HBD from circulation.
Cumulatively, the stabilizer has removed close to 25M HBD from circulation, while 14M were removed through conversions.
The stabilizer is providing support for the HBD price on the internal market, buying HBD with HIVE if the HBD price is below the dollar. The stabilizer has scaled down its operations in 2024 and lowered the funds that it is receiving from the DHF but in the long run it’s still playing the major role.
Cumulative HBD Added/Removed from Circulation
When we add the two charts above, we get this.
As mentioned already the author’s rewards are the main category in the positive, and the stabilizer is dominant in the negative.
When collapsed the both sides, give approximately 11M HBD where we are now.
When we zoom in the period since the Hive fork 2020-2025 we get this:
We can see the overlapping that happened in 2021, when there was demand for HBD due to its high price on external markets like Upbit, and there was HIVE to HBD conversions, both from users and the stabilizer creating HBD. But since then, this process has been mostly working in the opposite way, removing HBD from circulation by HBD to HIVE conversions. In the process HBD is burned, but more HIVE is created.
Also, here we can clearly see that the HBD from the DHF is now dominant when it comes to creating new HBD in circulation.
HBD Supply
Finally, the HBD supply looks like this.
The HBD in the DHF is represented with light white.
We are now at 11M HBD in circulation, while there is another 23.5M HBD in the DHF, accounting for a total of 34.5M.
We can notice that in the last two years the amount of HBD in circulation has been quite stable in the range of 10M to 12M HBD.
When we zoom in 2024-2025 we get this:
The chart is zoomed so the movements are more visable.
At the beginning of 2024 the amount of HBD in circulation was at 11.2M HBD and now we are at that same number. So, two years of stagnation in the HBD supply. BUT meanwhile close to 10M HBD was created and that number ended up as HIVE inflating the HIVE supply so HBD would stay balanced.
We can see that up to June 2024 HBD in circulation even increased a bit to 12.5M but then dropped.
The HBD supply in the DHF has also been stable at around 23M.
HBD Liquid VS Savings Balance
The HBD in the savings give a 15% APR at the moment. It was just recently changes after been at 20% for years. When we plot the amount of HBD in the savings against the supply we get this.
We can clearly see that since the introduction of the interest for HBD, back in 2021, there is a constant growth in the amount of HBD in savings, while the liquid HBD supply went down.
We are now at 8.2M HBD in savings from the totally 11.2M supply, leaving 3M liquid HBD.
Liquid HBD Share [%]
The chart for the liquid HBD supply share in percent, excluding the HBD in DHF and in the savings looks like this.
We can see that the liquid HBD supply share keeps going down. In the last two years. It has dropped to 25% liquid HBD and 75% staked HBD, and it is around that spot in 2024 with short fluctuations from time to time.
As the liquid HBD supply drops, the demand for new HBD should trigger conversions from HIVE to HBD, driving demand for HIVE as well.
Summary for HBD Added and Removed by Category in 2025
When we sum up all the above, and check what has caused the HBD supply to expand or contract we have this.
The DHF payouts are the number one way for HBD entering in circulation in 2025 with 2.3M HBD.
Next are the authors rewards with 1.2M followed by the interest payouts with 1M.
When it comes to removing HBD from circulation the stabilizer is the one doing most of this and has removed 3.2M HBD from circulation in 2025 so far. The thing is that to remove this amount of HBD the stabilizer had put additional HIVE in circulation increasing the HIVE supply in the process.
Conversions are next in removing HBD from circulation with 900k HBD removed. There are around 70k HBD that has been sent to null or burnt as post beneficiary.
When we sum the positive and negative numbers we get 4.5M HBD put in circulation and 4.2M HBD removed from circulation, or almost neutral supply change for 2025 of just 300k HBD created. Again for this to happen the HIVE supply has apsorbed the HBD, and close to 20M HIVE was created in 2025 on top of the regular inflation, that is around 25M on yearly basis.
Historicly the creation/removal of HBD per caterory trought the years looks like this.
Note that 2025 is not over yet.
We are seing that there is now a shift in the way HBD enters circulation. In the past the majority of it was put in circulation from the authors rewards (grey), and cumulative this is still the bigesst position. But in the last years the shift is more towards proposal payouts from the DHF (white) and then HBD interest (green). It should be noted that this is just half of the author rewards, the other half is paid in HIVE.
The stabilizer(orange) has been the main way to remove HBD from circulation since 2021. Conversions (red) are negative in 2024 and 2025, while they have been positive in 2022. In all of the HIVE history, for the nine years, conversions have been positive only in two, massively back in 2021 and a samller amount in 2023.
When we collapse the bars above, we get this:
Live data here:
https://www.hbdstats.com/