A couple of days ago, I have a friend sharing with me regarding his insurance investment has matured. It was supposed to be a education fund he invested years ago, to prepared for the children to use during the university. However, things slightly behind his plan as the kid's exam wasn't good enough, hence the next level will have to wait.
Since there's a stash of cash, he's looking for something useful with low risk and slightly better return than hoping the bank to pay him annual interest rate at least than 3%. So, what's left behind is government bond, but people like us is hardly accessible to those kind of big fat profitable portfolio. Or, he can go for trust fund.
I thought of, maybe I can introduce this friend to Hive. Since the bank require a full year lock, he's not getting his money back by the time his children required money to go for the Uni, might as well do a short term investment in HBD savings. I do understand there may be transactional costs, but a full 14% APR can be very attractive and 3 days lock is just way beyond comprehension for people whom doesn't have any idea of how crypto verse works.
So I went to the wallet, wanting to take a screenshot of 14% APR and planning to share with this person. If he doesn't want to risk more, at least he can invest a small portion and let it grow from here. I do have some resentment towards the adjustment from 20% down to 15, and then subsequently 14% APR, but who am I to question?
What set off this bomb was the moment I click on my wallet, I realized the screen capture I was looking for, is not what I thought. The current APR shrunk to merely 12%. Frankly, if you ask someone to invest their rock hard cash into USDT or BTC, and from there to transact into Hive, and subsequently change back to HBD, I would have safely guess the fee or commission involved can easily take away 2 or 3% of the entire fund. And imagine after 9 months, the fund owner probably earned like 9% from the stake, and need to reverse the entire investment back to fiat currency, that takes away another 2-3%? Once again, this new 2-3% if including the profit.
I really can't see a point to introduce HBD as an investment to my friend anymore. The cost of buying in and out is too high, and the risk of WHAT IF is also extremely high. I can't afford to risk my reputation, or probably my freedom for trying to help a friend on his investment. And if anything goes wrong, come on those are educational fund for his children. So in the end, I told him he should just stick it to bank fixed deposit, maybe find some of those short term deposits like 3-6 months.
Anyway, here's where my personal financial interest takes place. I couldn't sleep all night. I thought to myself, since I'm actively involving in communities, I'm still getting paid via blogging. Why do I still need to use my HBD to "earn" the APR? Moreover, it's only 12% now. So many of W3 initiative offers way above 20%, hence I don't see a reason why would we continue to burden Hive ecosystem.

Paid with #ecency point to generate this AI photo
3 days ago, I decided it's time. So I started the withdrawal process, without even looking at how many days before my next payout.

This is probably one of the biggest Hive transaction I've ever done. You are free to take a look at my current stake. This single transaction of buying in 55k Hive, I think I can never see anything so crazy in my life 🤣

What are my plans? I'm crazy. I have already planned to hit 60k in 2026, since now I have achieved my target, I would like to adjust my next target to be 100k. What about the rest? Probably let them stuck in the savings for safety purpose. It's not a lot, but I am hoping if one day Hive decided to revisit the moon, I will have some 10 to 15k in hand, just to make my life slightly easier.