What is HBD outperforming?
First and foremost, it is outperforming itself.
When we go to the gym, what is the purpose? The purpose is to improve ourselves. It's not a competition, as there is only one party (ourselves). Many lose sight of this, and try to do very stupid things like lift more weight just for the sake of lifting more weight. They forget the reason they are actually there:
- Get stronger
- Have bigger muscles
- Have more stamina and endurance
- Increasing flexibility and perfecting form.
- Health benefits of exercise
- Training for a sport
A person might go to the gym for one or all of these things. So when we see someone trying to lift as much weight as they possibly can with terrible form, what purpose does that serve? If they really want to do 10 reps and end up doing the entire set completely half-assed, what was the point? We can see these kinds of things happening all the time, and they are completely counterproductive. They'll be lucky to not get injured, and zero or even negative gain will be rewarded for the poor effort.
Crypto is a lot like this.
People lose sight of what is important. Why are we here? What are we doing? What is the actual goal? Look how many people risked everything for a 5% return, and then unsurprisingly lost everything. When greed takes over everything falls apart. Only the people who didn't trade on leverage and secure their own keys survive (barely). This is why we can't have nice things.
The key premise of crypto has nothing to do with market share or monopolizing a new industry or venture capital. In fact the entire point of crypto is largely the exact opposite of that. Old money that tries to move in and control everything will always find that control slipping though their fingers; that's the entire point. When we project competition onto the space it's always going to lead down the wrong roads and backfire.
What does that have to do with HBD?
HBD has been shockingly consistent during this bear market. Hive has retraced 90% and HBD has not broken the peg in any kind of significant way. Sure, HBD isn't a good way to buy the bottom on a V-shaped dip, as the value of the token is always slightly under $1 during those times. However, it is still great for longer-term holds and U-shapes where the bottom is a bit more elongated than the V-shape.
During the bear market I actually had the opportunity to take the $140k I made during the first 3 days of the Polycub launch and dump it into HBD. I seriously thought about it for a while, but then like everyone else, was very greedy about the whole situation. $140k earning 20% a year is $28k a year... which is comically more than I spend in an entire year. There is a real possibility there that I turned down a free opportunity to have enough money to retire on a 3-day swing-trade, and I didn't take it, opting to go for even more. Classic example of the infinite greed of crypto.
Rule of thumb: if you go from having an insignificant amount of money to life-changing money in a single bull run, you find ways to hedge. You'll always regret it if you don't. HBD is an amazing hedge at 20% yields, and very few people are taking the deal, which makes it even more secure (low debt-ratio).
Speaking of debt-ratio...
Even after Hive losing 90% HBD still has a 5% debt ratio, which is extremely impressive. Now that we've jacked up the haircut to 30% Hive would have to crash to 5 cents or less before a haircut actually kicked in. Judging from history, the 10 cent support on Hive is still completely uncrackable even given the worst-case scenarios. Bitcoin could crash to $5k and I'm fairly certain this 10 cent support would still hold.
The implications of this speculation mean that HBD's peg is not going to break to the downside like it has so many times in the past. It's going to be a massive accomplishment for this network after so many trials and tribulations from the previous crypto winter.
"This time is different"
Many scoff at the idea in crypto that "this time is different", but that's because the context is often laughable. Many apply this logic to the price during a bull market. "This time is different"; AKA we aren't going to get a bear market, and if we do it won't be that bad. Clearly the "this time is different" people were wrong yet again.
However, there are many ways in which this time really is different. In fact, it is always different when we look at fundamental development. The space keeps pushing forward no matter what and will always be different from a year to year snapshot. This is a guarantee; it's not possible to move backwards on development and infrastructure.
In terms of crypto in general, this means we'll always have access to AMM technology and the ability to control inflation, volume, and liquidity in ways that we never had access to before. The next run will be filled with projects that actually figured out how to plug the holes in the boat and create something more sustainable than providing yields to random LPs that offer to value in return to the governance token.
In terms of HBD, we've made a ton of upgrades compared to back in the day when the token was failing and breaking the peg to 60 cents for weeks or months at a time.
- Instant Hive >> HBD conversions (no 3.5 day wait)
- 30% haircut raised from 10%
- HBD stabilizer creating exponentially more liquidity
- 20% APR on savings accounts
HBD stabilizer is a huge deal.
It wasn't that long ago that I couldn't even buy or sell $50 on the internal market without having to wait or accept a lot of slip. Now I can trade THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on the internal market due to stabilizer optimizations. It's actually quite impressive and makes the internal market actually usable for 90%+ of the users on Hive. Liquidity is a critical requirement for all crypto projects, and we are providing that liquidity without the usage of venture capital, foundation stake, or anything like that, which is promising.
Conclusion
HBD is performing better than it ever has in the history of its existence. There is a very strong chance that we get through this bear market without breaking the peg to the downside like we have in the past. This combined with 20% yields means that HBD is the last man standing in terms of how good of a deal that holding debt on this network has become. All the other algo tokens out there that were in the same league have since imploded from overleverage and foolish tokenomics.
The longer HBD can remain consistent the more traction it will gain. Slowly over time and then all at once. I also haven't even mentioned that there are plenty of new projects out there being built directly on HBD, giving it even more value, use-case, and utility. HBD has already outperformed all expectations in one of the worst environments possible (90% retracement from peak), and it appears that it will continue to outperform even if this isn't the bottom. Kudos to all the devs who made it happen. Color me impressed, as every other community seems to have failed where we have succeeded.