I have been asked on multiple occasions about when is the best time to convert Hive Backed Dollars (HBD) and it can be quite a confusing one! At the moment, you only really get HBD from post or comment rewards on Hive posts after 7 days from posting but what you do with it after that is an open playing field.
The idea of HBD is to be a stable coin pegged to $1 USD but it seems to fluctuate around depending on a variety of factors. If you wanted to play the game, you can always buy HBD from an exchange or on HIVE's internal market below $1 and wait for it to go higher seeing as it's designed to be $1 always. However, I would rather convert it to HIVE, power it up and put it to work myself so this my approach to HBD.
PeakD's Conversion Tool
When you log in to to PeakD, you can find the conversion tool in the "Hive Backed Dollar" section of your HIVE wallet. If you don't have any HBD, the dropdown box will be greyed out but if you do, then click on "Convert to Hive".
Then you will see a dialogue box pop up which will tell you more about it, how much you want to convert to HIVE and away you go!
What It Does
Once you have started the conversion, it's all done by the blockchain and takes 3.5 days, after which, you'll get about $1 USD worth of HIVE for every 1 HBD you converted. This is all based on what the witnesses HIVE price feeds are over that 3.5 days and the median value is taken as the conversion factor between HBD and HIVE. You can read more about it as you are doing the conversion.
When To Convert?
As always, it's up to you but I usually keep my HBD until the price of it goes below $0.90 before activating the conversion. If the aim of HBD is to always be $1 then you'll likely get a bit more HIVE by converting than by using the internal market. When HBD goes above $1.05, I go to the market and exchange it in to HIVE which is a bit faster than converting and I think I get a bit more HIVE for my HBD!
Daily Posting
If you can get in to a habit of posting or commenting daily (which isn't always easy) then it's possible you'll have a constant stream of HBD coming from post/comment rewards so converting can be a nice way to increase your HIVE stake. This is what I do to make the most of the compound interest effect!
What's your approach to converting HBD or do you have another method? Did you know about this feature in PeakD? Let me know in the comments below!
Take Care
Nicky
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