This is probably not going to be the best guide, and it definitely is not the only way but it is how I and some others do it. As with anything there are 9 ways to skin a cat.
The most important part though is actually understanding why you do something the way you do.
First - We likely have HBD
Now I will start with the HBD to Hive part. Since if you already having the Hive is an integral part to accomplish.
If you have HBD and need to turn it into Hive you have essentially 2 options.
You trade on-chain
You convert it to swap.hive on Hive-engine (Tribaldex)
On Chain HBD -> Hive
For on-chain I will only show the Ecency desktop interface, since it is the only one that gives a quick swap and limit order interface. I have tried PEAKD but they send me to Hivehub market and Hivehub basically never loads , maybe because it needs to download terrabytes of javascript.
Anyway the Ecency Limit order page will be the exact one you get on Hive.blog , with that said. Limit orders are what we are all surely familiar with, you set a price or accept prices in the queue , you either wait for your price to be met or you are happy taking a bit less for a quick trade. However you 100% decide.
So from your Ecency wallet you can go to either Hive or HBD and in the wallet look for the TRADE TOKEN button.
That will take you to the on-chain market built into Hive blockchain. In ecency you will see 3 tabs at the top-right - SWAP | LIMIT | ADVANCED
Advanced
- This is just a fancier view of Limit with candles and pretty colours.
Limit
- This is the traditional Hive market view, same as what you would get on Hive.blog
SWAP
- A quick way to accept all the top buys or sells, you will lose money here.
So whether you then decide to fill one of the active sells for Hive since you have a similar amount or rather set a lower price and wait for someone to sell you have at that price will be the same on Limit or Advanced view.
Ecency SWAP
The swap option though just requires you to do a bit of confirmation. If you have a small amount of say 10 HBD or even at times 100HBD the diff in what you get is often not a real concern. You could check coingecko for a rough estimate of how much Hive you ought to be getting or open another limit order page and input the values against the lowest ask price.
The main thing to know is why there might be a price difference. From what I have seen in my wallet history is that SWAP is just an automated way to buy up all the latest orders. It basically does what a very impatient person would do manually. It will start at the top of the current sell orders and just buy everything until your HBD value has been met.
This is usually fine unless there is quite a large amount of HBD to trade or there is a big gap between sell values. Something like 1 HBD on lowest sell price you get 10 HIVE but this still does not fill your 10 HBD order. So the next sell price is 5 Hive for 1HBD and so on and so forth. It will buy them all and essentially you might make a cumulative loss of "50 Hive".
It depends though because waiting for your price to be filled might lose you more if everything decides to drop.
I think that covers getting your Hive via the on-chain market.
Hive-engine - Tribaldex
The other method is to go directly to Hive-engine from HBD and for simplicity I will just say Engine unless something is specific to Tribaldex. Tribaldex is essentially just a Engine v2 interface although I think this is almost only in looks rather than functionality. So although I like Tribaldex for most things I will use Hive-engine screenshots since they have 1 very important thing that the supposed better platform does not.
For this part have at least two tabs open, your Hive wallet - peakd, ecency or if you like Keychain. Why I think keychain might be a hassle is because it closes when you go back to copy the memo. Unless you make them different windows and not tabs. If you do use keychain then maybe make a txt doc or the first time to easily copy over the address and memo. Future times at least it will auto complete the address.
In Engine you can then click the DEPOSIT button and they will still go old-school and give you an address and memo to transfer to. COPY these instead of trying to write. You will only ever kick yourself in the arse if you try to type things without direct reference.
Once you have sent the HBD, or if you did on-chain first the same will apply for HIVE. DEPOSIT HIVE instead. I will note another quicker method if you have Hive already below.
Once you have sent the HBD with that exact address and memo , then you will have SWAP.HBD in your account.
If you have Hive already then the simplest is to just use BEEswap - BeeSwap - Convert
That will convert your HIVE to SWAP.HIVE
SWAP.HIVE is the main thing
Not sure if this goes without saying but the main thing that matters once you are on Engine is then having SWAP.HIVE
Almost all pools and trade pairs on Engine use SWAP.HIVE as the base. So when you sent HBD to Engine for SWAP.HBD you will always need to do another trade for SWAP.HIVE , since they are pegged I honestly am not too sure about "slippage" but I think there can still be variations so again just check how much you get when doing a swap. It should be negligible.
This is where Hive-engine beats Tribaldex though. Because on Tribaldex if you try to go from SWAP.HBD to LTC then you won't have a method of conversion. You will manually have to go SWAP.HBD -> SWAP.Hive -> Target.
As you can see in the red block I drew. Hive-engine automatically will route the swap through the closest pairs - hbd->hive->ltc
So that makes it worthwhile to use the "old" engine. I would still check what the final estimate is for LTC just in case liquidity is so low I might need to make a different plan. This goes the same for all other tokens.
Why LTC
I use LTC here because I do trust it the most, and it is such a ubiquitous token you will be hard-pressed to find a place that does not support it.
Fee wise it is also one of the cheapest to transfer between exchanges with relevant speed. Sol is another option on Engines withdraw list worth using if possible but I have always had a bit of an ick when it comes to Solana. Which is ironic because I transfer USDT only on the SOL chain between Binance and my local exchange. So maybe my ick is with Engine...
Onward to the Exchange
The important bit here is that you have checked which tokens your exchange support, unless you are a complete imbecile I doubt your will be transferring ERC anything.
After giving the Engine withdraw list a gander I would say cost and speed wise the only tokens most will support are LTC, SOL, BNB and DOGE ... maybe not DOGE.. I don't know about that dog.
Then once you see the token you like, you go to your exchange and you make very sure that you can deposit it. Don't change to the token on Engine unless you know it is the same token. You will just waste time and probably lose on price drop.
Engine also seems more straightforward than some others so things like LTC but wrapped on another chain won't be as relevant. It will be LTC directly to LTC unless otherwise specified.
Be sure you have to correct address from your exchange!!
Then you are done ... right.
Once you withdrew to your exchange you are pretty much done. Because you have already checked the following?
Your exchange connects to your bank account so you may withdraw in your local currency
Your exchange supports the withdrawn token and that token can be traded to your local currency
You are aware of any verification measures such as confirming the money comes from your personal wallet or they list Engine as an exchange option for "TAX" purposes.
Some bits for South African transfers.
Personally I do not use Luno, they irritated me a couple years ago and since then I only use VALR. Luno are thieving little bug fuckers. Also always know which protocol and token you are sending funds on ERC-20 does not mean any ERC-20 token.
The above method I showed is actually the simplest method you can follow to go from HBD/Hive to any exchange. I actually don't use it, simply because again Engine pissed me off at some point.
However they are still the most reliable way we have to quickly change to a supported token and move our funds.
For South Africans I think this is specifically Luno or Valr.
If however you want to trade more than what Engine provides, then you can slap Binance in the mix.
Once you have your on-chain Hive, preferably you then transfer that to your Binance account. They do not support HBD. Your transfer will also have to be manually approved by going to your deposit history.
In your deposit history and once you clicked the transaction it will ask you where the money comes from. You will say it is from yourself. Hive wallets although online are our own personal wallets.
Sometimes I need to complete that then go back again and attempt to complete it again only for it to say I have , that will trigger the availability of the funds. Honestly that is just stupid javascript again. This process is usually within 5 minutes.
Once I have Hive I trade to USDT , and from there you can do as you wish.
My goal is obviously to get to VALR. So on VALR I always confirm I can accept USDT and I choose the Solana chain.
On Binance I will go to withdraw and paste my Valr address. I then confirm that I am sending to an exchange, and choose VALR from the dropdown. The transaction usually costs me about 50 cents ( 8 rand).
Which is why the Engine flow is probably better.
On VALR I don't SWAP my USDT to Rands because the loss on the direct buy sell is about 100 rands almost always.
I will trade my USDT to ZAR on the closest value and even if less than I like it is never less than a SWAP, USDT also has no real fluctuation so unlike waiting for LTC and having a dip I hardly ever lose much once my Hive is sold for USDT.
Always confirm the info.
So I think that is about it. The last bit has no screenshots simply because at that point it might be different for most. The important part is knowing what is next in your workflow. Know why you are sending to a specific place and confirm that everything matches.