Sometime last week, I stumbled upon the Bridge page on Tribaldex. This feature allows you to wrap HIVE onto Ethereum, BNB Chain, or Base. In other words, you can move your HIVE out to trade on DeFi. I didn't know what to make of it. The first thing that came to mind is that it's another way for people to sell all their HIVE. But, the bridge requires a minimum of 100 HIVE for wrapping onto BNB and Base, 1000 for ETH, which is a speed bump for the Hive exodus.
Earlier today, I stumbled upon a HiveFest video which revealed that wrapped HBD is already functional, but has not been enabled yet. Soon. I find wrapped HBD more exciting than wrapped HIVE. There should, theoretically, be less price difference swapping wrapped HBD with USDC, and vice versa.
To me, it seems like wrapped HBD would be a great way to get people onto Hive for the 15% interest on HBD Savings. Even if they never blog, they'd be bringing in capital to Hive. Coinbase currently pays 3.85% APY on USDC held onchain. If you can swap USDC for wrapped HBD and bridge it back to Hive, you can earn greater yield.
Wrapped HIVE, on the other hand, I just don't see people buying it. It would largely be selling. Maybe I'm wrong. Hopefully.
I think it would be more fruitful for us as Hive users to convert our HIVE to HBD and then bridge that out. I just don't see great excitement for HIVE outside of the community. A stablecoin such as HBD, on the other hand, has some utility simply from being a stablecoin. HIVE, on the other hand, has utility within Hive. Outside of Hive, it's just good for selling or trading.
I'm not entirely skeptical of wrapped HIVE. I also watched another Hivefest Video in which they discussed Lite Accounts. This would allow people to onboard using their Google or other social media credentials. We have long theorized that if joining Hive were easier, then we'd have more users. Lite Accounts could make that true. If that's the case, then there would be utility for wrapped Hive as users could power up their accounts sooner to avoid the struggle most new Hive users have with low rewards. It wouldn't hurt to have more options for new users to buy HIVE so that they don't struggle as much at the beginning. I think we lose users because they become discouraged with their small accounts.
For me, personally, I have been warming up to the Base blockchain. Living in the USA, Coinbase is one simple way to onramp into crypto. The the Base wallet allows me to buy crypto directly from fiat with minimal fuss. I'm also a Crypto.com user, which has been more challenging to fund at times. This is why wrapped HIVE and HBD on the Base blockchain matter.
In addition, LeoStrategy has put LSTR, SURGE, and TTSLA on Base. This makes it a much shorter path to these assets from fiat. Bridged HIVE and HBD on Base also have that added convenience. Suffice it to say that I have mixed feelings. Bridging is good for me. But I'm not so certain how good it will be for Hive. I suppose time will tell.