In my write-ups about the Hive that you earn for holding Hive Power, I’ve used the (perhaps poor) analogy that Hive Power is like gold, immutable. And that Hive is like paper money, with purchasing power vulnerable to the effects of inflation.

If you have exactly 100,000,000 vests today (making you an Orca) and do nothing with it for a year (i.e. not even curation), a year from now you’d still have exactly 100,000,000 vests.

But if you have 51,300 liquid Hive today and do nothing with it for a year, you’d still have 51,300 Hive but powering it up would get you less than 100,000,000 vests so you would not be an Orca.