For the month part of the month HBD price was eventless
There was a major price manipulation of HBD. The price shot up to $2.59 on the 25th. The Financial Report from @arcange shows people withdrawing about a quarter of the HBD in savings. Withdrawing funds from savings freezes the money for three days. The accounts that withdrew were not able to take advantage of the price pop. They will lose a little bit of interest. This will probably show up next month.
I suspect that the current manipulation of the price of HIVE is related to the manipulation of HBD.
Anything that is traded in open markets will have price movements.
You are correct to note that HBD on external markets will always have strange movements. That is because the movements are related to the limited number of coins in the external markets. HBD can be used as a currency because the formulas of the internal market guarantees that people can get a $1 worth of HIVE for an HBD.
The stupid interest rate does nothing but set up the platform for price manipulation.
The big dip in the chart was largely due to the large HBD holders withdrawing their funds en masse. It appears that the mika account withdrew then redeposited $400,000 in HBD.
The big accounts make HBD unstable. Your data shows that the top 13 accounts received over half of the HBD interest. The top 217 accounts received 90% of the HBD interest. The top 300 accounts listed received 93% of the HBD. Considering that there's tens of thousands of active HIVE users, it appears that we created a situation where the top 1% receive most of the rewards.
The 20% interest on HBD is a bad structure that benefits only a few. The HBD spike that happened on the 25th and the HIVE price manipulation going on today show that we have a structure that is easy for the players in the world to manipulate.
I hope the price of HIVE stays high. Common investors in HIVE can't respond to the pump because there is a 7 day power down period.
I hope the price of HIVE stays high. You should do a query to see how many people launched a power down in response to the current bump in the price of HIVE.
I agree with your assessments in general and thank you for additional information.
I disagree with a conclusion that HBD interest payments are only there to benefit 1%. It is open for anybody who is willing to use this feature and earn stable income on their money. There is a risk of missing out for those who choose to use HBD savings though. These accounts will miss out on big Hive price movements. The system is fair and everybody is welcome to participate in interest payments. That's why who is getting how much becomes irrelevant.
Also 20% APR is there to attract investments into Hive. Because the supply of HBD is so low, the only way for anybody to acquire massive amounts of is by minting - buying Hive and converting them to HBD. This in return should increase the price of Hive. If this theory works in practice, it is a win for the blockchain, for the community, for Hive/HP holders, and HBD holders.
So far, we don't see massive adoption of HBD, mainly the same people are using the savings feature. In this regard 20% APR wasn't able to accomplish its goal yet. But this also means, Hive doesn't pay too much out in interests, and these numbers are so low, there is nothing to worry about as far as sustainability.
As far as Hive price, I would rather see it keep going up slowly and consistently. Sudden and short lived price jumps don't really mean much.