Well, thanks for reminding me on browsing through my own witness votes list again ;-) It was a good time to do that now :-)
Read your take on the topic ;-) And I agree on your points, but I think the solution lies more in the middle (12% ;-) ).
- True about the demotivation to participate. For some. I think if you lower the APR to 6% now, you will get a shift from HBD to HIVE for people that are already active on Hive. The ones that have their HBD parked here for nothing but the gains will not suddenly become active, they will or never notice (or in a few years only, when they want to bank their gains), or they will notice, remove their HBD and be gone from the network, looking for something better. At the same time, you are "punishing" the ones that were always here, were active & saving at the same time, and will continue to do so.
- Same goes for the governance & long term activity I think. Having a nice savings account on Hive keeps people here, and keeps them active to receive more HBD through posting. Lowering it too much will chase them away.
- Not sure about the currency adoption point... I do hear from a lot of people that they have their HBD in savings, and use the interest payment as liquidity. I even know of a few who count on that to partially feed their families.
- The 20% interest as a red flag, yes, agree on that, it does make the whole thing look quite a bit sketchy :-)
But taking all these very valid points into account, I am mostly inclined to try to keep a balance between HBD interest and Hive earnings and all. I also believe that the APR needs to be reconsidered regularly. And I definitely believe that we first need to look at other things that need cleanups.