On its own, HBD is an instrument to short HIVE.

Yes but can you really short a network by going long on a derivative collateralized by the short?
Again, none of this is very simple.
It very much depends on where the money is coming from.
If the money is coming from outside the network (selling BTC in HBD) then Hive gets pumped.
If the money is coming from inside the network Hive trades flat.
In both situations Hive was never dumped on external exchanges so the price can't go down.

However, price can go down if the "short" was successful and HBD is worth more Hive than it was when we started. However, in that case we not only have to transfer the HBD back into Hive but we also have to sell that Hive on external exchanges to make the price go down. People like me would just power up the Hive and call it good. That gets us into another discussion: what about if I sell the curation that the powered up Hive creates? It also opens up another path as to how much our bandwidth is worth and governance powers.

Judging by your response I guess I'm just in an argumentative mood.
Happens.
My bad.