Is It Time To Convert Any Leftover SBD To Steem? Is A Re-Peg Possible? + Golos Top Gainer

in #sbd7 years ago (edited)

SBD 0.jpg

A bank run to withdraw gold before the Communists arrive in Shanghai, 1949.

A topic I get asked a lot is "Should I sell my SBD and if so, when?" The truth is that this question is more complex than even your average request for a crystal ball rental. The reason for that is SBD are, in theory (and often previously also in practice,) a pegged currency. They are not pegged to the US $ technically, but rather pegged to 1 US $'s worth of Steem (admittedly, a minor distinction.)

In the past month, there has been some discussion about whether the SBD peg should be more strongly enforced (scroll to the bottom for links). I've only recently caught up to speed with some of the later posts in this particular saga, but from what I can tell the view of the majority of the witnesses is that SBD should be pegged. Their position is also rather logical - there is no real point to having two volatile coins on one blockchain.

On the other hand, the majority opinion (not by stake, but by users/authors) is to allow SBD to continue to float on the positive end. The idea is that the higher rewards help authors and drive both engagement on the platform and new users. Also, the general philosophy includes a preference for free market forces deciding the price of SBD.

One reason the SBD price is so high can be seen in my recent post about Korean volume - it's huge, for both Steem and SBD. However, it's truly nuts for SBD. I followed the entire CoinMarketCap currency list down to SBD at #228, and not a single coin was even close to turning over as high a percentage of their market cap daily. SBD turned over twice as much, or more, as the closest competitor I found in the top 240.

If you take a look at the following image from CoinMarketCap, you can see where I've written how much of each currency's total market cap (in percentage) is traded in the daily volume.

SBD Dump 2.png

One of these things is not like the other...

SBD's volume is over 10x the nearest competitor, and it is way more than 10x the average if you look at the other coins on this page.

Another worrying situation is the increasing divergence of market cap and bitcoin price from the dollar price of SBD. Take a look at the following chart, particularly the area highlighted in red:

SBD Dump 1.png

What you are seeing above is a near-all-time high in market cap for SBD, even though the dollar price was almost 3x as high 2 months ago. That means if you sold SBD today, or back at $14, you sold at roughly the same market cap or total valuation of SBD.

This is because everyday SBD are produced as the Steem blockchain pays out rewards for posts on Steemit. Very few of these are currently burned, as nobody is using the conversion command (it was recently removed from the GUI, so even uninformed users can't use it) and few SBD are burned for access to the promoted tab. The end result is a higher supply of SBD, so in order to maintain the same market cap, price must continually go down.

This natural effect of supply and demand on SBD is likely what we are seeing trail the price down from recent highs. Add to this the tail risk of the surprise addition of a Steem -> SBD conversion option as proposed and favored by many witnesses, the odd nature of the high volume and it being centered around the Korean Upbit exchange, and on balance I think you have a much higher risk for similar or less reward holding SBD instead of Steem.

Could SBD go much higher, or the Steem/SBD ratio go much higher? Sure, and that's probably what will happen if Bitcoin continues to retake its gains toward 20,000. However, will SBD gain faster than other options and with less risk? At the moment, I'm finding it hard to make that argument.

SBD Dump 3.png

It decided to do the opposite while I edited this article...as soon as I made peace with 50k satoshi.

I won't tell you what to do with your SBD and I'm not bearish on Steem. However, I'm going to start converting the ones I have stashed away into Steem at my earliest convenience. There's zero chance Steem gets pegged, and Steem is fundamentally more useful than SBD.

Here are some posts discussing the potential for repegging from last month; feel free to take the temperature there yourself:

https://steemit.com/witness-category/@reggaemuffin/witness-discussion-sbd-price-and-reverse-peg
https://steemit.com/sbd/@lukestokes/should-sbd-be-a-pegged-asset-if-so-when-should-we-peg-it
https://steemit.com/steem/@aggroed/still-in-defense-of-a-high-sbd-why-witnesses-should-not-implement-steem-to-sbd-conversions-now

I'm not calling a top here (a bit late for that), and I'm sure the market will immediately make me look like an idiot, but that's my take.

In completely unrelated news:

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Way to go, Steemit's Russian little brother! Conversely, only 5.5 BTC for top gainer...

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I can see you have a totally valid point there. SBD was taken as a pegged currency which could be used in the place of $. So if any store is accepting dollar now with the help of steem blockchain it could used SBD and make online payments but from the time its price started increasing, now it seems difficult.
In a short term, it looks like not a very impressive deal for authors and new users but in the long run it will help steem to stablize and scale. It can open a lot of opportunities for different stores who want to accept a low volatile currnecy.

I'm not advocating for either side in this post, just pointing out the facts as I've researched them. There is a risk of SBD getting repegged.

Also, going to piggy back on this top comment for the record:

From a technical view, SBD looks primed for a big jump on the charts. I'm not suggesting that everyone fire-sale their SBD. But, if like me you had rather optimistic price targets previously, you may want to consider reducing them to something more realistic given it is always possible SBD is either forcibly re-pegged or trends back to $1.

How can we encourage more people to join Steemit and the crypto world, especially females?

Also, the general philosophy includes a preference for free market forces deciding the price of SBD.

This is a bogus argument, currently Steem has to bail out the SBD price every time it falls below 1$. And there's been many months where the price was staring to to nudge below 1$. The only reason why SBD enjoys high prices is because investors know that Steem holders have to bail out SBD if it falls below 1$.
A truly "free market" "with no rules" SBD would go to near 0 instantly without Steem backing it.
I would argue that allowing Steem to be converted to SBD is more freemarket than the current system preventing it. Steem investors are subsidizing this silly SBD coin which does not bring the benefits of a stable currency as envisioned in the white paper, and has held back the development of an online markeplace, not to mention the missed opportunity of taking away some of Tether's market share.

Interesting point, and I would assume that the witnesses would make an announcement beforehand, don't you think?

If you see the announcement, it would already be too late to sell before the market moves.

Yikes, you got me spooked, I'll be selling soon.

i don't think a stronger peg can be achieved than the existing one, one can only control the value here but outside market is again going to not take any peg seriously like the existing one.

@titanik, why isn't your avatar this picture instead:

However SBD was created by those farming in Steemit...

Holy crap, first time I heard of golos

According to the Steem Whitepaper

If a token is viewed as ownership in the whole supply of tokens, then a token-convertible-dollar can be
viewed as debt. If the debt to ownership ratio gets too high the entire currency can become unstable. Debt
conversions can dramatically increase the token supply, which in turn is sold on the market suppressing
the price. Subsequent conversions require the issuance of even more tokens. Left unchecked the system
can collapse leaving worthless ownership backing a mountain of debt. The higher the debt to ownership
ratio becomes the less willing new investors are to bring capital to the table.

The high SBD price is good for the long term, but as the whitepaper says, will make Steem unstable because a higher SBD means you can generate way more Steem tokens, thereby significantly affecting the price and supply of Steem.

Also,

If the amount of SBD debt ever exceeds 10% of the total STEEM market cap, the blockchain will automatically reduce the amount of STEEM generated through conversions to a maximum of 10% of the market cap. This ensures that the
blockchain will never have higher than a 10% debt-to-ownership ratio.

Having a high SBD relative to Steem would increase the amount of debt on the network. If the price is high, people will be trying to get as much SBD as possible and then cashing out.

Having it worth $1 USD adds stability. Sure, you could have it worth more, as long as the total value does not exceed 10% of the Steem marketcap, but then you can't really control it as well. The blockchain will not allow you to convert the SBD to an equivalent value of Steem. As a result, I guess people will just send it off into other cryptos.

everything looks correct, but i do not get the point how more steem is going to get generated since SBD is already pegged to $1 here on steemit and 50% of the reward will always be SP which will take SBD as $1.

talking about the outside conversions, they are only possible upto the extant of total STEEM generated already as rewards, nobody can buy more steem than the generated amount and the post payout will increase with rising value of STEEM not SBD.

so authors can earn extra by coverting to other coins but i do not agree that STEEM circulation is going to be affected by a higher valued SBD.

Correct me if i am wrong,

It has nothing to do with the fixed number. It's like stocks. Think shares. They divide in number as their value increases. They start out as an Initial Public Offering--people can purchase them for what they will.

When people from the outside have the opportunity to purchase steem tokens for their businesses, this will revolutionize the world's economy as larger corporations incorporate crypto currency into their model without even realizing it. They'll do Initial Coin Offerings, and bam. Steem value increases (as does the reward pool).

I posted an article on it awhile ago, that I think may answer some of the economical questions on how it impacts the growth here, if you'd like to read it: Smart Media Tokens Take Over the World

You'll have OUTSIDERS speculating on tokens that are steem tied. It's brilliant. I can't friggin wait.

Nowadays, when you convert SBD to STEEM or SP, blocktrades takes into account the value of SBD from exchanges. That is why people got pissed before, because when they sent their SBD to SP, the conversion was assuming that SBD is valued at $1 USD but on exchanges it was worth $5-$13 USD. So if they had $10 SBD, they were only getting $10 USD worth of SP, as opposed to getting $50-$130 worth of Steem/SP.

Thanks for posting the links. It’s a great debate and for now it feels like a lever d steem. They really should do what they can to increase the cap of Sbd. It would be great if this was a top 50 coin.

deleted..

Probably not worth commenting then.

removed..sorry for that

My feeling is that it's going to be really tough to re-peg it - you'd in effect be leaning against the Korean market.

thanks for share this information