It's not the blockchain's fault that steemit.com shows misleading figures. Use SteemPeak and you won't see any dollar signs. You'll see the rewards in Steem Token Units, which are not currently worth one USD, though. But at least fewer people mistake the STU symbol to mean the dollar.
I think the front ends should do a better job showing the correct dollar amounts.
If STEEM starts going up, let's say close to 1 USD, then SBD will go up too. I can guarantee that. That's because SBD will become convertible again once the SBD Debt Ratio goes under 10%. What that means is that you can convert each SBD into exactly one 1 USD worth of STEEM. When SBD is under 1 USD, the conversion makes perfect economic sense. That's what makes the peg work from the downside until the price of STEEM goes so low that it can no longer back SBD properly. The failure of the peg is a fail-safe to stop STEEM from going lower at an accelerated paced when it's already very low in a vain attempt at maintaining SBD at 1 USD.
This is not smoke and mirrors. It's just a failure on part of steemit.com and most other front ends to properly show the dollar values when the SBD Debt Ratio is above 10% or when speculation has caused SBD to spike far above 1 USD.
I guarantee ya 8 out of 10 of the average people who use this site would find everything you wrote way too complicated and lose attention before getting halfway through.
That's not meant to be a reflection on you or your writing - but feedback on the overcomplexity of this system itself and what a headache it is for your average person.
Not mass-adoption friendly at all.
Absolutely not mass-adoption friendly. I completely agree with that.